It is necessary to pay tribute to the RA first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan for his attempt to return the question of vital importance to our country – the settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – attempt to the political agenda. Delivering a speech at the ANC party Assembly, Mr. Ter-Petrosyan acted in a triple role. First, as a high-class scientist, a historian, a linguist as well as a special political experience coordinating political expert as well as a former president and as an actual policy-player. It conveys three contexts to his unequivocal political speech.
It’s hard to raise an objection to Levon Ter-Petrosyan about the most important issue that the alternative of not being ready for concessions in the negotiation process is a disastrous war with all its unpredictable consequences. It is also hard not to agree with the former president about the disastrous consequences that the change of government brought in 1998 carried out by “unknown forces”. Because as they say, in the “dry end” it is obvious that the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh was left out of the negotiation format placing a responsibility on Armenia which initially is not legitimate because currently the negotiations are going on behind the Artsakh people and the authorities while the main demand which the authorities must have raised in Stepanakert is the same as with the Polish the then and similarly legitimate, “Nothing about us without us.” In this regard, the question has come to a dead end at the expense of the interests of Armenian.
At the same time, in a sense, being an actual political player, Ter-Petrosyan’s speech inevitably fits into the context of current political realities and cannot be perceived as abstract but as a component of the panorama of the current political processes. What is going on now? Which efforts of Russia does Levon Ter-Petrosyan talk about? First, it’s worth mentioning that during an almost one-hour speech there was no reference to the in-depth reasons of the four-day war and Russia’s role in unleashing this criminal war. Narrating his approaches, the firs president actually was urging the RA authorities to listen to Russia’s recommendations which as we know are openly and for a long time thrown to the public at the most opportune time for them and at the most inopportune time for us in order to wreck the very plain decisions adopted in the Minsk Group co-chairmanship format and aimed at real peace. Russia, incidentally, does not object these decisions publicly but it is prevented by arming with the “left hand” and perverting Aliyev whom for no reason but Levon Ter-Petrosyan honors him an unearned compliment by calling him a “rational-minded statesman.”
It was this figure who losing the sense of reality attacked Artsakh receiving a deserved counterattack. So, regardless of Serzh Sargsyan’s and his government’s political qualities, it is also hard to see from their perceptions and assessments that the peace settlement process being a “street” with two-way traffic, the Armenian side provides more on its part, unlike the Azerbaijani side. As for the thesis that the key to the settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is in hands of Russia, then it does not withstand any test. The Karabakh conflict is Russia’s most “favorite” conflict in the post-Soviet Union. The key to the command to war rather than to the settlement is undoubtedly in the hands of Russia which he put into action by the hand of “rational” Aliyev in April this year, and the main task of the Armenian side is the international community seizes this ill-fated key from Russia’s hand which partly was successful at the end of the war in April – in the Vienna talks – where Russia is compelled to play by American rules and Aliyev was shown his place.
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But unfortunately, it ended when the Armenian side agreed to go to St. Petersburg and allowed Russians to smear the Vienna arrangements. Does Russia really seek peace now and its “serious efforts” are aimed at final, at least, phased normalization, and Serzh Sargsyan or his headed Republican Party is the main obstacle to those “serious efforts”? The reality is quite different. Russia’s presence in the region is contradicted for peace. Moscow only wants to change the “geometry” of the conflict and at the expense of the interests of Armenia, unilateral concessions from the Armenian side, to increase its presence in the region, also tapping out the agreement of both sides on the deployment of its “peacekeeping” troops. Hypothetically, if tomorrow morning the parties reach a final agreement and settle the issue, then a completely different reality is formed in the region where Moscow in the current form, size, quality, and ambitions has just nothing to do, and the issue will be placed before Moscow an hour later after this hypothetical agreement just like in Egypt after the Camp David.
Incidentally, the first President’s attention missed one very important aspect of the Camp David historical agreement and reconciliation. The Stalin Soviet Union’s role in the creation of the state of Israel was decisive. Tens of thousands of repatriated Jews learning the lessons of the Holocaust day and night were working in the desert in newly established qibbūs with collective economy in militarized settlements while the Israel founding fathers being the carriers of ideology of repatriation of Jews of Zionism and rebirth of a state around Mount Zion in Jerusalem were also pronounced “left-wing” and treated the USSR with great reverence, however, it did not hinder them to realize how dangerous and harmful it is to become the Kremlin’s blunt instrument in the region. And it was not of the great love to Jews that anti-Semite Stalin who was the first in 1947-49 independence war when all neighbors of Israel attacked him and a new holocaust was exposed to Jews, this time, in the historic homeland, he began supplying arms through Czechoslovakia which by and large determined the outcome of the war.
And in 1956, it was otherwise. Unfortunately, the Arab states decided to become Moscow’s blunt instrument in the Middle East and the Russians began to “rescue” them. And it continued until Camp David. And Moscow which was turned into a petrol-state in the 70s needed only one thing: the Middle East should always be on fire as it ensures a high oil price, therefore, problems for the West as well as was opening wide opportunities of arms business which helped to incite new conflicts. In other words, Russia formed what in Islam is called Dar al-Harb – “house of war and distrust” where all “haram” operates.
And the turn of the Egyptian leadership came to realize what it means to be Russia’s “friend”, what the then ally and Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad realized who without resolving the problem inherited it to his son who was a good ophthalmologist but an untalented in politics, who now is trying to continue to be the king of the ruins “under the high patronage” of Russians, by seizing the life of more than half a million Syrians. In other words, one of the main outcomes of Camp David apart from peace was that Moscow’s leg was cut off from this region exposed to sufferings. After the collapse of the USSR, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat also understood it who in 1993, began the process of reconciliation. It is beyond doubts that the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan are eventually capable of reconciliation and future peaceful and good-neighborly relations, and the dignified peace can only be achieved by the means of concessions just as with the peoples of Egypt and Israel.
However, like with Camp David, it can only be without Russia, despite Russia and at the account of Russia but not by its initiative, its “active efforts” or especially, by its leadership. And of course, we are “grateful” our “strategic ally” for all this because having such an ally we do not need enemies anymore. Certainly, Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s position on supporting the government in the issues of internal stability and confronting the external intimidations is welcoming. But given the realities in Armenia associate with the Armenian-Russian, to say the least, asymmetrical relations, the political forces are obliged to develop a strategy to eliminate this asymmetry and begin a corresponding process because today, this asymmetry has reached an unacceptable degree of danger, and Armenia’s quarterly century statehood is forayed by Moscow and its “Russian-Armenian” collaborationists, and the impression is that the “placeholders” appointed by Russia seem not to spare any effort and zeal to return the country to its “owner”, running in front of the Russian locomotive by the very first command.
Yes, the government must be urged and supported especially in this matter as whoever holds the key to the solution of vital issues, first of all, should know how to handle it. Therefore, Armenia has no right to allow to dissolve as a sovereign state into today’s this new “Dar-al-Harb” and eventually disappear from the map.
Ruben MEHRABYAN
In the photo: (BBC) Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin in 1978
