Armenia is represented at the Ancient Civilizations Forum that kicked off in La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia. Our country is represented by the Director of the “Matenadaran” Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts Vahan Ter-Ghevondyan and senior specialist at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of RA NAS Arsen Bobokhyan.
The Ancient Civilizations Forum was launched in 2016 at the initiative of Greece and China and serves as a platform of cooperation and dialogue aimed at preserving cultural values and encouraging cooperation in the sphere of cultural heritage. Bolivia, Egypt, Iraq, Iran , Italy, and Peru are the founding members of the Forum. India and Mexico have an observer status. Armenia joint the Forum as a full member in July 3, 2018.
As the press service at Matenadaran reported, Vahan Ter-Ghevondyan will present a report on the topic of Old Armenian and its role in forming culture.
The Armenian national team and the Armenian football delegation left for Sarajevo on Thursday. As part of the Euro 2020 Group J qualifications match our team will meet Bosnia and Herzegovina on March 23, the country’s football federation reported.
Earlier Head coach Armen Gyulbdaghyants announced the names of 27 players invited to join the team. Anatoly Ayvazov and Arsen Beglaryan will miss the match due to injury.
To note, Group J consists of six teams: Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Greece, Italy and Liechtenstein, where they will play against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format.
The top two teams will qualify directly for the finals. Unlike previous editions, the participants of the play-offs will not be decided based on results from the qualifying group stage, but instead based on their performance in the 2018–19 UEFA Nations League.
Even after the change of power last year, Armenia continues to adhere to Russia on foreign policy and tolerate Russia’s massive role domestically. Most recently, this is demonstrated by Armenia supporting Russia’s vast military effort in support of the Syrian regime.
– Abbas Zeynalli Rusif Huseynov
On February 8th, the Armenian Defense Ministry declared that 83 Armenian specialists – doctors, de-miners and security officers – will be dispatched to the Syrian city of Aleppo. According to the news release, this group was to provide humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. Severe humanitarian conditions, UN Security Council’s Resolutions 2393 (2017) and 2401 (2018), Syria’s formal requests, as well as Aleppo’s big Armenian community have been referred to as the main reasons for the deployment of the so-called non-combat team, which is supposed to work in those areas which are not engaged in any military operations.
This action is actually not the first engagement of Armenia in the Syrian civil war. Since the outbreak of the conflict, thousands of Syrian refugees, mainly of Armenian origin, were accepted by the South Caucasian nation. However, some of the refugees were illegally settled in Nagorno Karabakh, an Armenian-occupied conflict area which is internationally recognised as part of neighboring Azerbaijan.
Answering Moscow’s call
While some questioned the legality of the action, as Armenian law has no provisions for protecting civilians or involving its military personnel in such humanitarian activities, several politicians spoke out against the government’s decision. For instance, Hovsep Khurshudyan believes that Russia dragged Armenia into the Syrian conflict, which will have unpredictable consequences for Armenia, which has not received and will not receive anything in return.
The first international reaction to the Armenian team naturally came from Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s key ally Russia, who covered the trip’s logistics and security issues. On the same day, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu thanked his Armenian counterpart David Tonoyan, stating, “You were the first to respond to our call to provide assistance to the Syrian people”. The hypocrisy of this Russian statement, given that Russia is largely responsible for the Syrians’ suffering, is nothing new from Putin’s government[.
For a long time, at least since 2012, the Kremlin had been seeking support for its Syrian partner from its military allies. Although some news on a CSTO peacekeeping mission circulated in the following years, with Russia being especially interested in involving Central Asian Muslim countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, those speculations never materialised as other CSTO members seemed less enthusiastic to get engaged in the bloody conflict.
The negotiations on possible Armenian participation in the Syrian war started a few years earlier. In 2016, the Russian and Armenian foreign ministers discussed the deployment of army sappers to the Syrian town of Palmyra. These discussions took place during the presidency of Serzh Sargsyan, openly pro-Russian, who stepped down as a result of the Armenian revolution in spring 2018. The protests were led by Nikol Pashinyan, who had long criticised his predecessors foreign policies, opposing Armenia’s joining the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and calling it a “serious threat” to Armenia.
What revolution?
Therefore, Armenia`s teaming up with Russia in Syria now should raise some questions about Yerevan`s post-revolution government; Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his team have already worsened their relations with Moscow but was nto willing to make any dramatic U-turn westward either, despite the expectations both from within and outside of Armenia.
In fact, the current government’s Syria deal with Russia was announced back in summer 2018, when Pashinyan disclosed on August 17th 2018 that Yerevan and Moscow were to undertake an “unprecedented humanitarian initiative”, as he called it, in the Middle East. Later in September, both Pashinyan and Defense Minister Tonoyan confirmed Armenia`s plans of dispatching troops to Syria.
The negative reaction by the United States arrived immediately in September 2018, during the visit of U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton to Yerevan. The top official warned Armenia against sending its troops to Syria to back up government forces or their allies. “It would be a mistake for anybody else to get involved militarily in the Syrian conflict at the moment… There are already … seven or eight different combatant sides. To get involved with anyone of them for any other country would be a mistake,” he noted.
In February 2019, the U.S. Embassy to Armenia issued a special statement of the State Department, which “did not welcome” the initiative: “We do not support any interaction with the Syrian Armed Forces, regardless of whether it is about providing assistance to civilians or is of a military nature”.
This action was cited as why the planned visit of Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan to Washington was canceled by the U.S. State Department, which followed a conversation between Mnatsakanyan and John Bolton.
Interestingly enough, Armenian plans were announced and then realised amidst and despite the tensions between Yerevan and Moscow, as well as within the CSTO. Having not heavily interfered with the revolution and post-revolution processes in Armenia, the Russian authorities still did not welcome Armenia’s new officials warmly. Moscow seemed particularly upset with Pashinyan’s policies and attempts to bring to trial his pro-Russian predecessors.
As for the CSTO, during the Khachaturov case, when the post of Secretary General of the organization became vacant and the Armenian authorities tried to fill in the position with another representative[, they faced the resistance of other member-states, especially Belarus and Kazakhstan. The situation has fully exposed Armenia’s vulnerable position in the organization.
Among the main factors of Armenia`s decision to enter Syria could be Pashinyan`s desire to appease Putin, who considers any revolutions and attempts at democracy in Russia`s “near abroad” – neo-imperial objective – a threat. Moscow may have been especially interested in such a serious move in order to demonstrate to the Western community Armenia`s alliance with Russia despite the increased pro-Western sentiments in Armenian society, the cooling of Armenian-Russian relations and inner problems within the CSTO.
It is not the first time Armenia has openly sided with Russia against the West. After the violent and illegal annexation of Crimea into Russia, an event condemned by many countries, especially the Western community and those who support international rule of law, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan was the first person to congratulate Vladimir Putin on a happy annexation. No surprise then that Armenia was also one of the 11 states which voted against the United Nations Resolution calling upon the states not to recognise changes in status of the Crimean region.
A humanitarian mission sent by the new government is said to either appease Putin or to acquire some concessions (e.g. non-interference in Armenia’s domestic policy) from the Kremlin.
No matter what could be the calculations of the post-revolution Armenian authorities who replaced a pro-Russian government, it is obvious that they cannot turn to the West or even balance between Russia and the West without overwhelming resistance from Russia’s government. Russia`s omnipresence in Armenia (Russian military bases, the dominance of Russian companies in the Armenian economy) leaves little or no room for maneuver for Yerevan, making it virtually impossible to shift its domestic and foreign policies.
It will be too difficult for Armenia to get rid of the Russian umbrella and diversify its foreign and security policies, given that the landlocked and resource-short nation has problems and sealed borders simultaneously with two of its neighbors – Turkey and Azerbaijan. Moscow`s relatively calm attitude towards the Armenian Maidan (unlike the cases of other color revolutions in the post-Soviet space) may also stem from the fact that the Russian authorities are fully aware of their strong positions in Armenia and realise that this country cannot dis-anchor from Russian sphere of influence. Perhaps the revolution did not change that much.
Rusif Huseynov is the Co-Founder of the Topchubashov Center, Azerbaijan. His main interest is peace and conflict studies, while his focus areas cover mainly Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Abbas Zeynalli is a Research Fellow from the Topchubashov Center, Azerbaijan. His areas of interest include the Middle East, Chinese foreign policy, the South Caucasus and European integration.
Manipulation of the Armenian Genocide issue against the backdrop of tensions in Turkish-Israeli relations is unacceptable for Armenia, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anna Naghdalyan told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday.
“The recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is first and foremost a moral issue,” she said, reflecting on the recent Erdogan-Netanyahu spat, which made a reference to the Genocide issue.
Commenting on Armenian-Israeli relations and plans to open an Armenian embassy in Israel, the spokesperson said expansion of Armenia’s diplomatic representations is always on the agenda of the Foreign Ministry.
Separately, she slammed Azerbaijan’s conduct of large-scale military drills on its territory without a prior notification as a serious violation of international commitments that no way contributes to regional confidence-building measures.
Naghdalyan said Armenia’s representative at the OSCE has raised the issue, demanding an explanation from Azerbaijan.
Asked to comment on Azerbaijan’s deployment of a new military base on the border with Armenia, Naghdalyan stressed both Artsakh and Armenia have determination and capacities to defend themselves and retaliate.
She said Azerbaijan’s application of mortars on Artsakh border after a long break on March 13 also does not contribute to preparing populations to peace and strengthening atmosphere of trust.
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After decades of ethnic conflict, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan are preparing to meet to try to resolve their long-term clash over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Observers have many reasons to be skeptical that yet another one-off meeting will lead to a thaw at long last.
However, something significant has changed since the last such push. A year ago, Armenian protesters brought down a prime minister, leading to free elections last December. Some evidence suggests that democratic societies are more likely to seek peace with their neighbors — and are most likely to achieve it if civil society groups are allowed to reach out and form contacts across borders before the formal negotiations.
Here’s what you need to know about what has happened, and what comes next.
1. A brief history of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
Between Armenia and Azerbaijan lies a contested territory controlled by an unrecognized state called the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), which is supported, but not recognized, by the Armenian government — and is claimed by Azerbaijan.
In 1921, the Soviet Union joined this Armenian-majority highland enclave with Soviet-controlled Azerbaijan, separating the Armenians as part of Stalin’s divide-and-conquer strategies. In the late 1980s, as Moscow loosened its controls over the Soviet empire under perestroika, ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh began campaigning to rejoin Armenia, agitating for democracy, human rights and self-rule — one of the early cracks that brought down the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh formally voted to secede from Azerbaijan — prompting armed conflict between Armenia and the Armenian-majority population on one hand and Azerbaijan on the other. In 1994, after 30,000 people on both sides had died and more than 1 million refugees fled the violence, the two countries signed a shaky cease-fire agreement. Observers consider the standoff to be neither war nor peace, and it simmers with low but persistent levels of violence at the border.
2. The democratic wave in Armenia
Last April, Armenia’s parliamentary opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan led a mass nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that forced the prime minister to resign. For decades, Armenia had been “a soft authoritarian state in which the ruling elite … closely controlled political and economic opportunities,” as political scientists Mariam Matevosyan and Graeme Robertson explained here at TMC a year ago. By December, the protesters had forced free elections that put Pashinyan and his pro-democracy party in power. As I’ll explain below, that gave observers some hope that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could be resolved.
[Armenian protesters brought down a prime minister. This is why they were in the streets.]
In recent months, the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France, has mediated diplomatic efforts between the two sides. Armenia and Azerbaijan had been accusing each other of frequently violating the cease-fire with shootings, mortar attacks and use of other heavy weaponry that kills and wounds soldiers and civilians alike. Such attacks have ceased since Armenia’s democratic transition last year.
The global track record of this type of single-shot peace agreement sought by the OSCE Minsk Group has been mixed, as has the efficacy of external peace negotiators. Russia, one of the mediating parties, has continued to sell weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has continued to threaten war and economic isolation to try to force negotiating concessions. And Armenia has continued to insist that it will not withdraw from the seven disputed districts it controls around Nagorno-Karabakh.
Past diplomatic rounds were followed by only temporary thaws. Many analysts and peace advocates remain skeptical about this most recent diplomatic opening, too.
3. Here’s what may now be different
Armenia’s democratic breakthrough may have shifted leaders’ incentives on both sides. Now two countries in the region, Armenia and Georgia, its neighbor to the north, embrace democracy.
Recent studies suggest that when a region has more democracies, the probability of conflict and aggression tends to go down. Democratic societies favor peaceful interactions with their neighbors. They tend to advance cooperation and compromise in their regions. And democratic societies are more likely to support one another’s shared goals of human rights and economic interests in bigger markets. That weakens support for military “solutions” to conflicts.
But that’s not enough by itself. Research also suggests that peace agreements are more likely to be implemented if all parties involved in a conflict are included in the peace process. What’s needed now are ways to engage the groups most affected by the conflict: rural communities near the conflict lines, women, refugees and Nagorno-Karabakh itself, all of which have been left out of negotiations over the years. Studies have shown that single-shot, top-down peace deals often fail — unless the parties simultaneously build broad-based connections among societies.
Of course, calling for contacts between people while militaries continue patrolling the borders, and without regionwide security guarantees, is unrealistic. All affected parties in the region — including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh itself, nongovernmental organizations, civil-society groups and others need to be involved in crafting broader regional security agreements and institutions. Regional security structures that incorporate all such interests are necessary to support and enable a sustainable peace agreement. Otherwise, connections across conflict lines will remain shallow and limited, and formal peace agreements between governments short-lived.
Such regional security can take the form of regionwide rules, treaties, pacts or issue-focused organizations. They can enable community leaders to work together on shared problems — such as drug trafficking, rural poverty, distorted trade routes, water cooperation or preserving cultural heritage sites — across conflict lines.
Building such connections in the region can help shift diplomacy away from short-term concessions and focus it instead on longer-term, regionwide issues of bread-and-butter governance. Such multilateral forums can dilute the rivalry between Armenia and Azerbaijan, helping various social groups build trust and connections across conflict lines — before international mediators and governing elites ask their people for concessions. Regionwide security guarantees can clarify and affirm nonviolence as a foundational principle for the region, and create the political stability needed to enable deeper diplomacy around the conflict itself.
Anna Ohanyan is Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Stonehill College, editor of “Russia Abroad: Driving Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia and Beyond” (Georgetown University Press, 2018), and author of “Networked Regionalism as Conflict Management” (Stanford University Press, 2015).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/20/long-last-peace-might-be-possible-between-armenia-azerbaijan-heres-whats-needed/?utm_term=.ae30293e893c