• REFUGEE

To apply as a refugee for Australia, Nairi Serobian-Mouzenian had to go back to Aleppo at the height of the civil war, dodging snipers and enduring a month of bombings to be issued a Syrian passport.

Her papers were lost on the way to Lebanon when she left Syria in 2012, and she needed proof of identity.

Three years later, she braved checkpoints and aerial bombardment to make it back into the war-scarred country that had uprooted the sizeable Armenian community she hails from.

The Nagorno-Karabakh region has been contested for decades with several wars fought.

Most Armenians who settled in Syria over a century ago are direct descendants of survivors of the 1915 genocide, where one million people were killed by Ottoman soldiers.

“It was hell. It was one month where I saw a lot,” the 32-year-old graphic designer told AAP.

“Life was beautiful one day and then I hear the sound of a bomb that was very loud close to our house.

“All I remember is screaming and my dad being upstairs and thinking I hope nothing happened to him.”

He escaped with a small head injury from flying shrapnel.

She described another incident when a soldier at a checkpoint in her densely packed neighbourhood told her to find another route because there were snipers on the roof.

Ms Serobian-Mouzenian made it safely to Sydney in 2016 with her family and is expecting her first-born in coming months.

But she cannot but help feel powerless with about 100,000 Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region leaving their homes in recent days under shelling from Azerbaijan.

The year-long blockade, devolving into a war, has been internationally condemned as a modern-day genocide.

The two former Soviet countries have contested the region (known as Artsakh to Armenians) for decades, with several wars breaking out including the most recent conflict in 2020.

“I feel very sad from the depths of my heart because Syrian Armenians have gone through it (mass exodus) and now other Armenians are going through it again,” Ms Serobian-Mouzenian said.

“Our history is all a struggle from one place to another, and it’s so sad to see where we live in a century (where) we have technology and no one is doing anything.

“It’s like you’re standing in the middle of the ocean with no one helping.”

Anne Gharibian heads up settlement services at the Armenian Resource Centre in Sydney, a volunteer-powered group which provides about 3000 Iraqi and Syrian Armenians with help ranging from filling out Centrelink forms to giving advice on family reunification.

The centre is desperate for funds to keep up with demand.

It is expecting the fallout from the Nagorno-Karabakh exodus to reach Australian shores, with many Armenians having links to the territory.

About 100,000 Armenians have fled their homes under shelling from Azerbaijan.

A delegation of seven Australian parliamentarians from NSW and Victoria visited a refugee camp in Armenia for those fleeing, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong in September urged Azerbaijan to cease its military escalation.

But Ms Gharibian is calling on the Australian government to dedicate a special intake for Armenian refugees as it did for Afghan, Syrian, Iraqi and Ukrainian asylum seekers in recent years.

Sonik Oghlian was living in Sydney when the conflict in Syria took a turn for the worse in late-2011.

She sprung into action and managed to get her mother, as well as her brother, his wife and children, out to Lebanon for a few years and then later as humanitarian entrants to Australia in 2016.

“We never felt safe in Syria even though it was our physical home for decades,” she said, referring to her experience as a descendant of genocide survivors.

She said seeing images of the mass exodus of Armenians happening in real-time in recent weeks entrenched the complex feelings of being a refugee.

“It starts with the genocide and it’s a cycle. It always goes back to square one, to the feeling you don’t have a home.”

These feelings of helplessness are compounded knowing that she has a young relative serving in the Armenian army.

“It feels safe in Australia, the help we got here and there’s a future for the kids … but the worrying is always in the back of your mind,” she said.

Just days before Azerbaijan wiped the indigenous Armenian enclave in Nagorno-Karabakh off the map, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim declared to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “We will not tolerate any attack on the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The genocidal intent was clear. Azerbaijani soldiers wore armbands with the image of Enver Pasha, mastermind of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, and the slogan “Don’t run Armenian you’ll just die of exhaustion!” Upon capturing Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh and a city historically almost entirely Armenian, the Azerbaijani government named a street for Enver Pasha. To Armenians, Azerbaijan’s arrest of the region’s Armenian political leaders has obvious parallels to the 1915 arrests—and subsequent executions—of prominent Armenian leaders, an event that scholars say marked the beginning of the Armenian genocide.

While growing numbers of Congressmen complain or sign letters demanding action, the Biden administration does little to help displaced Armenians or punish Azerbaijan for systematically violating every diplomatic agreement and ceasefire they signed. While realists in the White House view Armenia-Azerbaijan in isolation and may even see opportunity in the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to enable an elusive peace, they are wrong on both counts. Unilateral action justifies unilateral reaction, even if delayed by decades, while ethnic cleansing unpunished signals its utility to aggressors.

So it is now with Turkey. On October 1, 2023, two suicide bombers affiliated with a militant offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) attacked the front gate of Turkey’s interior ministry, injuring two Turkish soldiers. While there is no excuse for terrorism, the attack came after a year of near daily Turkish cross-border attacks on Kurds. The Turkish Interior Ministry responded by declaring all sites it associates with the PKK and YPG (People’s Defense Units) as well as energy infrastructure as potential targets. Turkish drones and/or aircraft have preceded to bomb a number of sites across northern Iraq and Syria. The threat to bomb civilian and economic infrastructure represents collective punishment illegal under international law.

Given the US partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is a member, that raises the stakes that Turkey might target American troops. This is not a theoretical problem. On April 7, 2023, Turkish drones targeted a convoy conveying Iraqi Kurds, SDF, and American Special Forces. The strike was not simply a warning, but lethal in intent. Local officials told me the only reason Americans did not die was that the ground was muddier than usual, allowing the warhead to penetrate into the ground before detonating.  On October 5, American forces in Syria downed a Turkish drone that they deemed a threat. Such NATO on NATO action is a rarity.

The Turkish government might seek to compel the United States to abandon their Syrian Kurdish allies, much as the White House abandoned Armenians. That the United States has been silent regarding the Turkish ethnic cleansing of Afrin might encourage Ankara further. That President Donald Trump had after a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed willingness to throw the Kurds under the bus might lead Erdogan to believe American resolve is weak.

He would be foolish to believe so. The United States allied with Syrian Kurds against the Islamic State that Turkey at the time backed. Turkey might be a NATO member, but Kurds have proven themselves on the ground at a time Turkey would not. The Islamic State remains a threat, one that would grow if Turkey overruns the Kurdish administration. Erdogan’s racist hatred of the Kurds also ignores the obvious to those who have visited the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria: while far from perfect, it is nonetheless impressive and has achieved a great deal with few resources. Residents—both Kurdish, Arab, and other—enjoy greater freedoms than their counterparts do in Syria, Turkey, or in areas of Iraqi Kurdistan under the control of the Barzani family.

This will not keep Turkey from trying, however. As Turkey seeks to ethnically cleanse northern Syria, Kurds tell me that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps demands the same right of access and operation along its border. Serbia, meanwhile, uses the Azerbaijan and Turkey precedent to intimidate and target Kosovo. Turkey may hope American forces simply get out of the way, but they should not. Today’s downing of a Turkish drone should be both a shot across the bow and an inspiration for the future. To stop ethnic cleansing, it behooves the United States to help all of its allies defend themselves from the predation of dictatorships wielding drones.

Conversely, American troops across the globe will be in danger unless the White House forcefully conveys to those who would seek to target and intimidate them that to do so will lead to an exponentially higher price visited upon them. Washington should put Ankara on notice: If a Turkish drone, jet, or sniper targets an American, every Turk in Syria and Iraq will have a target on their back.

Now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Dr. Michael Rubin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005).

By Faustine Vincent

Two weeks after the surrender of Nagorno-Karabakh following a lightning-fast military offensive, on Tuesday, October 3, Azerbaijan re-issued a map of the capital of the former Armenian separatist enclave (Stepanakert in Armenian, Khankendi in Azerbaijani), with street names in Azerbaijani. One of these streets is named after Turkish military officer Enver Pasha, one of the main instigators of the Armenian genocide of 1915. The map was first published in August 2021.

The map is re-issued at a time when Baku is intensifying its efforts to convince the international community that it will respect the rights of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians wishing to remain in the enclave.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has promised a "peaceful reintegration" and to turn the region into a "paradise." "Equal rights and freedoms for all, including security for all, are guaranteed regardless of ethnicity, religion or language," his government said again on October 2.

The start of the integration process had been formally announced the day before, on October 1. The Azerbaijani media widely broadcast a video of two people said to be Armenians who are choosing to stay and live in Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani rule. The actual identities and backgrounds of these two individuals are unknown.

If Armenians do remain in Nagorno-Karabakh, it would provide Azerbaijan with an opportunity to showcase its "peaceful reintegration." It could also provide Russia with an excuse to keep its 2,000 or so peacekeepers in the region, which have been deployed there since the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020. However, among the refugees that Le Monde met in Armenia, not a single one believes in the possibility of a "peaceful reintegration," or

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By Varsen Aghabekian, Dar al-Kalima University Press, 2023, paperback, 226 pp. MEB $25

The Saga of Survival fills an important gap in the history of the Armenians of Palestine. While there are good studies about the Armenian communities of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, an analysis of the Armenians of Palestine has been missing. Varsen Aghabekian fills this gap by telling the history of Armenians in Palestine during the inter-war period (1918-1948). What is unique about this study is that Aghabekian is able to intertwine her family history with that of the history of the larger Armenian community of Palestine. The strength of the book does not lie in unearthing new primary sources to reconstruct history, rather it is heavily based on oral history, an extremely valuable source that no other scholar in the area has utilized.

The Armenian presence in Palestine dates back to the fourth century CE, when Armenian pilgrims began arriving in Jerusalem after the discovery of the holy sites of Christianity. The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem in its present form came into being in the first decade of the 14th century, when the Brotherhood of St. James was established in the Holy City. It was around the Armenian Patriarchate that a small Armenian community sprang that eventually formed the Armenian Quarter, which encompasses one-sixth of the Old City of Jerusalem. Those descending from this early community are known as “the locals” (kaghakatsis), while those who arrived after the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) are known as “visitors” (zuwwar). 

In her book, Aghabekian is able to show the common and interconnected histories of Armenians and Palestinians. What is unique about the Armenians of Palestine is that they suffered multiple catastrophes: the Armenian Genocide, the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 Naksa. Aghabekian concentrates on the first two catastrophes. In the course of five chapters, she discusses the rise of the Armenian community of Jerusalem from the ashes of genocide, the challenges faced by the community and the important role played by Armenians in the context of Palestinian history. She concludes the book with the Nakba, which became the turning point for the Armenians of Jerusalem, leading to dispossession and the immigration of thousands to surrounding countries, Europe, the United States and Australia.

Aghabekian also discusses the struggles surrounding the arrival of Armenian refugees during and after the genocide. The Armenian Patriarchate had a monumental task to feed and take care of the refugees, while local Armenians also assisted the refugees. Despite a brief period of tension between both groups due to cultural and linguistic differences, their relations improved during the British Mandate period. It is this period upon which Aghabekian most concentrates by bringing the voices of the living and the dead to life. Her father, for example, Ohannes Aghabekian, becomes one of the important voices in the book. In describing the difficulties of life during the 1930s, he recalls: “I used to walk over 10km to Battir and bring vegetables on my back to sell in Jerusalem so my family would have food to eat. I was only 12 years old.” Unlike other historians, Aghabekian also tells the story of the Armenian Catholic community in Jerusalem, mostly formed by the survivors of the genocide.

Aghabekian demonstrates how the local Armenians who were fluent in Arabic were much more integrated in Palestinian society. With their excellent education, acquired mostly from missionary schools, they were able to occupy important positions within the British colonial administration. Armenians also excelled in diverse professions, such as medicine, photography, ceramics, shoemaking, goldsmithing and silversmithing, among others. 

The Armenians of Jerusalem were not immune to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. In Aghabekian’s words, “Armenians have suffered politically, socially and economically like Palestinians, including the loss of properties in 1948.” In chapters four and five, Aghabekian tells the story of the Armenians during the 1948 war and its aftermath. She specifically concentrates on Patriarch Guregh Israelian, who played an important role in alleviating the suffering of the Armenians. She expresses Armenians’ fear and anxiety upon becoming refugees for a second time. During the war, thousands of Armenians from throughout Palestine poured into the Armenian Patriarchate looking for a safe haven. Despite this, around 40 Armenians were killed by the Haganah militia’s shelling, including my great cousin Hagop Der Matossian. Similar to the other Palestinian upper-class families, Armenians lost most of their businesses and homes in West Jerusalem. 

The Saga of Survival is a fantastic book that tells the story of the Armenians of Palestine during a critical phase of the modern period. The book is unique as it tells the story of the period from those who experienced it, and not through the perspective of colonial archives. No other scholar has successfully utilized such a rich trove of oral history to tell this unique story. The book is extremely important to scholars and non-scholars alike who are interested in understanding the complexities of the Armenians of Palestine during the Mandate period, as well as the previously untold details relayed by Armenian witnesses and victims of the Nakba.

Bedross Der Matossian is a professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the former president of the Society for Armenian Studies.

Azerbaijan’s push into the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is drawing comparisons to other episodes of ethnic cleansing. What can be done under international law?

Article by David J. Scheffer

The ethnic Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan, a largely Christian community in a predominantly Muslim nation, is experiencing ethnic cleansing at warp speed. Over the last week, almost all of the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh have fled west to Armenia. This exodus follows clashes with the Azerbaijan army that have reportedly killed upwards of four hundred people, including some civilians. The renewed conflict demonstrates the failure of years of diplomatic efforts to prevent the persecution of ethnic Armenians, and remaining options to address the situation with the tools of international law are limited.

The Armenian government has accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. The term “ethnic cleansing” has garnered varied definitions over the years, but the United Nations describes it as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” The use of starvation tactics against ethnic Armenians during the monthslong closure of the so-called Lachin Corridor between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, combined with Azerbaijani army intimidation, resulted in an exodus of Armenians that has triggered the charge of ethnic cleansing.  

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Armenia

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While ethnic cleansing is not defined as a matter of criminal law, its attributes appear in the crime against humanity of persecution and as predicates for acts of genocide. International criminal tribunals prosecute those atrocity crimes, and in many such cases, claims of ethnic cleansing have been front and center. The most prominent example of ethnic cleansing in the last few decades was the forcible removal of the Muslim Bosniak population of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Bosnian Serb (Orthodox Christian) and Bosnian Croat (Roman Catholic) forces in the early 1990s. 

An explicit invocation of ethnic cleansing also can be found in the Responsibility to Protect principle (R2P) adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly in 2005. R2P states that nations have the responsibility to protect their own populations from “genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.” But if a government fails to do so, R2P proclaims, then the UN Security Council can act with enforcement power under the UN Charter to prevent and confront such assaults on a civilian population. The Security Council has not acted under R2P in the current Nagorno-Karabakh crisis because Russia, as one of the five veto-wielding Permanent Members of the Council, almost certainly would block any such action while it remains focused on waging a war of aggression against Ukraine.

Deterrence, including measures that could discourage ethnic cleansing, reached its expiration date in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now too late for international monitors to bear witness to the fate of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN observers that have arrived in the enclave have confirmed that nearly all ethnic Armenians have already fled to Armenia. 

The history of monitoring in the region is mixed. In the wake of the 2020 resurgence of conflict over the enclave, Russia deployed peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, an echo of the small contingent of monitors sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) years earlier. The Russian force, which normally would act as a de facto monitoring mission, has proven itself to be remarkably ineffective. It refused to intervene to open the Lachin Corridor, and it has now failed to deter a renewed assault on the enclave. 

However, one other prospect could be the deployment of OSCE or UN monitors under a fresh mandate to patrol the Armenia-Azerbaijan border in hopes of deterring cross-border movements by either country’s armed forces. This approach would have to include a negotiated withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from the Armenian territory that they occupied in 2021 and 2022 and a return to internationally recognized borders. If that idea proves unworkable, the two countries could agree to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice for adjudication.

Azerbaijan claims that it will treat the remaining Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh just like any other minority population. That promise likely will not instill much confidence among the small number of Armenians who now face the prospect of Baku dominating their governance in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Azerbaijan is party to multiple multilateral treaties that include obligations that either explicitly protect or reflect the rights of minority populations. OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov could intensify his monitoring of Azerbaijan’s compliance with and any violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Aggrieved ethnic Armenians can lodge claims against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights, the legal arm of the Council of Europe, a human rights body to which Armenia and Azerbaijan both belong.

To demonstrate its respect for R2P, Azerbaijan should prevent ethnic cleansing, including its incitement, against ethnic Armenians. While that could seem inconceivable given what has occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh, the United Nations and influential actors such as the United States, Turkey, and the European Union should be pressing the point in all diplomatic exchanges with Baku.

There is long-standing animosity between the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s majority-Muslim population, whose resentment has been stoked by the brutal war and subsequent Armenian occupation of the enclave and surrounding Azerbaijani districts in the early 1990s. The resulting armed conflicts of recent years and the rout that has driven most ethnic Armenians onto Armenian territory demand some sort of dialogue. Otherwise, resentments and insecurities will govern the future relationship between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

As a start, the Council of Europe should explore a truth and reconciliation commission that brings both government officials and average citizens together to address grievances and hopes. There likely is no turning back on the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh as a territory now—it will be absorbed into the nation-state of Azerbaijan. But the ethnic Armenians who have called Nagorno-Karabakh home will still seek an end to persecution and hatred. Respect and dignity are the pillars of any truth and reconciliation commission. Armenia and Azerbaijan should work to restore both to their peoples, starting with an initiative that seeks the truth and creates momentum for reconciling divisive prejudices. Nor need there be a trade-off between justice and transparency, as both could be uniquely balanced in the outcome, as proved to be the case in Sierra Leone after its civil war.

One approach to justice would be to turn to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which can investigate and prosecute charges such as ethnic cleansing. On October 3, the Armenian Parliament ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC and two months after its formal deposit of that instrument of ratification—probably early December 2023—will become a state party. The news was not welcomed by Armenia’s longtime (now fading) ally Russia, whose leader, President Vladimir Putin, has been charged by the ICC with war crimes in Ukraine and who now could be arrested if he were to visit Armenia. Azerbaijan remains a non-party state of the court.

Armenia’s embrace of the ICC can be a powerful weapon of lawfare. Indeed, even before it formally becomes the 124^th member of the ICC, Armenia could file immediately a special “Article 12(3)” declaration granting jurisdiction to the Court over the forcible deportation of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh onto Armenian territory. This option would be similar to the ICC’s current jurisdiction for atrocity crimes committed on Ukrainian territory (a non-party State).  Ukraine had filed two such declarations, triggering an official ICC investigation into the Ukraine situation (and of Russian officials). The investigation commenced following referrals by scores of ICC countries; a similar course of events could be a plausible prospect for Armenia’s injury in the Nagorno-Karabakh situation. Once Armenia’s status at the ICC is settled, Azerbaijan political and military leaders could be drawn into the jurisdiction of the ICC because of the character of the alleged crime, just as the forcible deportation (ethnic cleansing) of the Rohingya minority onto the territory of ICC member Bangladesh by military forces of Myanmar (a non-ICC country) in 2017 exposed Myanmar officials to ICC investigation. 

Baku might want to capitalize on the depopulating of Nagorno-Karabakh with a swift military movement across Armenian territory to control access to Nakhchivan, an exclave region of Azerbaijan bordering Iran. But now that Armenia is poised to join the ICC, Azerbaijan’s political and military leaders would likely risk investigation by the ICC prosecutor of the crime of aggression. That may explain the Armenian Parliament’s rapid move to ratify the Rome Statute—to address not only the fate of ethnic Armenians but to deter any Azerbaijani aggression across its territory.