History Forgotten is Bound to Repeat Itself

The Starving Armenians, Part Two.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, read part one here.

A Lot of History in One Little Paragraph

Following the Armenian Genocide of 1915, power struggles continued. Wars were started, ended, peace treaties signed and broken, and through it all, many of the refugee Armenians slowly made their way back home. Armenia ended up taking cover under the Soviet Union in hopes of protection. As time went on, Azerbaijan, often funded by Turkey and at times by their supposed protector, Moscow, continued committing massacres and deportations of the Armenians. This culminated in their struggle for, and ultimate success in gaining independence.

Throughout the 90's, up to today, the Armenian government worked to establish a democracy, with a parliamentary system. They have held elections ever since.

Modern Day Armenia

They have some of their own land back, and are living independently with a mostly Western style government. Sounds great right? Well, perhaps we should have paid more attention to 1915.

Remember this map? The light pink area is called Nagorno Karabakh. Through all of the previously mentioned conflict, this area (formerly part of Armenia) came to be controlled by Armenians again, but was cut off from the main land mass of modern day Armenia. It's connected by one single road, the Lachin corridor.

That's about to be very important. 

“Environmental Protestors”

On 12/12/2022, the Lachin corridor was blocked by so called environmental protesters. Azerbaijan authorities claimed no knowledge of the protest blockades, but strangely they mysteriously disappeared as soon as Azerbaijan finished a military checkpoint on the road. These blockades have stopped food, medical supplies, fuel and other crucial supplies from entering the region. To give you an idea of the health crisis, it is reported that the miscarriage rate has at least tripled during the obstruction of the road.

The road to Nagorno Karabakh continued to be unusable up until September 19th of this year. Nine months of, for all intents and purposes, a siege.

September 19, 2023

On September 19th, Azerbaijan launched a Turkey backed military assault on the region. Via Joel Veldkamp of Christian Solidarity International,

"The military assault drove half of the region's population out of their homes, and swamped the capital's hospital with wounded for whom there were no medical supplies. Widespread atrocities were reported, including the apparently deliberate bombing of a group of fleeing children. Five days after the attack began, the Karabakh Armenians accepted Russia's offer to evacuate their population to the neighboring Republic of Armenia.”

This was an unprovoked ethnic cleansing, following 9 months of starvation and deprivation, driving over 120,000 people from their ancestral homes. And yet, the decolonizers haven’t made a peep.

Why isn’t this in our news?

Let's take a little detour back into foreign policy for a minute. I'm far from an expert but...I can smell a rat when one is there, and I bet you can too.

The US is operating under the assumption that there is still a sort of alliance between Armenia and Russia, even following the end of the USSR. Russian peacekeeper soldiers are, in fact, meant to patrol the Lachin Corridor and help protect Armenians. They did absolutely nothing to end the blockade.

Whether this is due to forces stretched thin from fighting in the Ukraine, or something more sinister is impossible to know for sure. Here’s what we do know. Russia has recently sold billions of dollars in weapons to Azerbaijan...the military adversary of their supposed ally. Smells…like a rat.

The US has used the farce of a Russia alliance to avoid supporting Armenia. Armenia, you know, the only Christian, Western style government in the entire region. Meanwhile, we are "strategic partners" with Turkey and Azerbaijan. What does strategic partnership mean?

I bet you guessed it. We give them money. Lots of money. Per the state department, we sent Turkey over 100 million dollars in 2022. We also sent Israel over 3 billion dollars in the same year. How does Israel fit in? Well, Israel has supplied Azerbaijan with weapons for years, as Azerbaijan supplies them with oil. Ok. So we fund Turkey and Israel. Turkey and Israel fund/supply weapons to Azerbaijan. To top it all off, Armenia's supposed ally, Russia, is ALSO giving Azerbaijan weapons.

Phew. That’s a lot of odds stacked against them.

Before we finish up in foreign policy land, we also give some money directly to Azerbaijan. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have actually had the opportunity to stop this cash flow through Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. This section only allows the US to provide military assistance to Azerbaijan, so long as the secretary of state certifies that such assistance does not contribute to conflict in the region. Both have waived this opportunity. Cool, right?

I can only speculate on why this isn’t making the news, so draw your own conclusions. My personal speculation is, 1) it really doesn’t look good for our government to follow the money trail, and allow that money to be used by our “strategic partners” to starve and displace over 100,000 people, and 2) they’re not a particularly beneficial partnership for us economically, as they are a very poor country.

Does that mean we shouldn’t care? Of course not. But from a political standpoint, it is certainly easier to turn a blind eye.

They still have mainland Armenia, right?

It’s true. They’ve only starved and evacuated the light pink area on the map…for now. Many in the region are expecting incursions on the mainland next. And that makes sense right? A Christian democratic nation stands in the way of their Great Turan (see part one for the explanation of this,) and what are we doing? Asking them to all sit down and negotiate, while we dump cash into the Islamic nations.

Are negotiations even an option? According to Turkish and Azerbaijan officials themselves, no. They have made it clear that they intend to “finish what their fathers started.” Simone Rizkallah of Armenian descent tells the story of her grandmother who lived in Egypt after being displaced in the 1915 genocide. When Egypt and Israel went to war in 1973, she went to her usual grocer, where she had shopped for 30 years. In fact, her kids and the grocer’s kids grew up playing together. And yet, on this day, the grocer looked at her grandmother and said, “first we’ll get them (the Jews,) and then we’ll get you (Armenian Christians.”) Source.

Christian Persecution

Genocides have been perpetrated on all different sorts of people. It generally starts with an “other-ing” of a religion, nationality, ethnic group, etc. and is amazing how quickly the hatred can spread. Think, Germans and Jews living peacefully next door to each other…until suddenly, they didn’t.

It is difficult, I believe, for Americans to truly understand this, despite our love of claiming victim status. If your local grocer made threats such as the above, you would have legal recourse. Armenians do not.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. Christians have been persecuted throughout history, and it’s still prevalent today. in fact, more than 360 million, or 1 in 7 Christians in the world today face high levels of persecution, via the World Watch List from Open Doors.

But America can NOT get involved again.

Over and over, we have essentially failed in our attempts to democratize countries who don’t want to be democracies. Our population being “gun shy” is completely understandable.

But here, we have a similar situation to Israel. A country that we claim to support because they overall already share our values and system of government, smack in the middle of those who don’t. Why are they worthy of our support, and Armenia, a very similar situation, although less economically prosperous, is not?

“Getting involved,” by the way, does not have to mean boots on the ground. I’m certainly not advocating for another war. But what if, I know, I know, this is a crazy idea, we stopped pumping money to their aggressors? I mean, just a thought.

Ok. So what can we do?

Sometimes it feels…overwhelming. So many suffering people. So many causes. We do what we can, focus on what’s in front of us, and that’s all we can do. But if you read this? Well now you know. And there IS something you can do.

1. Pray for peace. We can all do that, and it is powerful.

2. Know the story. Maybe you don’t have a huge platform, that’s totally ok. But know the story. Share it within your circles. With your children. Don’t let it fade from memory like the Holocaust has with so many of our young people.

3. Call and put pressure on your representatives to TALK about this issue. To cut funding to their aggressors. We elect these folks to be our voice. So make sure our voice is heard.

4. Follow the Philos Project for updates and ways we can help.

Remember, the first time around when Americans were called on to help? Our government said no, but the people said a resounding yes. I wonder, amidst all of our differences, if we could find that spirit again?