Two modes of thinking since the announcement that Artsakh is going to be divided up, much of it given to Azerbaijan including Shushi, the smoldering ruins of whatever is left placed under the watch of Russian peacekeepers.
First, the emotional, initial gut feeling. I am going to get this off my chest. For this, as is typical of me, I have a song that this reminds me of. A song I had not heard for years before it entered my brain when this news dropped.
“No one saved us. No one’s gonna save us now. Not even God.” “Where do you expect us to go when the bombs fall?“ Very relevant lyrics, all things considered.
This week, we have learned that ethnic cleansing, genocide, torturing to death prisoners of war, bombing cities with carpet bombs that are supposedly “illegal”, burning down forests with phosphorus bombs that are supposedly “illegal”, paying terrorist mercenaries $100 for every severed head they can produce, is rewarded in this world. It will get you what you want. If you have enough money, the word “illegal” becomes meaningless. The rest of the world will look the other way. The UN is powerless and meaningless. You can make a weapon illegal, but who’s going to enforce it? Laws only apply to the poor, not the rich. There is no such thing as justice. Justice does not fucking exist. Karma? Ha! Turkey and Azerbaijan are above karma. Hundreds of years have gone by, and they’ve never once been punished. Might as well wait for the United States to be punished for their treatment of Native Americans. It’s never going to happen. There is no such thing as karma. How many times do you need to be let down? How many times do your prayers need to fall on deaf ears? No one is listening. No one cares. What a shitty world. I hate it here. I hate this place.
Do I blame Nikol Pashinyan for signing away Armenia’s land and what little independence it still had? When I first learned of the news, my initial reaction was to blame him. But, now that I have had time to process everything, I see that perhaps it was the only thing he could do in those dire circumstances. But I would have appreciated it if he’d been more honest. This was all done behind everyone’s back. We were fed bullshit by the media that we were winning. Certainly keeping morale up is important, as is not giving information to the enemy. But really, my confidence in Armenian news media is shaken, perhaps forever now. I feel like I let myself fall victim to the echo chamber. I should have paid attention to neutral sources. Now, we are at Russia’s mercy. As soon as they stop giving a shit, and they pull out their peacekeepers, that will be it for Armenia. Turkey will take the rest. Maybe it will happen in fifty years. Maybe it will happen next year. No one will remember Armenia when it is gone. Its history will be erased, as it has been in every other part that the Turks have taken. But, perhaps there is some small comfort in knowing that this is the eventual fate of every country on Earth. The human race can’t have too much longer before they drive themselves to extinction, after all. Nothing is forever. Not even this planet and the star it orbits.
The second response: logic. Here’s a good interview that presents the more logical take.
Pashinyan acted before the situation could get even worse. Artsakh is not completely gone, yet. The rest of Armenia is intact, for now. And for the first time, the remaining people of Artsakh do have some kind of legal status and security guarantee. And most importantly, the war is finished, and the killing has stopped. After all, people’s lives mean a lot more than humanity’s abstract lines in the sand. Armenia lost around 1,300 people to this madness (that number will inflate once the bodies are counted, sigh). And for now, it is over. Or at least, on pause. And from the Azeri side, they still didn’t get all of Artsakh like they wanted, and now, they have Russian soldiers on their soil. They are now a Russian colony just like Armenia is. The real winner of this war, despite Azerbaijan coming out on top, is Russia. Azerbaijan paid a heavy price for their gains. They think they’ve won, but let’s wait until it sinks in. It will be interesting to see what happens to them in the long run, when their oil reserves run out, and perhaps with it, their free pass to commit all the genocides they want.
Going forward, the only solution for Armenia is unity. Division does no one any favors. It doesn’t help. All the crying in the world isn’t going to change reality. This is the way things are now. We have to adapt. Things are grim right now. They’ve always been grim though. Perhaps grimmer. Maybe there is still a way for Armenia to survive. Doom and gloom doesn’t help anything. This may be every politician’s favorite excuse, but Pashinyan has inherited this mess from his corrupt predecessors. He should have acted before Shushi was lost I think, but, we don’t know the whole story, do we? I sure don’t. I’m not going to be an armchair general. Bottom line is I don’t think this is all his fault. I am not loyal to him, but I think Armenia is better off keeping him around instead of trading him for a Russian lackey, in my humble estimation, as much as my opinion from the diaspora counts, which is not for much.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I desperately need some kind of a distraction from the world. I have not slept well for the past two nights, I got maybe 4 hours of sleep last night over this stuff. I need to tune it out for my own well being. There’s just nothing at all that I can do about this. I won’t be sharing this blog entry around, this was just something I wrote to work through my feelings, but if you did manage to find it, well, I hope you learned something.
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