Category: 2021

Turkish press: Where is Noah’s Ark?

Arsine Chaltikian
 COLUMNS 
SEP 08, 2021 12:05 AM GMT+3


According to the holy books of the Torah, the Bible and the Quran, the Prophet Noah tried to call people to believe in the one God for years, but few people responded positively. After receiving a revelation, he built a ship to house a pair of every living creature and those small few who believed in him.

From the _expression_ “water gushed forth from the Oven” (Surah Hud: 40) in the verse of the Quran, most scholars deduced that Noah’s Ark had advanced technology and was powered by steam. Noah is considered the master of sailors and carpenters.

After heavy rains that fell for days, the whole world was covered with water. Disbelievers perished. In time the waters receded, and Noah’s Ark landed on earth. Noah and his family lived prosperously in this new land and multiplied. All of the humans throughout history were descended from Noah’s three sons who got on the ark; all living things are descended from a pair of their kind taken aboard the ship.

Although it is very ancient, the most commonly remembered historical event in all cultures is the flood. The Sumerian “Epic of Gilgamesh” is based on the flood. Egyptian oracles, Greek philosophers, Persian and Chinese historians, Indian Brahmans, Welsh, Scandinavian, Maya, Aztec and Native American legends all speak of the flood.

A fresco by Aurelio Luini depicting Noah’s Ark with many kinds of animals boarding the wooden ship, including unicorns, at the San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore Church, in Milano, Italy, Sept. 2, 2017. (Shutterstock Photo)

The stages of the event are almost the same, but the names are different. For example, in Greek mythology, the story tells of the savior Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha; and the name of the mountain on which the ship went is Parnassus.

In the Torah, it is told that Noah’s Ark landed on the Ararat Mountains. The Assyrians used to call their neighbors, who lived in Eastern Anatolia and called themselves Halti, as Urartu. Ararat comes from Urartu. It means the places irrigated by the Aras River. Today, this mountain is in the easternmost part of Anatolia, on the border of Turkey and Armenia.

Armenians, one of the oldest Christian communities, call this mountain Masis. It means “Mother of the World.” St. Nicholas of Damascus was the first to say that Ararat in the Torah was Masis. The Armenians embraced this rumor and thus it spread to the world.

Ağrı, the name of Mount Ararat in Turkish, comes from the Kurdish word “Agir,” which means fire. “Agiri” means fiery. Indeed, it was a volcanic mountain. It last erupted in the 1840s. Today, still, trees do not grow there, it is impossible to find water since the rocks absorb it. Nothing is heard but the roar of rocks rolling high above them with constant storms. For this reason, the Armenians also call Masis the World of Darkness.

Once there was a village called Arguri in a valley descending deep into the mountain; above this, at an altitude of 1,800 meters (5,900 feet), was the St. Yakobus Monastery. According to the legend, the monastery was on the place where the Prophet Noah built the first temple after the flood, and there was a large cross made from the remains of the ark.

Armenian Monastery Khor Virap with Mount Ararat in the background, in the Ararat plain, Armenia. (Shutterstock Photo)

The village and the monastery were destroyed in an earthquake in 1846. It is believed that just above the village, a small willow tree grows from a part of the ship, and that the Prophet Noah planted the vineyard next to the monastery.

To the north of the mountain is the city of Nakhchivan, which means “first seen.” Nakhchivan was the first city established after the flood, and its name comes from Noah.

Since 1829, European travelers and scientists have repeatedly climbed Mount Ararat and searched of Noah’s Ark. They claimed that they found the three-decked ship according to the measurements of 150 meters by 25 meters by 15 meters given in the Bible, and even bought some parts. Later on, the pilots said that they had even took pictures of the ship. Representative pictures were drawn. Newspapers made a sensation of the event. In fact, Americans built the Oregon warship according to these stories.

The staunchest follower of this claim in Turkey was Republican People’s Party (CHP) politician Kasım Gülek. It was later revealed that none of the stories were true. The items received did not pass the carbon 14 test. It turned out that what was thought to be a ship was a landmass that looked similar to a ship.

A boat-shaped rock formation some believe is the remains of Noah’s Ark at the spot near Mount Ararat, in Doğubeyazıt, Ağrı, eastern Turkey. (Shutterstock Photo)

Over time, it was claimed that this kind of research was a money trap. Researchers would advertise for days to find sponsors, going from church to church and giving paid lectures. Religious people did not shy away from donations. Then they would come to Mount Ararat, take pictures and on the way back say, “We couldn’t find it this time, but next time, definitely.”

After the debacle of Mount Ararat, foreigners headed for Mount Judi. The Quran clearly states that the ship was sitting on Judi: “Then the word went forth: ‘O earth! swallow up thy water, and O sky! Withhold (thy rain)!’ and the water abated, and the matter was ended. The Ark rested on Mount Judi, and the word went forth: ‘Away with those who do wrong!'” (Surah Hud: 44).

Quranic commentaries concur that Judi is a mountain near Mosul. Even literally, Islamic scholars praise this mountain for humbly taking on the ship.

While describing the flood, the Babylonian priest Berossos, who lived around 250 B.C., says that the ship sat in the Cordyean Mountains and that its remains are still present, and that people even made amulets from its parts.

These mountains are located on the southwest shores of Lake Van. And it is where Mount Judi stands. Just north of Mesopotamia, where the Prophet Noah lived, it is the only high mountain, with an altitude of 2,144 meters, the most suitable for a ship to land on.

The dove, which was sent to see if the flood was over, returned with an olive branch in its mouth. On the skirts of Mount Ararat, which is 5,137 meters tall, neither olive nor any other trees grow because of the cold while the southwest of Judi is an olive grove.

Today, at the foot of the mountain, there is a village called Heştan (Eighties), believed to be founded by the eighty people on the ship that survived the flood. Right under the mountain, there is the southeastern city of Şırnak, and according to a rumor the origin of this word is “Shahr-i Noah,” in Persian meaning “the City of Noah.” In Cizre, a historical town very close to the mountain, there is a large tomb that is said to belong to the Prophet Noah.

According to Islamic belief, the place where Noah’s Ark descended after the flood is Mount Judi, Şırnak, southeastern Turkey. (Shutterstock Photo)

As both mountains are in eastern Anatolia, there is no reason why Mount Judi should not be considered a part of the Ararat Mountains mentioned in the Torah.

As mentioned in a verse of the Quran, “And the people of Noah, when they rejected the messengers, We drowned them, and We made them as a sign for humanity” (Surah Al-Furqan: 37). Some tafsir (exegesis) scholars concluded that the remains of the ship would not be lost.

It is narrated that the Prophet Muhammad once said, “There is something left behind from Noah’s Ark, where the first of this ummah (Muslims) will catch up.” This might have been one of the reasons that made people look for the ship.

Armenia’s Limited Diplomatic Options

Adrine Hakobian
Sept 8 2021
08/09/2021 Diplomacy International Affairs
By David Davidian
Soldiers win battles; diplomats win wars. Genocide can be committed, but often responsibility is avoided by diplomatic prowess. The key in each instance is diplomatic skill. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Sun Tzu stated in his Art of War, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” The Second Karabakh War was not just a military catastrophe for Armenia, it was also a diplomatic defeat of unprecedented proportions.

David Davidian

Armenia finds itself in a self-made situation and is running out of diplomatic options. With thousands of Azerbaijani soldiers violating Armenia’s border, Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan has not only inherited a national problem but he has made it much worse. Modern Armenian diplomacy has not been known for its courage or wisdom. Since Pashinyan has come to power in a populist campaign, many ministries have been gutted. Some ministers have been replaced several times over since 2018, and certainly none are the best and brightest available. The Director of the National Security Services has been replaced five times. The result of this replacement-on-a-whim is the lack of functional continuity, which was especially disastrous coming just before, during, and after the Second Karabakh War. Recently, Pashinyan’s friend, Ararat Mirzoyan, former speaker of the Armenian Parliament, was assigned the role of foreign minister. Mirzoyan has no experience in diplomacy or negotiation, allowing one to conclude his function is to rubber-stamp the policies of Prime Minister Pashinyan, who also has no experience in diplomacy or negotiation.
Pashinyan has a history of categorizing the Nagorno-Karabakh stalemate as a yoke around the economic progress of Armenia. His recent re-election as Armenian Prime Minister was based on promises of post-war economic expansion, and of course aided by the immense use of administrative resources. Accumulated evidence allows one to rank high the hypothesis that last autumn’s Armenian defeat was engineered. Though some would consider this hypothesis as conspiratorial, there is mounting evidence that the Armenian leadership believed that only by losing a limited war could they convince Armenians to justify relinquishing land to Azerbaijan. Based on openly available sources, and applying critical thinking techniques, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Pashinyan’s policies have failed to such an extent that he has painted Armenia into a corner:
1 – Pashinyan’s badmouthed Moscow’s-led Collective Security Treaty Organization CSTO and arrested its Secretary-General, Yuri Khachaturov, for events in Armenia in 2008, when Pashinyan was jailed. This arrest angered Moscow. Armenia is a member of the CSTO, and when it came time for a possible CSTO response to the Second Karabakh War and post-ceasefire Azerbaijani aggressive actions, the CSTO, not surprisingly, remained neutral.
2 – Pashinyan appeared to have engaged in pro-Western actions and rhetoric, yet each act created no reaction from Western capitals. Populist Pashinyan went after a select group of oligarchs, exacerbating Armenian’s social fabric by favoring some and punishing others.
3 – The unwritten rules of military alliances demand that members must take it upon themselves to engage a threat to their own state, then request an allied response. Pashinyan promising a post-war economic boom, although somewhat muted as of late, precludes escalating skirmishes with Azerbaijan, further negating a CSTO response. If another war starts under Pashinyan’s watch, his claim of legitimacy will be seriously undermined. Thus, a military lever of Armenian diplomacy is lost. Further, it is not known if Turkey has threatened Armenia militarily and under what circumstances. One would assume even in the crudest democracy, the status of these national threats would be made public. However, Pashinyan’s hold on power is based on an illusion of a non-existent “peace dividend.” 
4 – Even if Armenia’s defeat in the Second Karabakh War wasn’t engineered as hypothesized, Pashinyan and his team appeared to have misread what defines end-of-hostilities when one side hasn’t unconditionally surrendered. Technically, Azerbaijan was not fighting Armenia per se, but rather the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia’s defeat was not secured with an unconditional surrender, because Azerbaijan is not exercising sovereignty over core Armenian-inhabited Nagorno-Karabakh. The Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians run their local affairs. With Armenia lacking professional statesmanship, with ministries complete with friends and lackeys of Pashinyan, one could have predicted an Armenia having been out-classed diplomatically, with increasingly limited options. Azerbaijan still holds Armenian POWs and civilian hostages and is using them to extract more concessions from Armenia. Pashinyan has periodically announced the concession of Armenian villages to Azerbaijan, not understanding such accommodation means little to Azerbaijan but will destroy the lives and families of Armenians, psychologically undermining the social fabric of Armenians.
5 – On July 14, 2021, Azerbaijani President Aliev stated (paraphrasing) If the war continued, we would have suffered more losses. We could have faced difficulties in liberating Kelbajar and Lachin due to the coming winter. Both Lachin and Kelbajar were regions conceded by Armenians, the latter with almost no fighting. These regions were of strategic value to Armenians, both militarily and culturally. Pashinyan must have been aware of the Azerbaijani military situation as spelled out by Aliev, post-factum. Last autumn’s concessions allowed Azerbaijan, today, to harass Armenian border villages, block roads, etc. One is forced to ask what military or diplomatic logic was used to concede these areas? Perhaps a moot point, even if engineered, but the result was an immediate loss of Armenian diplomatic and negotiating options.
“The first way to lose a state is to neglect the art of war; the first way to gain a state is to be skilled in the art of war.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
Author: David Davidian (Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. He has spent over a decade in technical intelligence analysis at major high technology firms. He resides in Yerevan, Armenia).


Azerbaijan’s Limited Diplomatic Options

Chalian Meline
Sept 8 2021
08/09/2021 Diplomacy International Affairs
By David Davidian
US General George Patton was quoted as declaring, “For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.” After Azerbaijan’s partial victory in the Second Karabakh War, Azerbaijani President Aliev demonstrated nearly all of Patton’s observations in their modern manifestations. What remains is for someone to whisper in Aliev’s ear.  

David Davidian

From the chaos created in all partially won conflicts, the Second Karabakh War resulted in unexpected challenges for Azerbaijan. One challenge for Aliev is the uncomfortable fact that Armenians are the indigenous inhabitants of this region and thus their presence needs to eradicated to give historical justification for Baku’s territorial claims. While Armenians lost much of the land they reigned over for nearly thirty years, Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions, Azerbaijan is cementing its partial victory by demolishing any _expression_ of Armenian culture and existence on the land now under its control. Azerbaijan, however, cannot claim a complete victory over Armenians since Azerbaijan doesn’t exercise sovereignty over the Armenians of core Nagorno-Karabakh. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to accept Russian “peacekeepers” on land over which Azerbaijan claims sovereignty, as the basis for the war’s ceasefire.  Most likely, without such “peacekeepers,” no Armenians would exist in what remains of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan prefers complete authority over all of what it considers its internationally recognized border while simultaneously deploying several thousand of its soldiers outside of such demarcation on sovereign Armenian territory. What might appear on the surface as Azerbaijani hypocrisy, By engaging in actions it accused Armenians of for a generation, Baku might appear hypocritical, but these actions are actually an _expression_ of Baku’s stalled diplomacy. These diplomatic limitations are further demonstrated by the following:
1 – Azerbaijan refused to show up at the August 23, 2021 Crimean Platform, attended by forty-seven other countries. This event was “a diplomatic initiative of Ukraine and its president … designed to be an international coordination mechanism to restore Russia–Ukraine relations by means of reversing the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.” This summit was not in the interest of Russia, and Azerbaijan’s presence would have offended Russia. If Azerbaijan’s military and diplomatic capabilities were entirely under its control, it would make sense for Baku to support the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea since it parallels what Azerbaijan demands in the restoration of what it considers is its internationally recognized borders which includes Nagorno-Karabakh.  Turkey, Azerbaijan’s big brother, fully supports a Ukrainian Crimea. As a result, Azerbaijan has a policy dilemma. 
2 – Earlier in August 2021, Azerbaijan was asked by the Kosovo Minister of Defense for Baku’s official recognition of this NATO-created entity. It is unclear what Pristina was thinking when asking such a request of Baku, considering Kosovo was created under circumstances that paralleled the creation of Nagorno-Karabakh, obviously an intolerable situation for Azerbaijan. Were Baku clear of any lingering military or diplomatic encumbrances regarding Nagorno-Karabakh, it might opt (regardless of its hypocrisy) for Kosovo recognition considering Azerbaijan’s strategic partners Turkey, Pakistan, and Israel also recognize Kosovo.
3 – Azerbaijan is under Turkish pressure to recognize Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus, as a separate state. If Baku were to recognize this entity as a sovereign state, it would surely invite reaction by Greece and the Republic of Cyprus. The latter two are EU members who would call for immediate sanctions against Baku. Both Greece and Cyprus would retaliate and recognize Nagorno-Karabakh. Even though Azerbaijan is supplying gas-starved Europe through Greece via the Azerbaijani-Turkish Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the economic and diplomatic cost would be too high for Baku to hold EU’s gas supply hostage following EU sanctions after an Azerbaijani recognition of Northern Cyprus. Azerbaijan refused to recognize the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and accused Armenians of violating internationally recognized borders. Turkey has done in Northern Cyprus what Azerbaijan “accuses” Armenians of doing. Azerbaijan could recognize Northern Cyprus, but subsequent EU sanctions and loss of gas revenue would tie its hands.
4 – Azerbaijan succumbed to a contingent of two thousand Russian peacekeepers stationed within what Baku considers its internationally recognized land, and worse, land that it claims won from Armenians. This contingent is separating the remaining Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijani Army. However, in an instant, this Russian contingent can take on any enhanced role in Russia’s interest without asking Baku’s permission. Similarly, Turkey would like a base in Azerbaijan, but Baku would be subject to the ire of Moscow. Azerbaijan appears not in full control of its domestic policies.
5 – The recent announcement of significant gas deposits in the Iranian sector of the Caspian, with the capability of supplying twenty percent of Europe’s gas requirements, could incentivize the EU to consider lifting sanctions on Iran. Hydrocarbon extraction and transportation interests monitor such exploration, especially regional suppliers such as Russia and Azerbaijan. Russia and Azerbaijan view Iran as a significant competitor potentially serving European gas requirements. In a possible preemptive move, Azerbaijani soldiers have not only violated Armenia’s frontiers, putting pressure on the Armenian leadership but also engaged in blocking the main south-north transportation roads between Iran and Georgian ports. Such aggressive Azerbaijani actions signal to Iran that it may have to deal with Baku -– not Armenia — before looking north too much longer, even though Iran declared it intends to use Armenia. Additionally, Azerbaijan has begun constructing its south-north route on land it captured in the Second Karabakh War from the Azerbaijani-Iranian border towards the Azerbaijani-Russian border, in an attempt to facilitate Iranian gas exports and exports north. Baku’s attempt to be the go-to dealer between Iran, Russia, while excluding Georgian Black Sea ports, may have repercussions ranging from Israeli operations against Iran to Turkish designs, to the survival of Azerbaijan’s regime in cutting off Georgian-Iranian trade. Some may consider post-war Azerbaijani military pressure as skillful diplomacy, others do not.
6 – Armenia will receive three billion dollars in an EU economic development grant over the next five years. Baku considers this an unfair reward after Azerbaijan “liberated” what it considers its territory. Others consider it a quid pro quo for an engineered defeat of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Even with Azerbaijani gas reaching the EU, the EU’s gas supply is diversified with contributions from Algeria, the Netherlands, Norway, and Russia. Azerbaijan’s allocation is not enough to blackmail the EU into not investing in Armenia.
7 – Perhaps the worst shackle for Azerbaijan is the endemic anti-Armenian hatred within Azerbaijani society promulgated as effective state policy. From pre-school to adulthood, an entire generation has been socialized to equate Armenians with the embodiment of evil. Torture and the beheading of Armenians were spread across social media and celebrated by Azerbaijani society throughout the Second Karabakh War. Hatred against Armenians was a method to bolster Azerbaijani nationalism and keep Aliev in power by blaming the ills of Azerbaijan on Armenians. Such techniques were used by Nazi Germany and the transformation of Islamic Turkey into a nationalist Turkey. Even if a titular peace is signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Baku will have to undo a generation of anti-Armenian hatred if any agreement is to succeed.
Though Southern Caucasus regional dynamics have changed drastically in the past year, Azerbaijan still finds limited options even with enhanced military agreements with Turkey and having captured land from Armenians. Baku is now even more indebted to two masters; Turkey and Russia.
Author: David Davidian (Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. He has spent over a decade in technical intelligence analysis at major high technology firms. He resides in Yerevan, Armenia).

Georgian, Armenian PMs pledge to create new opportunities for regional stability

Kalashian Nyrie
Agenda, Georgia
Sept 8 2021
Agenda.ge, 8 Sep 2021 – 17:31, Tbilisi,Georgia

The Georgian and Armenian Prime ministers have pledged in Tbilisi to intensify ties and cooperation to create new opportunities which will decrease tension and risks of conflicts in the region. 

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili hosted his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinyan earlier today and stated that ‘stability in Armenia is crucial for Georgia and for regional peace.’ 

Peace, stability and welfare are the three words I would use to describe our joint regional goals,” Garibashvili said at a press conference with Pashinyan. 

He stated that Pashinyan’s vision is for the sustainable development of Armenia and that ‘he will bring success and development’ to the Armenian people’. 

Our joint efforts should be targeted for ensuring new opportunities, development and peace for the region. Unfortunately, there are still many unresolved conflicts in the region,” Garibashvili said. 

He said that economic, trade, transport, communication issues, as well as the possibility of large projects have been discussed with Pashinyan. 

I want to also say that our country has an interesting transit potential,” Garibashvili said. 

Pashinyan thanked Garibashvili ‘for his personal contribution’ for the recent release of 15 Armenian war prisoners held in Azerbaijan and stated that the communication that time ‘created an even better atmosphere’ in the two countries’ friendly relations.

He stated that the Georgian and Armenian peoples are linked by a centuries-long friendship. 

Unfortunately, there are conflicts and tension in our region. We are trying to support each other and focus on the opportunities which will decrease the risks,” Pashinyan said. 

He stated that since the formation of the new government in Armenia, intergovernmental cooperation between the countries will become more intense. 

Pashinyan also expressed hope that economic ties between the countries would be further strengthened. 

  

Georgian, Armenian PMs Meet in Tbilisi

Chakrian Hovsep
Civil Georgia
Sept 8 2021
08/09/2021 – 17:17

 

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili hosted today his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinyan, who has arrived in Tbilisi as part of a two-day visit.

In a joint press conference after the meeting, the two officials discussed the security environment in the South Caucasus, and stressed the need for the peaceful development of the region. They also highlighted the importance of utilizing regional economic and transit opportunities and enhancing cooperation.

In his address, the Georgian PM dubbed PM Pashinyan’s re-election in June “an opportunity for Armenia to begin a new era.” PM Garibashvili asserted that after getting to know the Armenian PM’s vision, he is convinced that the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – “a difficult challenge for the region” – can lead to new possibilities.

“The stability of Armenia is of great importance for us,” said the Georgian PM, adding that “it is directly linked” to the stability of Georgia and the region as well.

Citing his involvement in negotiating Baku’s release of 15 Armenian prisoners of war in the exchange for landmine maps from Yerevan, the Georgian PM argued there are more possibilities for cooperation between the South Caucasus states. “I reiterated complete readiness, for Georgia to continue actively mediating,” he added.

PM Pashinyan on his part described Georgia’s mediation efforts in June as a new foundation for facilitating more productive cooperation. He added that collaboration will continue after the new Armenian government is formed, according to a Georgian translation of his remarks delivered by the Georgian PM’s press service.

The Armenian PM will also meet Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili later today.

Armenians and Azerbaijanis reckon with war’s psychological toll

Maral Takmazian
EurasiaNet.org
Sept 8 2021
Karine Ghazaryan, Heydar Isayev Sep 8, 2021
Soldiers wounded last year at the Homeland Defender’s Rehabilitation Center in Yerevan’s Heratsi Hospital (Winslow Martin)

The Second Karabakh War is nearly a year in the past. But the psychological wounds on both sides of the conflict remain.

In both Armenia and Azerbaijan, soldiers and civilians continue to suffer from the aftereffects of last fall’s 44-day war. Governments and private initiatives moved quickly to bolster the two countries’ limited psychiatric capacity, but questions remain about how they will manage to deal with what promises to be a long-term problem.

It is a problem that both societies have been reckoning with for decades – since the last war they fought in the 1990s.

“For 30 years we have been in a situation of war but we still don’t have a unified system for psychological and social assistance to soldiers,” said Hayk Khachikyan, an Armenian psychologist who has counseled war veterans. “Even soldiers who serve two years [the usual term for a conscript] come back so traumatized, let alone those who took part in the war,” he told Eurasianet. “They have serious problems with social adaptation, they come back shocked, mentally crushed.”

Rey Karimoghlu, an Azerbaijani journalist and veteran of the first war, said that this winter four or five soldiers a day were contacting him asking for help with their psychological problems following the war. “This problem has existed for many years,” he told the BBC’s Azerbaijani service. “We have been talking about the need to solve this problem for so long but the problems remain. We [first-war veterans] are used to this but they [second-war veterans] are not.”

Lingering trauma

Azerbaijani media have recorded eight suicides of veterans around the country as of June; seven of them had fought in last fall’s war. 

Gulara Mansurova said that her son Yunis had become noticeably more aggressive after returning from the front. “He was saying some guys were not even in serious fighting and they got medals, while he went all the way to Shusha and got nothing in return; I was telling him to thank God for coming out alive,” she told Eurasianet. 

When he visited the family home near Baku on leave in January, she suggested he may need help. “He would get angry, saying, ‘Why in the world do I need a psychologist?’” she recalled, in tears. “But when he was calm, he would agree, saying, ‘Let me settle my release from the army, then we will go.’” A week after arriving home, however, he hanged himself. 

In Armenia, the state prosecutor’s office released a statement in June saying that it had connected a number of recent suicides and suicide attempts to post-war psychological trauma. The report described one veteran, following his suicide attempts: “After the war ended he could not sleep, he had visions of the bodies of killed soldiers, he was constantly afraid and did not want to live.” 

Providing help

Both societies have marshaled what resources they have to aid soldiers and others who are suffering.

During and immediately after the war, more than 100 Armenian psychologists volunteered to work with soldiers in inpatient care, holding a total of about 11,000 counseling sessions as of December 2020. “This greatly contributed to the fact that many complications that we expected to see did not develop among these people,” Armen Soghoyan, the head of the Armenian Psychiatric Association, told Eurasianet. 

Soghoyan leads one of eight organizations that cooperate as the Psychological Support Consortium, which won a government tender to provide psychological help to those affected by the war. Before the government program started in June, the consortium’s member organizations were working without funding. “That couldn’t last long,” Soghoyan said. “Back then we were sitting passively, waiting to see who will come to us for help. But now the government provides us with the list [of soldiers and their family members], we contact them, invite them for consultations.” 

The consortium also provides a hotline that was originally set up to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the war started, the hotline shifted to helping those affected by the war.

Many Armenian soldiers from the recent war who need medical care are treated at the Soldier’s Home, a rehabilitation center established in 2018 by the Ministry of Defense and Yerevan State Medical University. 

At Soldier’s Home, all patients meet with psychologists to determine whether they need therapy. Apart from its therapists on staff, the center cooperates with on-call psychologists from Yerevan State University’s Center of Applied Psychology. 

During the war, the center set up a rapid response project to help those injured, displaced or otherwise affected by the war. With support from the United Nations Development Program, the center established a separate psychological care initiative and has helped over 200 people during the past six months. “They undergo a sustained psychotherapeutic process, which means not one, but regular meetings, six to eight meetings on average,” said the center’s director, David Gevorgyan. 

While most psychological support programs operate from Yerevan, regional initiatives also have emerged. In Kapan, in southern Armenia on the border with Azerbaijan, the local community center and NGOs provide psychological help to families displaced from Nagorno Karabakh. 

When the family of one woman, who gave her name only as Gayane, was forced to flee their home in Karabakh to Kapan, her middle son began to act out, refusing to go to school and not communicating with his friends. 

But Gayane started taking her son to group therapy sessions run by World Vision-Armenia and the community-run Kapan Center for Children and led by psychologist Anush Grigoryan. The sessions worked, Gayane said: “He’s great, like normal, he lives his life like he did before.”

Another member of the group, Inna, said she felt isolated before joining. “We carried all that in us. Somehow we couldn’t talk about this, share it with people, because there are people who do not understand. But here, Miss Anush does understand, it is possible to open up and talk.”

In Azerbaijan, several state agencies have initiatives aimed at helping both soldiers and civilians with post-war psychological issues. Three ministries – the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, and the Ministry of Defense – each launched its own working group to help people affected by the war. 

The social protection ministry oversees two agencies responsible for citizens’ appeals regarding post-war-trauma-related issues. One, the State Social-Medical Examination and Rehabilitation Agency, helps veterans get placed at one of 12 state-run rehabilitation facilities around the country. The government has been publicizing the work of these centers, emphasizing that the state is caring for those who won the war and that the country has the resources to do it.

Another public entity, the Social Services Agency, has created a hotline for veterans and families of fallen soldiers. The hotline has so far received 1,600 calls since the end of the war; psychologists and psychiatrists on the line can refer callers to online therapy sessions. The most common symptoms it has seen are stress, depression, anxiety, hallucinations, and panic attacks, the agency told Eurasianet in written responses to questions.

The agency also arranges in-person consultations. It started a week after the end of the war in the heavily hit cities of Barda and Terter, and later expanded across the country. The program lasted until the end of February, and in that time served nearly 3,000 families, the agency said. 

In March, the family of Emin Safarov, who fought for Azerbaijan in last year’s war, began to fear that he was threaten his wife and children. Although by that time the Social Services Agency had stopped offering in-person consultations, it quickly responded to the family’s call and sent two psychologists to meet with them, Safarov’s wife, Parvana Safarova, told Eurasianet. 

“They listened to all of us. We felt much better after the meeting. They talked to the city hospital and agreed with the psychologist there to work with Emin,” Safarova said. After a few sessions with that psychologist Emin decided to stop, saying that the conversations reminded him too much of the “bloody” days of the war, but Safarova said she hopes he will eventually start again.

Limited resources

Azerbaijan has “a shortage of specialists” qualified to help with people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders, said Azad Isazade, a psychologist who worked in camps for displaced people following the First Karabakh War. But he said he hopes that the experiences gained from the more recent conflict will advance the field in Azerbaijan and help educate a new generation of psychologists.

In Armenia, too, there is a lack of qualified specialists. “The level of professional training is far from being optimal,” said Gevorgyan of the Center of Applied Psychology. “There are of course some very good specialists, there also are many who took refresher courses, but it is worrying how often we witness a dilettantish approach.”

“Even counting not very good ones, we don’t have enough specialists to ensure 100 percent accessibility” to those who need help, he said.

Funding, too, is uncertain. In August, the charitable organization All Armenia Fund announced that it was ending a project paying for veterans to receive psychological care. Government funding for the Psychological Support Consortium also is scheduled to expire by winter.

But Soghoyan of the Armenian Psychiatric Association said he hopes the program can be extended, perhaps with support from international organizations. “This is drastically needed. Ending the project would be a problem,” he said.

 

Karine Ghazaryan is a freelance journalist covering Armenia.

Heydar Isayev is a journalist from Baku.

  

Heatwave, drought and war leave Nagorno-Karabakh short of water

Emil Lazarian
EurasiaNet.org
Sept 8 2021
Gevorg Mnatsakanyan Sep 9, 2021
Children in Stepanakert fetch water from a tank provided by the Red Cross. (David Ghahramanyan)

Forty percent of Stepanakert has been without running water for the past month. It is a new burden for a city that has struggled to revive normalcy since the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan last autumn.

Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto capital are condemned to thirst by a confluence of factors: Internally displaced people have packed into the city, increasing the population by some 30 percent; access to most of the region’s water supply was lost in the fighting; and it has been a hot, dry summer.

“We haven’t seen rain in over 50 days and temperatures have peaked at a steady 30 degrees Celsius. Add to that the 70 to 80 thousand cubic meters more consumed monthly by the 15,000 new residents of the capital fleeing war and you get what we’re seeing,” Gagik Poghosyan, who heads Jrmugh-Koyughi, the public company responsible for local water distribution, told Eurasianet.

During the 44-day war with Azerbaijan, Armenian forces lost control of most of the lands they had held since the early 1990s, including reservoirs and canals that are now on the other side of the front line. In a June report, the International Crisis Group described several villages without water, “not only because pipes were destroyed, but because in order to fix them plumbers would have to enter an area controlled by Azerbaijani soldiers.”

At an emergency meeting on August 16, de facto president Arayik Harutyunyan unveiled plans to connect the capital’s water supply network to the nearby Patara River (Badara in Azerbaijani) through a new pipeline that will end the shortages “within one year.”

Harutyunyan also promised to build a new dam on the Patara to create a reservoir that will provide Stepanakert and 12 surrounding villages with drinking water and irrigate over 2,500 hectares. Estimated at 15 billion Armenian drams (over $30 million), the project is the most ambitious of its kind to date, Harutyunyan said.

A new government water committee is etching out plans to drill over 40 artesian wells to provide round-the-clock service to communities across the region. Georgi Hayriyan, who was appointed by the president in July to lead the committee, estimates water losses at “over 80 percent.”

“What makes this so painful is that the resources still available to Artsakh aren’t going to be enough to irrigate whatever agricultural land is left,” Hayriyan told Eurasianet, using the Armenian name for the region.

The government is counting on the state budget and help from outside organizations like the diaspora-backed Hayastan All Armenian Fund to make the three projects happen. Another diaspora group in Washington is lobbying Congress for $25 million in assistance related to water and sanitation.

Russian peacekeepers – who have patrolled Nagorno-Karabakh since the Moscow-brokered ceasefire in November 2020 – are providing water and security while Armenians repair infrastructure near the front lines. In the three weeks to September 3, the Russian contingent dispensed over 200 tons of drinking water to 1,500 Stepanakert residents, promising to continue to “provide local residents with water every day” until a new pipeline can be laid.

British charity HALO Trust and the International Committee of the Red Cross have also extended help. “The current water scarcity only added to the practical difficulties faced by the population following the autumn 2020 escalation,” Bertrand Lamon, head of the ICRC Mission in Nagorno-Karabakh, told Eurasianet.

Twenty-five large water tanks donated by the Red Cross have been installed in neighborhoods hit hardest by the shortage and are being filled daily by trucks from the city’s water company.

With this aid, and efforts by local authorities to conserve water, the situation in Stepanakert has slowly improved over the past two weeks. But Poghosyan of the public water distributor remains wary. “If this weather persists, things could get dire,” he said.

For all their inconvenience, “there’s still a silver lining to these shortages,” said Nune Martirosyan, 47, an economics teacher in Stepanakert, whose own apartment has been without water for a month. “They’ve fostered a greater sense of community among residents as they scramble to help each other pull through.”

 

Gevorg Mnatsakanyan is a journalist based in Yerevan. 

Armenia to effectively require COVID vaccinations for all employees

Emil Lazarian
EurasiaNet.org
Sept 8 2021
Ani Mejlumyan Sep 8, 2021
A COVID-19 vaccination site on Yerevan’s central Northern Avenue. (photo: Ministry of Health)

In less than a month, nearly anyone with a job in Armenia will have to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to regular tests at their own expense.

On August 20, the government issued new regulations mandating that employers must get either a COVID vaccination certificate from each employee, or the employee must submit the results of a PCR test every 14 days. The regulations apply to all government workers and a long list of private sector businesses that encompasses nearly all spheres of the economy. Pregnant woman and those who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons will be exempted.

“We have set October 1 [as a deadline] so that we will not have queues and waste extra time,” Minister of Health Anahit Avanesyan said in an interview with official media on September 6.

It will be an uphill struggle: As of the end of August, the last time figures were released, less than 5 percent of Armenia’s population had been vaccinated. Even that is likely an over count as the government effort to make vaccines widely available attracted many foreigners, to the point that the government had to tighten regulations because so many Iranian tourists were coming for vaccinations. The government figures don’t disaggregate vaccinations given to Armenian citizens and to foreigners.

On top of that, many Armenians remain skeptical of the vaccines: In a poll from the International Republican Institute conducted in July and released on September 6, more than 50 percent of respondents said they “definitely” or “probably” won’t get vaccinated.

But Avanesyan took the rosy view: “If in March only 10 percent of Armenians were ready to be vaccinated, today’s surveys show that 40 percent of the population is prepared to be vaccinated; this is a good indicator,” she said.

Armenia is using four vaccines: the Russian Sputnik V, Chinese CoronaVac and Sinopharm, and the British-Swedish AstraZeneca.

Meanwhile, a single PCR test generally costs 15,000 drams ($30), about a quarter of Armenia’s monthly minimum salary. In addition, inflation has been spiking and the spike in food prices is the highest the country has recorded since the 1990s. 

That leaves the highly anti-vaccine Armenian population little choice but to vaccinate.

Armenian social media has become full of angry commenters who don’t want to be forced to get a jab. One news story about the requirement posted on Facebook spawned a heated discussion. “The government has no right to get into my system and mutate it,” one user wrote. “Let’s all just leave our jobs; that way they can’t fire everyone,” another suggested.

The new requirement comes as COVID cases in Armenia are rising, and a new wave is something the country can ill afford. On September 1, the country recorded 636 new cases and 19 coronavirus-linked deaths, an infection rate about double the month before and the highest single-day death toll from COVID-19 in months. Since May 2020 the country has had very few restrictions and what regulations do remain are widely flouted; masks are almost never seen.

 

Ani Mejlumyan is a reporter based in Yerevan.

Azerbaijan-Russia relations sour over Karabakh disagreements

Khoyetsian Rose
EurasiaNet.org
Sept 8 2021
Heydar Isayev Sep 8, 2021
Russian peacekeepers unfurl a giant Russian flag in Karabakh in August. (photo: mil.ru)

Azerbaijan’s relations with Russia, the broker of the ceasefire agreement ending last year’s war with Armenia, have hit another rocky patch.

Azerbaijan’s relations with Russia have been in flux since the latter diplomatically intervened to end last year’s fighting. The ceasefire that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped negotiate cemented Azerbaijan’s victory, but it also allowed for the presence of 2,000 Russian peacekeeping troops on what is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory and allowed the Armenian-backed de facto Nagorno-Karabakh government to continue to control part of its territory.

While Azerbaijan saw those developments as in opposition to its strategic goals, President Ilham Aliyev has nevertheless portrayed the agreement as marking “the end of the conflict” and the “restoration of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.” Putin, meanwhile, has said that the status of Karabakh in fact remains undetermined.

This disagreement over the fundamentals of the conflict has spilled over into several minor controversies over the past month.

Most recently, Azerbaijani media unearthed an announcement for a Russian government tender for servicing the peacekeeping contingent that used the term “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.” That name is anathema to Baku, which considers the self-proclaimed government to be an illegitimate occupant of its territory.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry formally complained to its Russian counterparts. Ministry spokesperson Leyla Abdullayeva said that the Russian side explained that the phrasing was a “technical mistake” and would be fixed soon. As of the time this piece was posted it remained online.

That episode followed a complaint on August 11 by Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense about repeated ceasefire violations in Karabakh. The MoD statement said that Armenian military posts had been newly set up in Karabakh, in the areas of Mukhtarkand and Shushakand (which Armenians call Mkhitarashen and Shosh, respectively).

Though Azerbaijan has long objected to the presence of Armenian troops in Karabakh since the end of the war — the ceasefire statement called on Armenian forces to withdraw from the territory — this was the first time Baku implicated the Russian peacekeepers.

“In accordance with the provisions of the tripartite statement, the Russian peacekeeping forces must put an end to the deployment of Armenian armed forces in the territories of Azerbaijan where they are temporarily stationed,” the statement read.

Two days later, the Russian peacekeeping forces reported that the Azerbaijani side had violated the ceasefire, firing at the direction of what they called “Nagorno-Karabakh armed units” — contrary to Azerbaijan’s description of them as having been deployed from Armenia. This statement also was unprecedented; it was the first time the Russians have blamed a specific side for a ceasefire violation.

That all, in turn, followed another diplomatic dispute between the two sides. Nationalist Russian member of parliament Vladimir Zhironovskiy gave an interview to a Russian radio station on July 30 in which he commented controversially on events in Azerbaijan.

“Ilham, you will have the territory you want, but no one has a right to look at Russian soldiers askance! You understand me?” Zhirinovskiy told the interviewer. “And he understands perfectly well that he will lose his post, there is a dictatorship there, it’s full of opposition forces there. If Biden wants to, he will be overthrown within two weeks. And only we can save him, as we saved Pashinyan.”

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry reported that it summoned the Russian charge d’affaires and expressed “concern and protest in connection with the insulting and biased statements against the Azerbaijani statehood and the country’s leadership”, which it believed would damage “the spirit of strategic partnership between the two states.”

Zhirinosvky’s comments also sparked even stronger objections on Azerbaijani social media, with many saying the government’s response was too weak.

Isfandiyar Vahabzade, a professor of philology and former ambassador, released a half-hour tirade on YouTube criticizing the Azerbaijani and Russian governments and broadly insulting the entire Russian nation. In response, the Russian government barred Vahabzade from entering Russia for the next 50 years.

Azerbaijanis also have objected to recent exercises that the peacekeepers have held in Karabakh. One was training Russian soldiers to defend themselves against drones — one of the keys to Azerbaijan’s military success in last year’s war — and the second, more controversial, was a course billed as “basic training” for young Armenian residents of Karabakh.

Though analysts in Azerbaijan hesitate to call the frequent disagreements a crisis, they say the continuing spats could escalate ahead of the critical date of 2025, when the term of the Russian peacekeeping force is set to expire and Baku will be able to veto its extension.

The controversies are exacerbated by the lack of a formal mandate for the peacekeeping mission, in contrast to Russia’s other peacekeeping missions around the post-Soviet space. Russia has been repeatedly pushing for Baku and Yerevan to sign a formal agreement, but it has been held up by demands by Azerbaijan that are unacceptable to the other parties, the International Crisis Group wrote in a June report.

One of the key sticking points is that Azerbaijan is demanding formal control of the Lachin corridor, a road that connects Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as an acknowledgement of its sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh itself.

“It seems that Russia does not want to accept Azerbaijan’s condition, thus leaving the mandate question open for now,” analyst Shahin Jafarli told Eurasianet.

There may be movement on the mandate issue, however: On September 5, Hikmat Hajiyev, Aliyev’s senior foreign affairs advisor, told BBC Azerbaijani that discussions are ongoing on “additional legal mechanisms” concerning the mandate of peacekeepers.

One Baku-based analyst, who asked not to be identified, told Eurasianet that Zhirinosvky’s comments about Russian soldiers were sanctioned by the Kremlin as a response to Baku’s demands on the mandate. “The Russian position is that it has an ongoing mission in Karabakh, and it is not going to tolerate any questions challenging this mission,” the analyst said.

Ahmed Alili, an analyst at the Caucasus Policy Analysis Center, also saw the mention of the peacekeepers as the most important part of the Russian MP’s comments. “He says you can take as much territory as you want, but do not dare touch Russian soldiers,” Alili told Eurasianet, adding: “this implies Russia is fine with potential Azerbaijani military advances in Karabakh as long as its [Russia’s] army remains” in Karabakh.

These controversies between Azerbaijan and Russia are temporary but they will likely intensify as the 2025 deadline approaches, Alili said. 

 

Heydar Isayev is a journalist from Baku.

Putin tells European Council about implementation of agreements on Karabakh — Kremlin

Andranik Taslakhchian
TASS, Russia
Sept 8 2021
The Kremlin mentioned that the sides agreed to continue contacts at various levels

MOSCOW, September 8. / TASS /. Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of the European Council Charles Michel addressed the implementation of the trilateral agreements on Nagorno-Karabakh over the phone, the Kremlin press service said on Wednesday.

“The Nagorno-Karabakh situation has been discussed. At the request of Charles Michel, the Russian President told him about the current steps to implement the provisions of the trilateral agreements of November 9, 2020, and January 11, 2021,” the press service noted.

The Kremlin also mentioned that the sides agreed to continue contacts at various levels.

Intense clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia flared up on September 27, 2020, in Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in the conflict zone, which facilitated a complete cessation of hostilities. According to the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides maintained the positions that they had held, while several regions came under Baku’s control and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the contact line and the Lachin corridor. The statement stipulates the exchange of prisoners according to the ‘all for all’ principle.