Category: 2023

India has shipped the first consignment of Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher (MBRL) rockets to a foreign country.

According to a post by Ordnance Factory Ambajri (OFAJ) on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the first consignment of Pinaka Mk-1 enhanced rocket (ER) was shipped on 5 October 2023.

The post stated, "OFAJ has successfully made a mark for itself on the global stage for Pinaka Rocket, with the flagging off, of the first consignment of Pinaka Mk I enhanced Rocket against export by Somnath Tripathy, Senior General Manager OFAJ on 5th October, in the presence of all stakeholders."

"This achievement is a testimonial of our craftsmanship and determination, and we are poised to contribute significantly to our Nation’s growth," the post further stated.

However, the post did not mention which country received the rockets, although Armenia is the likely recipient.

In September last year, Armenia ordered an undisclosed quantity of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)-developed Pinaka launchers, rockets, and associated equipments worth Rs 2,000 crore or $245 million.

These Pinaka Mk-1 ER rockets can strike land targets up to a distance of about 45 kilometres. A guided Pinaka Mk-2 rocket can strike targets at a range of 75 kilometres.

Another, even longer-range rocket, Pinaka Mk-2 ER, is under development, which will allow the Pinaka battery to hit targets at ranges of more than 120 kilometres.

According to reports, Pinaka launchers likely made their way to Armenia via Iran, in July this year, irking the Azerbaijani government.

Azerbaijan expressed concerns about the expanding military cooperation between Armenia and India and requested a reconsideration of India's decision to supply lethal weapons to Armenia.

Additionally, Armenia signed a deal worth $155 million with Kalyani Strategic Systems Limited for supplying an undisclosed amount of 155mm/52 calibre advanced towed artillery gun systems.

Larnaca municipality on Tuesday announced the launch of a humanitarian campaign to aid refugees from Nagorno Karabakh, organised by the civil defence in collaboration with the foreign ministry.

An announcement said that the campaign, which aims to help people who fled Nagorno Karabakh for Armenia, will be active until Friday, October 13.

The collection point set up for Larnaca is the municipality’s multiuse space near Ayios Lazaros primary school on Phaneromeni avenue.

It will be open from 8.30am to 2.30pm, and can be reached at 99817979.

The public are asked to donate dry food such as cereal, biscuits, pasta, baby formula and baby food, as well as personal hygiene items and diapers for both children and adults.

All donations must be dropped off in cardboard boxes, while the announcement noted that anything straying from the above list will not be accepted.

Those wishing to donate money can do so at the bank account below:

ACCOUNT NAME HUMANITARIAN SUPPORT – ARMENIA

ACCOUNT NUMBER 6001034

CURRENCY EURO

The IBAN number is

PAPER FORMAT CY47 0010 0001 0000 0000 0600 1034

ELECTRONIC FORMAT CY47001000010000000006001034

SWIFT BIC CBCYCY2NXXX

Stoking fears of an all-out Azeri incursion ‘within weeks’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy which could ultimately see Yerevan left in the lurch it sleepwalks into a conflict it can only lose.

The European Political Community (EPC) summitin Granada last week turned out to be yet another grandstanding get-together of do-nothing ideologues from across the continent with no clear deliverables or concrete plan of action going forward.

High on the agenda, alongside Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, heightened Serbia-Kosovo tensions and tackling a fresh wave of illegal migration, was Azerbaijan’s corrosive antics in Nagorno-Karabakh, even though its strongman leader Ilham Aliyev was missing in action during the two-day event.

Having cited France’s partisanship vis-à-vis Armenia and Turkey’s omission as grounds for Baku opting out at the last minute, this EU-led initiative was starkly reminiscent of the Jeddah peace talks four months ago which fruitlessly sought to lower the temperature between Moscow and Kyiv in the aggressor’s absence.

Besides dismissing ethnic cleansing allegations as a red herring, it was French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna’s trip to Yerevan on October 3 which really infuriated Aliyev and could end up being a potential “Boris Johnson moment” which raises the stakes in the South Caucasus’ edition of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Paris’ pledge to provide Armenia with interoperable military gear as well as 12.5 billion euros worth of humanitarian aid was perceived as a casus belliby Baku and risks ratcheting up bilateral tensions at a time when Europe has enough on its plate in the way of territorial disputes.

Despite throwing their weight behind Armenia and pressing for a sanctions crusade against Azerbaijan’s top brass, the European Parliament has few sticks at its disposal to neuter the latter. Unlike their Georgian counterparts who are on a tight leash and regard EU accession as the be-all and end-all, the Azeris remain visibly apathetic towards securing candidate status or even Schengen visa-free travel for that matter.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron recently conceded that although, “Azerbaijan seems to have a problem with international law”, boycotting the petrostate will ultimately prove “insignificant”.

As far as energy needs are concerned, Europe’s leaders have wised up to the sobering reality that they cannot have their cake and eat it too. Gone are the days of Western powers attempting to transform the resource-rich, developing nations they procure hydrocarbons from into Jeffersonian democracies and vanguards of human rights.

When it comes to former Warsaw Pact states queuing up for membership, there is an increasingly blurry line between being a bona fide strategic partner and a mere vassal of the European Union. The Aliyev regime, for its part, read the tea leaves early on and has since pursued a multi-vector foreign policy as opposed to binding their future to a crisis-ridden bloc which last expanded in 2013. That said, Azerbaijan is a member of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and hosted the inaugural European Games in 2015.

With the ink barely dry on last year’s joint MoU to double gas imports from Azerbaijan to 20 billion cubic metres a year by 2027 and expand the 3500km-long Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), outspoken MEPs are unlikely to renege or backpedal given the dearth of alternative fossil fuel suppliers whose morals correspond with the EU’s set of values.

As Brussels moves to diversify away from Russian crude and LNG purchases, Baku had come to be seen as the lesser of two evils up until its so-called “lightning offensive” on September 19 which set the stage for a mass exodus of roughly 120,000 Karabakh Armenians.

It is worth recalling that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used the terms “reliable” and “trustworthy” in reference to the family dictatorship during her 2022 state visit. From her standpoint, the lack of civil liberties and press freedom in Azerbaijan is more than offset by its refreshingly secular and egalitarian society for a Muslim-majority jurisdiction.

Considering the Caspian nation’s growing geostrategic importance to the EU, realpolitikis bound to kick in sooner or later and take precedence over airy-fairy Western platitudes about defending democracy and standing up for rule of law. As such, Armenia would do well to take these overcooked narratives with a boulder of salt and not count on external intervention or support from its like-minded allies to fend off further Azeri irredentism.

Arguably, a blessing in disguise to have emerged from Yerevan and Baku upping the ante is that their sporadic clashes have shed light on Russia’s waning influence across the post-Soviet space. The Armenian Parliament’s recent vote to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) just months after Vladimir Putin’s arrest warrant was a major gut punch to the Kremlin, as was Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s decision to skip the CIS conference in Bishkek and his refusal to host Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military drills earlier this year.

Rather than instilling the fear of God in erstwhile USSR colonies who fail to toe the line, Putin’s barbarism in Ukraine has incidentally galvanised their westward pivot.

One notable exception, however, is Georgia. The country’s ruling elite has run roughshod over its Europhile citizenry and essentially sold them down the river by kowtowing to Moscow. Whereas Azerbaijan wasted no time in endorsing Georgian Vice Parliament Speaker Gia Volski’s call for Tbilisi to serve as an interlocutor, the jury is still out on Armenia’s receptivity to this proposal.

One might argue that its mediation offer is nothing more that a symbolic gesture intended to help Georgia get back in the EU’s good graces. The fact that Azeri natural gas constitutes approximately 80 per cent of its total imports casts serious doubt on the ruling Georgian Dream party’s impartiality were they to engage in peacemaking efforts, not to mention the exorbitant transit revenues they accrue from the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) that connects Azerbaijan to Turkey.

At the same time, Georgia has become something of a pressure cooker which can barely get its own domestic affairs in order, let alone those of third parties.

With petty government infighting, incarcerated ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili reportedly at death’s door, an inflationary cycle spiralling out of control, social decay emanating from the massive influx of Russian draft dodgers and the Kremlin’s plans to establish a permanent naval base in annexed Abkhazia, it is only a matter of time before a popular uprising erupts in Georgia.

Even if a colour revolution were to be miraculously averted, authoritarian buccaneering by Prime Minister Irakli Garbishvili and party chairman Irakli Kobakhidze means that prospective Georgian-led negotiations are likely to be skewed heavily in favour of an ideologically-aligned Baku.

To make matters worse for Armenia, Iran and Azerbaijan have taken active steps towards reconciliation after years of animosity and mutual distrust. This includes agreeing on the construction of a new road from the semi-autonomous Nakhchivan exclave to Azerbaijan proper via northwestern Iran and the possible reopening of the Azeri embassy in Tehran following an armed attack last January.

Finally, Turkey’s vested interest in driving a greater wedge between both warring sides cannot go unnoticed.

Azerbaijan’s triumph in the Second Karabakh War three years ago was largely down the lethal cocktail of Turkish Bayraktar TB2combat UAVs and sophisticated Israeli defensive technology it had been equipped with at the time.

Ankara’s subsequent ‘drone diplomacy’ has proven somewhat conducive to normalising ties with the Gulf Arab monarchies weaning themselves off excessive reliance on US-manufactured arms.

Azerbaijan is also a critical artery in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ‘pan-Turkism’ agenda as he seeks to expand Turkey’s economic and political clout throughout Central Asia at the expense of Russia and China.

Encircled by bad faith actors, Armenia must accept that a cut and dried lasting solution is unlikely to be brokered by outside forces. Unless Pashinyan bites the bullet and engages directly with his opposite number in Baku to establish a negotiated settlement—even if doing so entails making minor concessions such as opening the Zangezur corridor—Armenia looks set to reap the whirlwind of overplaying its hand.

https://emerging-europe.com/voices/why-armenia-will-have-a-hard-time-mobilising-the-international-community-in-its-latest-standoff-with-azerbaijan/

• Following three decades of separatist rule, Nagorno-Karabakh is planning to reintegrate back into Azerbaijan.
• The reintegration of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan has prompted 100,000 Armenians to flee the region.
• Armenians is urging the United Nations’ top court to impose orders that would protect Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians.

Armenia urged the United Nations top court on Thursday to impose new interim orders on Azerbaijan to prevent what the leader of Armenia's legal team called "ethnic cleansing" of the Nagorno-Karabakh region by Azerbaijan from becoming irreversible.

Armenia is asking judges at the International Court of Justice for 10 "provisional measures" aimed at protecting the rights of ethnic Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region that Azerbaijan reclaimed last month following a swift military operation.

In a 24-hour campaign that began on Sept. 19, the Azerbaijani army routed the region’s undermanned and outgunned Armenian forces, forcing them to capitulate. The separatist government then agreed to disband itself by the end of the year. More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh.

THOUSANDS OF ARMENIANS FLEE NAGORNO-KARABAKH AS AZERBAIJAN RECLAIMS SEPARATIST REGION

"Nothing other than targeted and unequivocal provisional measures protecting the rights of ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh will suffice to prevent the ethnic cleansing Azerbaijan is perpetrating from continuing and becoming irreversible," the head of Armenia's legal team, Yeghishe Kirakosyan, told judges.

Lawyers for Azerbaijan are scheduled to respond Thursday afternoon. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has said that the departure of Armenians was "their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation."

After six years of separatist fighting ended in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia.

Azerbaijan took back parts of the region in the south Caucasus Mountains during a six-week war in 2020, along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed earlier. Nagorno-Karabakh was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory.

20 DEAD IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH IN EXPLOSION AT GAS STATION CROWDED WITH RESIDENTS FLEEING TO ARMENIA

The world court is currently considering two cases focused on the deep-rooted tensions between the two countries. Armenia filed a case in 2021 accusing Azerbaijan of breaching an international convention aimed at preventing racial discrimination. A week later, Azerbaijan filed its own case, accusing Armenia of contravening the same convention.

The court has already issued so-called "provisional measure" rulings in both cases. The measures are intended to protect the rights of both nations and their nationals as their cases slowly progress through the world court.

Armenia on Thursday accused Azerbaijan of driving Armenians out of Nagorno-Karabakh even as the legal wrangling continues.

Alison Macdonald, a lawyer for Armenia, said court orders could prevent Nagorno-Karabakh being "swallowed up" by Azerbaijan.

"It is still possible to change how this story unfolds," she said. "The ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh is happening as we speak. It must not be allowed to set in stone."

Rivals Armenia and Azerbaijan clash Thursday at the UN's top court, with Yerevan asking judges to force Baku to withdraw troops from Nagorno-Karabakh and allow displaced ethnic Armenians to return safely to the breakaway region.

The hearings at the International Court of Justice come only weeks after Azerbaijan's lightning offensive to take control of the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in three decades.

The one-day operation sparked a mass exodus of ethnic Armenians, with the vast majority of the estimated 120,000 who had been living in the territory fleeing into Armenia.

The separatist Karabakh authorities announced that the self-proclaimed republic will be dissolved on January 1, 2024.

Armenia has petitioned the ICJ to order Azerbaijan to "withdraw all military and law-enforcement personnel from all civilian establishments in Nagorno-Karabakh."

It also called on the court to ensure Azerbaijan "refrain from taking any actions… having the effect of displacing the remaining ethnic Armenians… or preventing the safe and expeditious return" of refugees.

The ICJ rules on disputes between states but while its decisions are legally binding, it has no power to enforce them.

Thursday's hearings at the iconic Peace Palace in The Hague are the latest in a long-running legal battle between the two rivals.

Each country has accused the other of breaching a UN treaty, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

After September's military operation, Yerevan accused Azerbaijan of conducting a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" to clear Nagorno-Karabakh of its Armenian population.

But Baku strongly denies the claim and has publicly called on Armenian residents of the territory to stay and "reintegrate" into Azerbaijan.

The mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh was populated mainly by Armenians and has been part of Azerbaijan since the fall of the Russian Empire.

It unilaterally proclaimed its independence with the support of Armenia when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

In the wake of the operation, Armenian lawmakers approved a key step in joining another international court based in The Hague — the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This infuriated its traditional ally Russia because the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin on allegations of abducting Ukrainian children during Moscow's invasion.

(AFP)

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20231012-armenia-and-azerbaijan-bring-fight-over-nagorno-karabakh-to-un-top-court

Despite fears of a new war with neighbouring Azerbaijan, Armenia’s economy has performed remarkably well over the past year, with an influx of Russian migrants helping to drive exceptional growth.  

Home to 2.9 million people and nestled in the South Caucasus, Armenia has long benefitted from remittances from its large diaspora while suffering from geopolitical precarity.  

Devastated by a 1988 earthquake which destroyed 90 per cent of Spitak and half of Armenia’s second-largest city, Gyumri (at the time still known as Leninakan), Armenia then suffered further damage during the First Karabakh War with its neighbour Azerbaijan.   

• Armenia, Georgia, and Tajikistan remain the top growth performers in CEE and Central Asia
• Armenia, Azerbaijan clash again
• Let down by Moscow, Armenia looks to the West

Today, Armenia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union and Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO)—although its ties with Moscow have been increasingly strained after the CSTO failed to come to its defence amid clashes with Azerbaijan in 2022 and Russian peacekeepers failed to act against an Azerbaijani blockade on Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.  

Armenia struggles to balance favourable economic and political relations with its southern neighbour, Iran, and Western nations home to large Armenian diasporas such as France and the United States. The risk of further conflict with Azerbaijan over territory in southern Armenia, coveted by Baku as a land-bridge to its exclave of Nakhchivan, remains high. 

In addition, Armenia has is currently grappling with the arrival of over 100,000 displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, posing a significant challenge for the nation.

Other geopolitical developments—namely the war in Ukraine—have proven more beneficial. Western sanctions on Russia and the mobilisation of many Russians to fight in Ukraine created a mass influx of Russians into the South Caucasus, with many settling in Tbilisi and Yerevan.  

Newly-arrived Russians brought capital and drove increases in consumption and services that in turn pushed gross domestic product (GDP) growth to a whopping 12.6 per cent in 2022. Inflows of money transfers increased reserve levels and reduced credit dollarisation.  

This positive momentum continued into the first half of 2023, with a double-digit GDP growth rate of 10.5 per cent (year-on-year) in real terms. As in 2022, the services sector, particularly in IT, trade, and transportation, played a significant role in driving this growth.

Increased inflation—8.6 per cent in 2022, up from 7.2 per cent in 2021—was mediated by active inflation targeting, and the country has been praised by the World Bank for its adherence to prudent fiscal policy, and sound financial sector oversight. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have also praised Armenia’s recent transparency and anti-corruption reforms.  

“Recent economic shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted Armenia’s growth momentum, but the country has demonstrated a remarkable commitment to reforms that has allowed it to keep sustainable debt levels and macroeconomic management credibility,” said the Asian Development Bank’s director-general for Central and West Asia, Yevgeniy Zhukov. 

Nonetheless, low investment rates, weak attraction of foreign direct investment, limited human capital, insufficient diversification, and a narrow export base are serious structural challenges that limit the economy’s productivity. 

One of Armenia’s strongest sectors is its construction industry, which played a major role rebuilding cities after the Spitak quake. 

In 2005, the annual growth of the sector was about 40 per cent—significantly contributing overall GDP growth of 13.9 per cent that year. Construction accounted for 30 per cent of Armenia’s economy in 2009, but construction volumes fell that year by 37.4 per cent as what former Armenian prime minister Tigran Sargsyan termed a “construction bubble” burst.   

The sector then declined for a decade but has begun to grow again.  

Today, the outskirts of Yerevan are filled with new apartment buildings, and construction accounted for 7.2 per cent of GDP in 2022—which, while much lower than its share in 2009, is still the eighth largest national construction sector in Europe and Central Asia. In line with increases in public and private investment, construction expanded in 2022 by about sixfold to 18.8 per cent. 

Armenia’s construction sector is projected to grow at 17.6 per cent in 2023 before decreasing to 12.9 per cent growth in 2024. Increased government expenditure—including planned large public investments in the country’s north-south road—will drive this growth. 

However, overall GDP growth is expected to decrease from 2022’s exceptional rate to a still robust but less anomalous 6.5 per cent in 2023 and 5.5 per cent in 2024—still driven largely by growth in services. Lower growth, monetary tightening, and a smaller budget deficit will contribute to a decline in average inflation to seven per cent for 2023.  

“Uranium is found in granite rocks, and it is extracted in granite mines by block leaching, which significantly increases the cost of the extracted products. In other countries, uranium is found in soft soils, and it is mined using the less expensive method of underground leaching.”

Armenia's ruling Civil Contract party managed to score another victory on October 10 as the newly elected Yerevan city council chose Tirgan Avinyan to be the capital's mayor. 

Avinyan, a former deputy mayor and a close ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, won by a margin of 32-5, with 28 members not voting. 

The Mother Armenia alliance, led by Andranik Tevanyan and backed by Armenia's parliamentary opposition, and the National Progress party, led by former mayor and second-place mayoral candidate Hayk Marutyan, boycotted the vote. 

In the city council election held on September 17, the ruling Civil Contract party came in first but won only 32.5 percent of votes, amid a meager 30 percent turnout. Seats are distributed based on proportional representation, i.e. voters choose a party, which presents a list of candidates, the number-one spot on the list being the mayoral candidate.

The result initially bred hopes that the three opposition groups that won seats – National Progress, and Public Voice parties and the Mother Armenia alliance – could put together a coalition and pick Marutyan to lead the city once again.

Such an alliance almost came together but failed as two of the council members-elect of Public Voice, a party led by fugitive media personality Vardan Ghukasyan, were facing criminal charges and could not participate in the session. The remaining members of Public Voice then decided to take part in the mayoral vote, breaking ranks with the other opposition parties, which boycotted in the hopes of thwarting the vote and triggering another council election. 

The Republic party, which also won seats on the council, meanwhile, has long been supportive of Civil Contract. It signed a memorandum of cooperation with the ruling party and supported Avinyan. The party is led by Aram Sargsyan, the brother of late former Defence Minister Vazgen Sargsyan.

The Yerevan municipal election was seen as a test for Prime Minister Pashinyan and his party, whose popularity has declined precipitously since winning the June 2021 snap parliamentary election (which in turn was called because of Armenia's defeat in the Second Karabakh War seven months earlier). 

The prime minister said after the council vote that Avinyan's election as mayor was "a win for democracy" and the "revolution" that brought Pashinyan and his party to power in 2018.

Hayk Marutyan, the leading opposition candidate and erstwhile ally of the ruling party, said that Civic Contract should not be allowed to govern with a minority of seats. Marutyan accused the Republic and Public Voice parties of supporting Avinyan directly and indirectly.  For now, he is keeping his seat on the council. 

The country's two most prominent opposition groups, the former ruling Republican Party and Armenian Revolutionary Federation (which form the Armenia alliance in parliament), did not contest the election.

Some in Armenia had hoped that the election would see the emergence of a third force in the country and break the binary that has characterized Armenian politics for the past few years of the unpopular Civil Contract vs. the discredited Republicans and their allies.  

But there was widespread voter apathy and preoccupation with the security situation amid Azerbaijan's military buildup along the border and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Indeed, just two days after the election, Baku launched its lightning offensive that resulted in the region being emptied of its Armenian population. 

Election watchdog European Platform for Democratic Elections concluded that the poll was "free and fair, with no major systemic violations" despite low turnout and "the misuse of administrative resources by the ruling party."

https://eurasianet.org/armenian-ruling-party-hangs-on-to-yerevan-mayors-seat

What with Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine raging unabated, and now Israel’s retaliation after extensive Hamas terror attacks from Gaza, it’s understandable that journalists, their audiences and politicians have paid little attention to a massive ongoing humanitarian crisis in interior Asia where western media lack observers on the ground.

Beginning Sept. 19, Azerbaijan’s military crushed the self-proclaimed (and not internationally recognized) Artsakh republic in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh enclave within its borders.

The attack panicked and drove out at least 100,000 ethnic Armenians — now forced to cope as refugees in neighboring Armenia. This followed Azerbaijan’s cutoff of the crucial transit corridor from Armenia that had resulted in dire shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies. One factor here is the erosion of Russia’s history of providing Armenia’s security and regional peace-keeping because of its Ukraine entanglement.

The September takeover of the population’s ancient homeland is a straight-up case of “ethnic cleansing,” according to the European Parliament and a Council on Foreign Relations analysis. “In one fell swoop, one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships destroyed one of the world’s oldest Christian communities,” writes Joel Veldkamp, the head of international communications with Christian Solidarity International.

The vanishing ethnic enclave dated back to 1,722 years ago when Armenia became the first state to collectively adopt the Christian religion. As geography evolved, the Nagorno Armenians found themselves caught in a sector within Azerbaijan.

The latest “World Christian Encyclopedia” edition reports that Azerbaijan is 96% Muslim while most of the Nagorno population, and 84% of the population in neighboring Armenia, belong to the Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox) Church. Tensions were contained when the entire area was controlled under the Soviet Union, but that regime’s collapse led to the ongoing religio-ethnic struggle between newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Nagorno collapse is historically important in its own right but, importantly, it raises how religious liberty should be understood and championed. The problem is posed in an Oct. 3 article in First Things by Veldkamp (who is reachable at Solidarity’s Switzerland headquarters [email protected] or 41 0 44 982 33 33).

Veldkamp believes that the “almost complete silence” among Christians about the Nagorno takeover is “shameful,” but also “strange” in light of the rise since the 1990s of “a robust and vocal movement on behalf of persecuted Christians abroad,” especially among conservative western churches.

He proposes that this movement is misguided in one fundamental way. “Religious freedom” is framed in terms of individual human rights. That’s important, to be sure, but too many Christians dismiss Nagorno-type crises when they do not involve official actions against things like holding worship services, building of churches, Christian education of youngsters or Bible distribution, as in Communist or Muslim countries.

Instead, as with the “Armenian Genocide” in Turkey a century ago, governments seek to “exterminate a Christian people (whether practicing or not)” under a hostile regime that may see a threat to its hegemony. In other words, persecution can be aimed at populations as well as individuals, which is not how Christians in the American political system think about such matters.

Veldkamp adds that this conception allows “the U.S. foreign policy establishment” to define persecution as “primarily a problem of individual liberty rather than a question involving ethnic identity, peoples or even nations.” This can mean broader American foreign policy avoids questioning.

According to this Solidarity specialist, potential crises currently loom for a Christian population facing threats of foreign “oppression, military attack and ethnic cleansing” in Armenia’s southern Syunik province, and similarly for sectors within India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nigeria and Sudan.

In addition to the aforementioned genocide, Armenia across history has all too rarely enjoyed national independence. It has been dominated over the centuries by Arabs, Persians, Byzantine Greeks, Ottoman Turks, Russians and, finally, the Soviets.

An ecclesiastical point for writers to keep in mind: The Armenian Apostolic Church is part of so-called Oriental Orthodoxy, also prominent in Egypt, Ethiopia and Syria, as opposed to the Eastern Orthodoxy of Russia, Ukraine, Greece, et al.

As such, Armenians believe in the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ as defined by Christianity’s first three ecumenical councils, but not the further doctrine proclaimed by the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451. See this detailed explanation.

Resources:

* Armenian Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic church leaders in the U.S. issued this appeal last week.

* Congressional Research Service’s 2021 backgrounder on the Nagorno-Karabakh situation (click here).

* Council on Foreign Relations analysis can be found here.

* This Google search contains several essential terms, leading to additional resources and news reports.

FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited photo accompanying this feature — “After Russia’s Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire, could Turkey step up next for a lasting peace?” — at the website of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.