“When children lose their father, they can find solace with their mother, but when they lose their mother, they cannot find solace with their father,” said 38-year-old Artak Vardanyan, capturing his family’s tragedy. A year ago, his wife died in a gasoline warehouse explosion near Stepanakert, Artsakh, and now Vardanyan is raising their four young children by himself.
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Armenia a small landlocked country, without natural resources nor is it strategic in terms of flow of international trade, still insists on having two of it’s neighbors as arch enemies is something I’ll never understand. It’s like Mongolia having Russia and china as arch enemies. Don’t get me wrong, Mongolians in general hate China and Chinese and will never let their children marry a Chinese person, but the government has enough sense not to go about claiming vast lands like eg inner Mongolia from China as their Territory or tanu tuva in Russia as thier territory even thou millions of ethnic Mongols live there. as a nation of 3.5 million people Mongol leadership has more sense and strategic insight into the future and for survival near sharks than Armenia handsdown. if Armenia and Mongolia where to switch places I bet you Mongolia would have ceised to exist while turkey and Azerbaijan would have open borders and free trade with Armenia.
A year later, the reality for displaced Artsakh Armenians is still one of hardship.
@Austin onah
All you’ve managed to achieve is to show your profound and total ignorance.
Ever heard of a tiny little event called the Armenian Genocide.
all you’ve managed to achieve is to show a typical sense of living in the past. Have you ever heard of the Dzungar Mongol genocide or the massacres of ethnic Mongols during the Qing dynasty? that’s why no self respecting Mongol would ever allow their child marry someone from China, but a pragmatic Mongolian leadership (thank God for them) looks to the future, not stuck with the past. The Mongolian government isn’t going about teaching the population about greater Mongolia even thou there are 6 million Mongols in China and up to 1 million in Russia. even with all the really bad blood between Mongols and Chinese we don’t claim Chinese land, hence why China respects our territorial integrity and does not have Chinese itching for vengeance against hated Mongols. what has government sponsored antagonism with turkey and Azerbaijan done for Armenia in the last 30 years? count the looses. is it not time for Peace and open borders and free trade increasing investor confidence in Armenia and reducing the hemorrhage of economic emigrants from Armenia. We use Chinese ports for our goods to Japan, USA, Korea etc even thou we hate China and they know it. we use Russian rail even thou we distrust Russia and they know it, but if we behaved like Armenia and went about seeking war and future stockpilling of weapons for more future war the cycle never ends and they always win.
Turks cannot be trusted.
They, thanks to their religion, want to keep Armenians as their dhimmis and Armenia as a Turkish vilayet.
Stop comparing Armenia to Mongolia. The two are completely different situations and a comparison is totally irrelevant.
Yes Turks cannot be trusted you’ve known that for a hundred years, but what has war and open hostility with them done for you!? Mongolia is the nearest thing to Armenians situation love it or hate it it’s the bitter truth. Armenia fought a bloody war once with Georgia for javakh, Now the only Armenian neighbor with native Armenians still living close to the border is Georgia with javakh Armenians. if the Armenian elite still insists on carrying the Armenian people down a part of enmity with Turkey and Azerbaijan then I guess we might be having this same conversation when Armenia has lost syunik after another bloody war breaks out in the future. peace and cooperation even with your enemies is always better than open hostility. The population trend in Armenia is declining and Armenia might have only a million or so people by the end of this century.
Using your logic, Iran can not be trusted because of their religion and thousands of years of Persians destroying Armenia and turning it into a province of the Persian empire. The country of Armenia has known nothing but loses because of this open hostility it has with turkey and Azerbaijan. if I were part of the Georgian elite I frankly will pray to God that Armenia continues fighting turkey and Azerbaijan for the next thousand years. that way the benefits of trade conduit and the major node of oil, rail, business and money in the caucuses keeps on being me. Every Georgian elite must be thanking Armenia for being so openly hostile to their neighbors while Georgia rips the benefits. I still hear some Armenians openly speak of developing so they can get back artsakh, which to me is bafflingly. haven’t you learned your lesson, it’s this mindset of there will never be peace because we are planing to invade you to get back our “Homeland” that will be the doom of Armenia. A new narrative needs to be taught in Armenian schools. a narrative of cooperation in the region and getting Armenia out of the isolation that made Armenia overly dependent on Russia in the past, which led to many bad things such as the selling of vast amounts of Armenian sovereign assets to Russia, while the population suffered, emigrating en mass to find better futures outside, because their elites while blinding them with the orgasm of taking territory from Azerbaijan had sold Armenia bit by bit to Russia for cheap. those from artsakh will likely follow the trend of others in Armenia and leave for greener pastures, nobody wants to stay in a country where war can brake out at any time.
True in some ways about Georgia it’s a moot point that it’s the only neighbour of Armenia with a significant Armenian population in a contiguous community who seems broadly content as part of Georgia who it should be added has had factionalism from other minorities such as the Abkhaz and Ossetians keenly supported by Russia indeed this was the great error in Armenia was the assumption that because Russia was an ally and had support for Russians in Ukraine and for its allies in Georgia that Russia as an ally it would be always supportive of Armenia vis a vis Arktash this was to turn out to be a catastrophic misjudgment based on insularity although it manifests the unashamed hypocrisy of Russia to Armenia and it’s people and the wider world. Armenia manages alright with Iran; fellow Indo Europeans and with Georgia; fellow Christians so isn’t as inept nor as isolated as the critics like to imply even during the heavily Russia focused foreign policy 1991 – 2018 although only really declining 2020 onwards .
Living in the past is lethal. Even Israel which has always found the 1942-5 killings of Jewish people by the Nazis invaluable now realises that it’s no longer the asset it was almost everyone who survived then is dead now. It’s ability to serve as a national unifier is not what it was even a few years ago hence the dysfunctionality that manifested so acutely that Hamas was able to strike a symbolic blow although without the means to sustain the assault. South Africa, Turkey and Nicaragua supporting an ICJ genocide petition would have been impossible only a few years ago in such a circumstance and is increasingly relying on USA UN veto on its behalf constantly which is accelerating the decline of the creditability and authority of the UN. For Europe demographic changes mainly immigrants from Africa and Asia is rendering it harder for Israel to use the “Europe’s guilt” notion to silence criticism from European countries. Putin seemingly obsessed with WW2 and the Soviet Union , actions in attacking Ukraine is accelerating the decline of their legacies.
Armenia should seek to move forward but with the ability to safeguard it’s interests with the sourcing of weapons from any country willing and able to assist, especially as Byzantine policy Russia has failed to safeguard Armenia and struggles to protect itself it seems.
The Turks as Altaic peoples are inclined to be domineering and for the Arab coreligionists who regard the Turks as insincere corrupt upstarts in the Muslim religion. The Kurds fellow faith counts for little for example.