It has been 109 years since 1.5 million Armenians were deported, starved, or massacred by the Ottoman Empire in a genocide that took the world decades to recognize.
They haven’t forgotten.
Last week, thousands of the country’s citizens flooded the streets of Yerevan holding flaming torches to commemorate Genocide Remembrance Day. Meanwhile, the Armenian diaspora met on soccer fields in South America and in churches in Belgium, where the Belgian foreign minister promised them “never again.”
The Ethnic Cleansing of ‘Artsakh’
This year, the commemoration is especially salient. Despite the platitudes and promises of foreign leaders, including those in Russia and the United States, the specter of genocide continues to haunt the Armenians. Just months ago, 120,000 Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh, a semi-autonomous region of Armenia known to its inhabitants as Artsakh that contains the oldest Christian nation’s oldest churches. Yerevan has called the resulting humanitarian crisis an ethnic cleansing — a predicate for genocide, according to the United Nations. (READ MORE: Speak Boldly, Not Softly: Pope Francis and the Absence of Moral Clarity)
And it all happened mind-bogglingly fast.
During just one week last September, Azerbaijani troops completed their invasion of the region, and the Armenians fled, leaving behind their homes, their dogs, their churches, and their graves.
The United States, which had months of forewarning, might have responded — but it barely did. It wasn’t that the U.S. was caught unawares but, rather, that a complex web of lobbyists and alliances — including involvement from Israel — made a response much more difficult.
Azerbaijani troops had been blockading Nagorno-Karabakh for months. The region was starved of food, medicine, and electricity and cut off from the rest of Armenia since January 2023, when a group of “climate activists” shut down the single road that connected it with the larger country. In the West, the blockade and the resulting humanitarian crisis were barely reported.
A map of Armenia and Azerbaijan reveals the geographical source of much of the conflict. The borders between the two countries — both of which were part of the USSR — are spotty. Some portions of Armenia sit like islands inside Azerbaijan (and vice versa), and a substantial portion of Azerbaijan is inaccessible to the rest of the country except by traversing its neighbor. Blockading Nagorno-Karabakh was easy; a very minimal number of troops was needed to hold the Lachin corridor, the strip of land that connected it to Armenia after the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Map of Armenia (Volina/Shutterstock)
But geographics don’t tell the whole story. When Azerbaijan invaded the region in September, it promised to guarantee Armenians’ rights — but that didn’t stop the Armenians from leaving their ancestral homeland and fleeing across the Lachin corridor. There is a long history of ethnic and religious conflict between the two people. Armenians are predominantly Christian and Azerbaijanis predominantly Muslim, and there’s no doubt those religious differences play a role.
Violent ethnic and religious conflict has, for decades, transcended the war over borders — a fact that makes the agnostic West, which would like to believe that every modern conflict boils down to simple politics, squirm. Months ago, Christian Solidarity International’s Joel Veldkamp told the Higher Ground podcast that Azerbaijan has “deliberately nurtured a national culture of anti-Armenian hatred,” noting that he met Armenian migrants who had been attacked by ax-wielding Azerbaijani nationals standing outside their homes in France. (RELATED: The World’s Oldest Christian Community Could Be the Victim of Genocide)
For years, the USSR kept peace between the two nations, and, when the Soviet Union fell, Russia continued to exercise influence in the South Caucus mountains. In 2020, while the world was locked down, Azerbaijan took the opportunity to wage war on Armenia’s eastern border. The ceasefire agreement, reached after just months of conflict and mediated by Russia, created an awkward map that situates Nagorno-Karabakh as an island inside of Azerbaijan. Now, however, Russia is distracted with its own conflict in Ukraine.
That would seem to be a cue for the United States, which would like influence in the region, to step in. Not only is there a humanitarian crisis to resolve, but most American Christians would have no problem going to bat for their Armenian brethren.
But short of a phone call from the State Department assuring the Azeri president that it supports peace talks, the United States really hasn’t acted.
The American media can’t be distracted from its coverage of other global events. In November, there was a brief moment of posturing in Congress, but then congressmen fell silent. Disturbingly, the reason may simply come down to money and odd international alliances.
The Lobbying Battle Between Azerbaijan and Armenians
For years, Azerbaijan has paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to inform congressmen about the issues in the South Caucus mountains. According to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Azerbaijan has spent over $7 million since 2015 on lobbying activities. Although that’s not a massive sum (especially when compared to the efforts of nations like the United Arab Emirates), but the Quincy Institute points out that the amount is large enough to provide “critical context for understanding Washington’s muted reaction to Azerbaijan’s recent aggression, seemingly at odds with the strong moral position U.S. officials have taken over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Memos sent to congressmen by D.C. lobby firm BGR Government Affairs have consistently painted Armenia — especially government officials in the Nagorno-Karabakh region — as Russian allies.
Azerbaijan has good reason to lobby. Ever since 2002, the country has been a recipient of aid intended to help with counterterrorism operations in the region. The aid was dependent on Azerbaijan keeping peace with Armenia, but it didn’t stop coming after Azerbaijan provoked the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. In fact, only recently did Congress consider cutting the aid. (RELATED: The Armenian Test: Did We Learn Anything from Rwanda?)
Armenia, on the other hand, only started lobbying in D.C. last year, spending about $5,000 monthly on its efforts. (Those efforts seem to have been somewhat successful; last November, a bill was introduced entitled “Preventing Ethnic Cleansing and Atrocities in Nagorno-Karabakh Act of 2023.”) Before that, the country had depended on the more than 1 million Armenian immigrants in the U.S. to shape public policy.
But money isn’t the only reason why D.C. politicians are loath to touch the situation. There is a long-standing alliance between Azerbaijan and Israel. Currently, Azerbaijan supplies approximately 40 percent of Israel’s oil and recently was granted permission by Israel to “explore” an area in a giant oil field in the Mediterranean known as the Leviathan field. That deal will help protect Israel from the economic results of its war with Hamas.
In return, Israel has historically supplied Azerbaijan with munitions — up to 70 percent of Azerbaijan’s arsenal between 2016 and 2020 was reportedly supplied by Israel. According to one March 2023 investigative report, in the days leading up to the conflict in 2020, Azerbaijani flights between Baku and Ovda Airbase — the only base out of which Israel can fly explosives — spiked. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) researcher Pieter Wezeman told CNN that while we have plenty of information on munitions supplied by Israel to Azerbaijan leading up to 2020, after that, reporting stops abruptly. “[T]hat doesn’t really make sense because in 2020 Azerbaijan used a significant amount of its equipment,” Wezeman explained. “Mostly likely they have continued their relationship with Israel, but that’s about as far as we know.”
As the Quincy Institute observed, the bond between the two countries is one “built heavily on two pillars: weapons and oil” — but it certainly is not limited to them. Azerbaijan’s embassy signed an agreement in 2020 with Stellar Jay Communications, founded by Jacob Kamaras, promising a $3,300 fee per “project.” Kamaras later published an article entitled “Azerbaijan’s story mirrors that of Israel,” which the Quincy Institute observed could be just one of those projects.
More recently, in February 2023, Azerbaijan signed another contract with the Friedlander Group, which typically does lobbying and PR for Jewish organizations. Its founder, Ezra Friedlander, has since met with politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Of course, these are just the publicly known examples of Azerbaijan’s lobbying. The country has a history of laundering interests in the U.S. and Europe.
At the moment, the situation seems mostly stable, if tense. Azerbaijan certainly has the upper hand. During the ongoing peace talks, Armenia has been forced to cede control of four border villages, and it’s unlikely that Azerbaijan’s demands will end there. Baku has indicated that it would like control of a railroad through Armenia connecting Azerbaijani territory (a concept known as the Zangezur corridor). It’s not implausible that it would employ military force to obtain it.
At this point, the United States should be aware that the situation could escalate and acknowledge the very real danger that atrocities like another ethnic cleansing — or even genocidal behavior on the part of the Azerbaijani — could occur. The question, at this point, is whether the United States, Russia, and the international powers that be will be wise enough to stand back when needed and intervene when necessary.
