By Varak Ghazarian
Armenia has ended the tenure of Marianne Clark-Hattingh, the UNICEF representative in Armenia, according to the spokeswoman of the Armenian Foreign Ministry Anna Naghdalyan.
“The shortcomings of the UNICEF Representative in Armenia Marianne Clark-Hattingh in the implementation of her mandate and her non-cooperative style of work were problematic for the Armenian side. The UN Resident Coordinator and UNICEF representatives were informed about the above-mentioned decision,” Naghdalyan stated.
Clark-Hattingh left Armenia “in a hurry,” due to “the head of the UNICEF Armenia office not presenting herself correctly,” according to Sputnik Armenia.
Zara Sargsyan, Head Communication at UNICEF Armenia, denied reports that Clark-Hattingh left Armenia “in a hurry.” According to Sargsyan, UNICEF has already named a new representative in Armenia and is now awaiting approval from the Armenian Foreign Ministry.
According to various telegram channels, Armenian authorities declared the Head of the UNICEF Armenia office a “persona non grata” because she spied for Azerbaijan and Great Britain.
The General Prosecutor’s Office of Armenia stated they do not have any information about Clark-Hattingh’s alleged espionage for Azerbaijan while she was in office. However, the General Prosecutor’s Office stated that they will look into the allegations.
The UNICEF headquarters in New York has yet to issue a statement regarding the recent development, but the decision to remove Clark-Hattingh was agreed upon by the executives of UNICEF.
Clark-Hattingh took over UNICEF office in Armenia in July 2020. She was UNICEF’s representative in Malaysia from 2016-2020. Before coming to Armenia, she worked for UNICEF in Malaysia, Somalia, Ghana, Madagascar, and several other countries.
By Emil Sanamyan
A resolution calling on Azerbaijan to release more than an estimated 200 Armenian military prisoners and civilian hostages is due to be introduced in the House of Representatives next week, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) reported on March 6. Last January, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that among other things called for the release of Armenian prisoners. The Russian government has also been calling for the release of all prisoners. None of these calls have had much effect so far.
Since the start of the year, Azerbaijan released ten Armenian prisoners in exchange for two Azerbaijani citizens held in Armenia on illegal border crossing charges since before the war. Lawyers for the families of prisoners have estimated that hundreds of Armenian citizens are still being held by Azerbaijan, months after they were captured. The Armenian government has refused to publicize its estimate for the number of its citizens held, but the Diaspora commissioner Zareh Sinanyan recently acknowledged there were more than a hundred people held.
Armenian media have speculated that Azerbaijan is demanding additional territorial concessions from Armenia in exchange for the release. Armenian officials deny that any land-for-prisoners swap is in the works.
The proposed text of the congressional resolution, as reproduced by the ANCA, is below:
“Expressing the Sense of the House of Representatives That Azerbaijan Immediately Release All Prisoners of War and Captured Civilians
Whereas on September 27 2020, Azerbaijan, with support from Turkey and foreign militia groups, launched a military assault on Nagorno Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, resulting in the deaths of thousands and displacing tens of thousands of ethnic Armenian residents;
Whereas on November 9 2020, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia signed a tripartite statement to end the conflict;
Whereas in signing the November 9 statement, all parties agreed that the “exchange of prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees as well as the remains of the fatalities shall be carried out”;
Whereas the third Geneva Convention, of which Azerbaijan is a signatory, and international law require the release of Prisoners of War and captured civilians upon the cessation of hostilities and require that all detainees be treated humanely;
Whereas despite Azerbaijan’s obligations under the Geneva Conventions and their commitments in signing the November 9 statement, more than 100 days after the end of the conflict, the government of Azerbaijan continues to detain an estimated 200 Armenian prisoners of war, hostages, and detained persons, seeking to misrepresent their status to justify their continued captivity;
Whereas Human Rights Watch reported in December 2020 found that Azerbaijani military forces had mistreated ethnic Armenian prisoners of war and subjected them to “physical abuse and humiliation”;
Whereas Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights issued a report on the conflict “documenting crimes against humanity and other atrocities committed by Azerbaijani armed forces and Turkish-backed Islamist fighters against Armenians,” including beheadings, summary executions, and the desecration of human remains;
Whereas there is limited reliable information about the condition or treatment of prisoners of war and captured civilians, and there is significant concern that female detainees in particular could be subject to sexual assaults and other mistreatment;
Whereas Azerbaijan’s continued detainment of prisoners of war and captured civilians calls into serious question their commitment to human rights and negotiating an equitable, lasting peace settlement;
Whereas Armenia has fulfilled its obligations under the November 9 statement and international law by returning Azerbaijani prisoners of war;
Whereas the United States, along with France and Russia, is a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk group which was created to seek a durable and peaceful solution to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
Therefore be it resolved, that the House of Representatives –
1) Calls upon Azerbaijan to immediately return all Armenian prisoners of war and captured civilians; and
2) Urges the State Department to engage at all levels with Azerbaijani authorities, including through the OSCE Minsk Group process, to make clear the importance of adhering to their obligations under the November 9 statement and international law to immediately release all prisoners of war and captured civilians.”
Emil Sanamyan is a Washington D.C.-based South Caucasus Analyst.
This article originally appeared in Focus on Karabakh.
elecom Armenia has begun construction on a new fibre-optic Next Generation Network (NGN) in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
A former unit of Veon now trading as Beeline, Telecom Armenia expects the NGN to offer speeds of up to 10Gbps. Deployment has commenced in the Davidashen district of the city, although the operator does not expect to switch the network on for “several months”.
CommsUpdate quoted Telecom Armenia CEO Hayk Yesayan as saying: “We are taking a new leap into the next century by creating a new fibre-optic network that will be one of the best in the world. In existing networks, the main backbone is shared among multiple users, while in our new network, each subscriber will receive a fibre-optic channel using fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology.”
Much was made of Turkey’s return last year to one of its old stomping grounds – The Caucasus. Almost six months on, however, little of substance has materialized in Ankara’s diplomatic and military initiatives in the region.
For centuries, Turkey, in its previous incarnation as the Ottoman Empire, controlled the western portion of the South Caucasus, including much of western Georgia and historical western Armenia. Following the Ottoman collapse, Ankara was locked out of the region owing to Soviet domination. Even after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Turkey remained a peripheral player owing to its own weakness and greater interests elsewhere.
That all seemed to change last autumn. After nearly three decades of mostly low-key support to its Turkic ally, Azerbaijan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to throw Turkey’s military and political weight behind Baku to reignite the long-dormant Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Turkish drones and commanders played a key role in the ensuing 44-day war that ended in victory for Azerbaijan. It seemed Turkey had waltzed into Russia’s backyard and imposed itself on a region hitherto dominated almost entirely by Russian (and some Western) influence.
But what has Turkey actually won for itself in the Caucasus? The evidence suggests it is very little of any lasting substance.
The first difficulties emerged immediately after the war ended in a ceasefire in the early hours of November 10. The ceasefire was a trilateral agreement between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, who were both architects and guarantors of the deal. There was no mention of Turkey.
Turkish officials insisted repeatedly that they would be part of the ceasefire monitoring operations, as well as any future negotiations on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 12, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu even declared that Turkey’s role in monitoring the ceasefire would be “exactly the same as Russia’s.” Russian diplomats have refuted this claim, however, reaffirming that the November 10 agreement concerns only Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Other parties, including Turkey, have no part in it.
Nevertheless, a memorandum on a joint Turkish-Russian monitoring centre was signed in mid-November. But when the centre finally opened on January 30, it turned out to be situated around 10 km outside Karabakh itself, with a staff of only around 100, half of them Turkish.
Meanwhile, under the trilateral agreement, Russia had already deployed well over 2,000 personnel – equipped with heavy weaponry and vehicles – in Karabakh itself and were interacting directly with both Azeri and Karabakh Armenian personnel. Turkey’s presence appeared to be not only largely symbolic but also of greater benefit to the Russians, giving them boots on the ground on both sides of the line while Ankara was sidelined.
Other Turkish efforts to enter the diplomatic realm over Karabakh have similarly come to nought. Even though the OSCE’s Minsk Group, which until now has been the primary international vehicle for negotiations over Karabakh, seems to be moribund at present. Turkey continues to be rebuffed.
Ankara’s suggestions for other regional dialogue forums have met with a cool reception. The most ambitious of these, the “3+3” format (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia plus Russia, Turkey and Iran) promoted by Cavusoglu, has proved unacceptable to Armenia and Georgia, which is no great surprise. Ankara’s failure to see the obvious – that Tbilisi would object to working with Moscow – shows a certain naiveté.
Turkey’s attempt to end another long-standing quarrel in the Caucasus, between itself and Armenia, has also been ham-fisted at best. In recent months, Turkish officials have indicated frequently a willingness to reopen the border between their countries, which has been closed since 1993, and to establish diplomatic relations.
In this, Turkey would appear to hold most of the cards. If Ankara takes a unilateral decision to reopen the border, this essentially presents Armenia with a fait accompli. Russia would certainly encourage such a move as it could then establish its own overland link – via Azerbaijan and Armenia – with Turkey
But Ankara has shown little understanding of the political sensitivity of the matter in Armenia, with Erdogan in particular repeatedly issuing harshly-worded statements against Yerevan and in support of Baku. Without even the slightest show of empathy toward the issue of the Armenian genocide – let alone the open support for Azerbaijan in the recent war – the chances of a genuine relationship with Armenia are slim.
So what does Ankara have to show for the recent postwar months in the Caucasus? It has strengthened relations with Azerbaijan, but even those are tempered by Baku’s careful foreign-policy balancing act with Russia and the West. Turkey has made no tangible progress in asserting itself as a bilateral or multilateral partner with either Georgia or Armenia and has shown little understanding of the region’s dynamics.
In this context, Turkey’s role in the Caucasus is not so dissimilar to Iran’s: a former imperial power that once dominated half the region, but whose influence now is extremely limited. It will take significantly more nuance and skill if Ankara wishes to truly extend its reach into the Caucasus.
In arrangement with Syndication Bureau
Neil Hauer is a guest contributor. Views expressed are personal.
Army leaders reiterate call for PM to quit after he announces dismissal of top military figure.
Tensions between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the country’s army reignited on Wednesday, with the leader under continued pressure over his handling of last year’s conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan, the embattled leader who has faced a wave of anti-government protests in recent weeks, said on Wednesday that Onik Gasparyan, the army’s chief of the General Staff who earlier joined calls for him to resign, has been relieved of his duties, according to Russian news agency RIA.
Hours later, Armenia’s army leaders to reiterate their call for Pashinyan to step down, TASS news agency reported.
Pashinyan announced the move in a statement published on a government website, days after Armenian President Armen Sarkissian refused to sign the premier’s draft decree to dismiss Gasparyan.
The statement said the because Sarkissian had not sent documentation pertaining to his rejection of Gasparyan’s dismissal to the Constitutional Court, the chief of staff was therefore automatically “relieved of his post from March 10 [Wednesday] by force of law”.
Pashinyan, in power since 2018, had accused Gasparyan of leading a coup attempt after he called for the leader’s resignation.
Later on Wednesday, Pashinyan appealed to Sarkissian to appoint General Lieutenant Artak Davtyan as new chief of general staff, a government spokeswoman told AFP.
Gasparyan accepted his dismissal reluctantly, saying he would appeal against Pashinyan’s decree to fire him.
“In order to ensure the supremacy of the constitution and law in Armenia … I appealed to an administrative court,” Gasparyan said in a statement.
“I will continue my service to the motherland and the Armenian people in a different status,” he said, adding that the “resolution of the current crisis will only be possible if the prime minister resigns and snap polls are held.”
The prime minister has been under increasing pressure to step down following the latest conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which saw Armenia suffer heavy losses and agree to return swaths of territory to Azerbaijan.
Last month, large protests flooded the streets of the capital Yerevan – some came out against the PM but many others heeded Pashinyan’s call to rally in support of the government.
The dispute with top generals began when Pashinyan fired the deputy chief of the general staff after he ridiculed claims by the prime minister that Iskander missiles supplied by Russia – Armenia’s main military ally – had failed to hit targets during the war for Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinyan issued a subdued retraction on Monday, with his office saying he had been “incorrectly briefed on this matter” and had no doubts about the quality of Russian military production.
The Russian-brokered deal that ended the conflict secured significant major gains for Azerbaijan in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, a region internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but populated and until recently fully controlled by ethnic Armenians.
Thousands of soldiers and dozens of civilians on both sides died during the war.
Pashinyan, who has rejected calls to resign, said he had been compelled to agree to the peace deal to prevent greater human and territorial losses.
MOSCOW (REUTERS) – Armenia’s government said the dismissal of a top army general at the centre of a political crisis went into effect on Wednesday, almost two weeks after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan fired him and accused the military of a coup attempt.
The army had demanded Pashinyan quit on Feb. 25, prompting Pashinyan to sack the chief of the army’s general staff. But that move needed the approval of the president, which he declined to give.
The standoff is a major challenge for Pashinyan, who was swept to power by protests in 2018 but has been under fire over his handling of last year’s conflict between ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Pashinyan’s government said in a statement on Wednesday that the general’s dismissal was now legally effective because the president had not signed the decree within the time allotted or gone to court under specific articles of the law.
“Head of the General Staff Onik Gasparyan … is legally dismissed from his post from March 10,” the statement said.
In a statement in response, Gasparyan denounced his dismissal as unconstitutional and said that Armenia’s political crisis could only be ended by Pashinyan’s resignation and snap parliamentary elections, the Interfax news agency reported.
“I will continue to serve the motherland and the Armenian people in a different capacity,” he said, without elaborating.
Another statement attributed to the leadership of the armed forces said it agreed with Gasparyan’s statement and his overall assessment of the situation, News.am and Russian media outlets reported.
“There is one solution to the current situation, it is in the message (from Gasparyan),” the statement was quoted as saying.
Pashinyan later proposed Artak Davtyan, the former chief of general staff, to replace Gasparyan, the TASS news agency reported.
Pashinyan has faced calls to resign since last November when he agreed to a Russian-brokered ceasefire that halted six weeks of fighting between ethnic Armenian and Azeri forces over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The deal secured significant territorial gains for Azerbaijan in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but is populated and until recently was fully controlled by ethnic Armenians.
Pashinyan, who has rejected calls to resign, said he had been compelled to agree to the peace deal to prevent greater human and territorial losses.
(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Larry King)
For the beleaguered indigenous Christians of the Middle East, there was hope the historic visit of Pope Francis to Iraq would bring much needed awareness to their plight.
Despite recognizing the “fading” presence of the region’s Christians, mainstream media has largely been complicit in reinforcing the systematic erasure of these ancient communities.
The Christians of the “Muslim world” take little solace in being portrayed as outsiders in the region they’ve inhabited since before the time of Christianity. Nor are they particularly delighted at their portrayal as a homogenous entity of “Iraqi Christians”—a reductionist mischaracterization of a diverse community that was propounded by Ba’athist and later Kurdish authorities to enforce the assimilation and disappearance of their distinct ethnic and cultural identities.
Assyrians are the predominant Christian group in Iraq, whose presence traces back to the birth of Mesopotamian civilization. Today, Assyrians in Iraq are often identified along their church denominations—with the Chaldean Catholics comprising the largest group, followed by members of the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church and Syriac Catholic Church.
The modern history of the Christian community in Iraq has been defined by waves of persecution they’ve been subject to by both their neighbors and foreigners.
In the early 20th century, Assyrians suffered genocide alongside the Armenians and Greeks at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Many of those displaced by the Ottomans became the victims of a subsequent genocide by Iraqi and Kurdish forces in 1933 known as the Simele massacre. Over the course of the next several decades, Assyrians would be subject to a campaign of Arabization by Ba’athist leaders seeking to assimilate, homogenize and co-opt Iraq’s Christian communities.
After the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the instability generated as a result of a power vacuum, Christian communities were left particularly vulnerable to the militant forces vying for control within the country.
While much triumphalism surrounded the Pope’s visit to Mosul, where ISIS once declared its crusade on Rome and desire to execute the Pope, few noted that the mass exodus of Christians from Iraq began not with the rise of ISIS—but with the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Since the invasion, the population of Assyrians in Iraq has fallen from over 1.5 million to fewer than 250,000 today.
Assyrian and Armenian churches and cultural sites routinely became the target of extremist attacks, while Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) forces took control of the Nineveh Plains—the ancestral homeland of the Assyrian and Yazidi people—there they embark on a campaign of Kurdification, mirroring in many ways the campaign of assimilation undertaken by the Ba’athist regime.
But amidst the fanfare of the Pope’s tour, one could have easily mistaken the papal visit for a press tour for the Barzani dynasty, Iraqi Kurdistan’s ruling clan.
Young women dressed in traditional Assyrian clothing wave flags of the Holy See as they wait for the arrival of Pope Francis at the Franso Hariri Stadium in Arbil, on March 7, 2021.VINCENZO PINTO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
For the Assyrians, the KRG is the government that occupied their ancestral lands, that colluded in the killing and displacement of Assyrian communities and whose security forces disarmed Assyrian protection units in the midst of ISIS’ expansion. The same KRG that forcibly removed local Assyrian leaders from office, stifled political opposition and terrorized local communities.
The public expressions of Assyrian and Christian identity permitted during the fanfare of the Pope’s visit—highlighted by mainstream media as a testament to “peaceful coexistence”—would in normal circumstances be met with suppression, or not take place at all out of fear of repercussion. Even in this more relaxed atmosphere, local Assyrian groups were reported to have been prevented from participating in a celebratory parade because their uniforms were adorned with the Assyrian flag.
To the Assyrians, the KRG represents little more than a continuation of a familiar pattern of cultural repression, assimilation and disenfranchisement.
Instead of highlighting the systemic violence marginalized Christian communities still face, mainstream media advanced a most gratuitous redemption arc for the West in the aftermath of its destabilization of the region—one in which the U.S. is absolved for abandoning the region’s most vulnerable by whitewashing the abuses of a government it firmly backs.
This is an all too familiar story.
The Kurds have themselves been the victims of this grotesque revisionism. Celebrated and honored for their heroism in the fight against ISIS, the Kurds found themselves abandoned by the U.S. in their time of need when Turkey began its invasion and ethnic cleansing of northern Syria.
One report would lead the charge in defense of Turkey, suggesting Ankara’s genocidal intervention was actually the only thing preventing their massacre at the hands of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
A similar fate befell the Yazidi people, whose tragic plight was the subject of global attention during the height of ISIS as numerous governments condemned the genocide inflicted upon them. Now, as the survivors of those atrocities find themselves under assault by the warplanes of NATO-ally Turkey, the spotlight has faded.
There are also close parallels to the ways in which mainstream media covered Turkey’s Christian community during the years of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise—or Azerbaijan in the wake of its invasion and occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh)—often emphasizing disingenuous overtures toward “reconciliation” and “cultural tolerance” that served only to sanitize the image of an oppressive authoritarian regime and vindicate the United States for its negligent inaction—all the while providing perpetrator governments with cover for the deepening undermining of minority rights.
While the papal tour to Iraq may have inspired hope in many, it also revealed how insidious the systematic erasure of Middle Eastern Christians, and other ethnic and religious minorities, is—and how easily their experiences have been sidelined for the sake of political expediency.
Alex Galitsky is the communications director of the Armenian National Committee of America’s Western Region, the largest Armenian American grassroots advocacy organization in the United States. His Twitter is @algalitsky.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.