OPINION:
“One of the oldest Christian communities in the world is being destroyed.”.
It’s hard to imagine this dreadful truth unfolding in the 21st century, yet this is the situation happening right now in Nagorno-Karabakh, the small, landlocked region between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“We are witnessing, in real time, the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh by the dictatorship of Azerbaijan and its partners,” Joel Veldkamp, head of international communications at persecution watchdog Christian Solidarity International, told me this week.
As I detailed earlier this year, Mr. Veldkamp and his organization have been at the forefront of the crisis, warning for months that a potential genocide was brewing and pleading with the West to take decisive action.
Tragically, the U.S. and other nations have, instead, aimlessly watched as Azerbaijan has steadily marched toward total dominance of a region that houses 120,000 ethnic and mostly Christian Armenians — a historic zone with some of the world’s oldest Christian churches and heritage.
In situations like these, there are defining moments along the way that set off alarm bells, but these clarion calls were left mostly unmet by a torpid international community. In December, one of those brazenly disturbing moments was Azerbaijan’s intentional blockage of the Lachin corridor, the only roadway connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.
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This left Armenian residents in the region without food, resources, electricity, basic transport for surgery and other essentials. Residents, in-tune political leaders and human rights activists pleaded with the world to take notice, with relative silence reverberating.
That blockade culminated in a deadly attack last week, a forced decision by Nagorno-Karabakh to essentially dissolve its government, and a panicked quest by thousands of residents to collect everything they can take and flee the region they’ve called home for centuries.
“People are leaving not because they want to, but because Azerbaijan is refusing to let them return to their homes or to move past the siege lines, and refusing to guarantee their security,” Mr. Veldkamp explained. “These are de facto deportations.”
The horror of the situation for the Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh is almost unimaginable. A woman named Nonna Poghosyan told CNN she and her family spent Monday assessing their home to see what could fit into suitcases as they prepared to flee.
“They cry for every toy,” she said of her 9-year-old twins, who must decide what to leave behind when they leave the home and life they’ve known.
A 70-year-old teacher named Vera Petrosyan told Reuters Tuesday she has seen shootings, hunger and horror amid the chaos.
“I left everything behind. I don’t know what is in store for me. I have nothing. I don’t want anything,” Ms. Petrosyan said. “I would not want anybody to see what I have seen.”
More than 200 people died in last week’s Azerbaijani offensive, leaving families with another horrific conundrum: how to honor the dead.
“Families who lost loved ones in Azerbaijan’s attack are facing horrendous choices – should they bury them in their homeland, where they will no longer be able to visit their graves after they are deported in the coming days, and where their graves might be desecrated by Azerbaijani forces, or should they try to have them brought to Armenia by refrigerated car for burial, at great expense?” Mr. Veldkamp asked. “The thousands of years’ worth of Armenian graves and churches in Nagorno-Karabakh, of course, cannot be safeguarded at all.”
His conclusion that “this is a dark day” cannot be emphasized enough. And yet where is the West? Why has the Biden administration been so painfully silent on the matter? It’s true officials are currently visiting Armenia, but critics note it’s essentially too little, too late.
Since December, the Lachin corridor has been blockaded, with the situation intensifying every day since its inception. Plus, previous battles in 2020 helped set the stage for the current crisis; those Azerbaijani assaults, too, yielded very little international reaction.
The U.S. has no doubt been slow to take action, failing, until now, to consider pausing military aid to Azerbaijan, among other viable actions. Some critics want the Biden administration to call out the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh for what it is: a genocide.
According to the United Nations, the word is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The specific deeds include: causing mental harm or “serious bodily” injury, taking actions against a group to create “physical destruction in whole or in part,” making moves to stop or prevent births within the group, or moving children of the group to another group.
We can debate the definition of “genocide” all day long, but one uncomfortable truth remains: If the U.S. and other Western nations exhibited strong leadership, the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh wouldn’t have reached this fever pitch.
Bad actors take terrible action when they know the forces of good are distracted, uninterested or unwilling to stop them. And that’s the tragedy we face right now, with Mr. Veldkamp warning the threat to Armenia itself could be nowhere near over.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Azerbaijan on Sept. 25 and openly praised the incursion. Let’s remember it was the Ottoman Empire — the previous iteration of modern-day Turkey — that was responsible for the Armenian Genocide, a campaign of mass deportation and murder that killed up to 1 million Armenians. Turkey, a nation remiss to admit its past horrors, is now openly praising another horror directed at the Armenians.
The U.S. and other Western nations should have taken up the mantle of leadership months ago but failed to do so. Had this crisis been an opportunity to warn about climate change, host a lecture on some outlandish social issue very few people care about, or implement another vapid pet project, the world would certainly know every detail of what was unfolding.
Sadly, ignorance and confusion abound, and evil, as always, never wastes an opportunity.
• Billy Hallowell is a digital TV host and interviewer for Faithwire and CBN News and the co-host of CBN’s “Quick Start Podcast.” Mr. Hallowell is the author of four books.
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