Will Armenia disappear?

In a recent book, Will Armenia disappear?, French journalist Frédéric Pons highlights the religious roots of the conflict between the Caucasus country and its neighbor Azerbaijan.

«I said we'd drive [Armenians] off our land like dogs, and we've done it.» With these words, uttered following Azerbaijan's victory in Nagorno-Karabakh - an Armenian enclave of Christian identity located in Azerbaijan - in 2020, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev relegated Armenians to the rank of animals. This illustrates the brutality of a conflict whose common thread is intimately linked to religion.

In Will Armenia disappear?, published in 2023, French reporter Frédéric Pons provides a well-documented illustration of the threat of an Azeri invasion of Armenia. He highlights the ethno-religious dimension of the conflict, often ignored by Western public opinion, which is nonetheless alerted to Azerbaijan's expansionist policies. On the borders of Europe and the Middle East, an outpost of Christianity, Armenia is for Pons a «mirror of the essential» held up to Europeans.

The reasons for Franco-Armenian friendship

By virtue of its history, France - often referred to as the «eldest daughter of the Church» - naturally feels a close affinity with Armenia, the first Christian nation. Having adopted Christianity in the year 301, the country of the Lesser Caucasus has preserved its religious identity against all odds: «The inhabitants of the small Republic of Armenia suffer and resist,» writes Pons, "because they know that, before them, previous generations also experienced terrible suffering and immense despair. Successive invasions have turned them into a people of exile. The Armenian diaspora worldwide is estimated at twelve million people, four times the population present on Armenian territory. The 600,000 or so native Armenians in France - 400,000 of whom were born in France - play a major role in the closeness between the two countries.

«Armenia is placed on an advanced line of defense for European values, as was the case for Lebanon in the 1970s-1980s, when Lebanese Christianity, in all its components, almost disappeared,» Pons points out. Hence his expression «the mirror of the essential» held out to Europe, to designate a country that is now an outpost of European civilization and consciousness. In the absence of support from the French state at present, Armenia's defenders are alerting public opinion in their own name. Like Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Les Républicains party, from whom Pons quotes a striking comment: «Armenia is under attack because it is Christian (...). We're trying to starve a people out of their ancestral lands, to destroy their culture, their heritage and their future.»

A crusading air

In the face of Christian Armenia, Azeri expansionism takes on a decidedly religious hue. Following the Azeri victory in 2020, Nagorno-Karabakh has become a place of oppression for its Christian inhabitants. Many churches have been decommissioned - in defiance of their thousand-year-old history - and some transformed into ammunition depots. «Bullying is on the increase [...]. The Azerbaijani military have been ordered to block Armenian pilgrims» access to certain places of worship, including the famous Davidank monastery [...]. [...] The pretext for the ban was the risk of Covid-19 contamination. Then there was the danger of a landslide."

Azerbaijan's campaign is also strikingly obscurantist. The destruction of the cemetery is a despicable war strategy aimed at trampling Armenian identity and erasing its past. A strategy already used in 2006 with the destruction of the Djulfa cemetery. At the time, only the Times was moved that ’a medieval cemetery considered one of the wonders of the Caucasus has been wiped off the face of the Earth in an act of cultural vandalism likened to the Taliban, who blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001.«

Interests supersede the sacred

«Complacency», «abandonment», «denial»: Frédéric Pons doesn't mince his words when it comes to the West, and in particular the European Union (EU), all too happy to be able to import Azeri gas, a substitute for Russian gas since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. On the subject of the European Peace Facility (EPF), EU financial aid granted to several countries including Ukraine, «Brussels rejected Armenia's request, citing the sensitivity of the conflict with Azerbaijan and the neutrality of the EU. However, this neutrality does not apply to Ukraine», as Pons explains.

Unfortunately, he suggests, we may have to wait for a large-scale invasion of Armenian territory before the EU finally plays its part. An invasion that is taking shape a little more each day, according to the great reporter: «A pebble in the Turkish slipper», Christian Armenia caught in the Turkish-Azerian Islamic pincers is promised to burn.

No one is unaware of the sacred dimension of Armenian resistance in the face of its enemies, but some prefer to ignore it for commercial gain. Frédéric Pons regrets that the West «looks the other way», but assures us that this is not inevitable. Armenia's few but vocal supporters fight for its defense on a daily basis. Such as François-Xavier Bellamy, Member of the European Parliament, who, in April 2021, reminded the EU of its duty: «If the EU really cares about the principles it claims to uphold, and understands what is at stake here for its own future, it has no right to sink into denial.»

Write to the author: matthieu.levivier@leregardlibre.com

You have just read an article from our SACRED folder, published in our print edition (Le Regard Libre N°106).

Frédéric Pons
Will Armenia disappear?
Artège
November 2023
227 pages

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