STEPANAKERT. – President Arayik Harutyunyan on Saturday signed a decree dismissing Mikayel Arzumanyan from the post of Defense Minister and Commander of the Defense Army of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)—and in pursuance of his respective formal request, the presidential staff reported.

By Heather McRea,

Communities across Orange County are planning ceremonies and tributes to remember those who died and those who rushed into danger’s way during the Sept. 11 attacks. Here are just a few of the 20th anniversary events planned locally on Saturday:

Anaheim: The Rotary Club will debut its new Field of Honor on Sept. 11 to honor heroes whether a first responder, veteran or military. The club will display flags at Eucalyptus Park, 100 N. Quintana Drive, with an opening ceremony at 10 a.m.  The flags will be displayed for three days.

Garden Grove: The Christ Cathedral will remember those who died or were injured in the attacks by ringing its carillon bells. The bells inside the cathedral’s Crean Tower will ring four times to mark the events of that historic day: at 8:46 a.m. (World Trade Center North Tower), 9:30 a.m. (World Trade Center South Tower), 9:37 a.m. (Pentagon) and 10:03 a.m. (Somerset County). All of those are local times to here.

Huntington Beach: A ceremony hosted by American Legion Post 133 will be held at 6 p.m. at the Pier Plaza and will honor Huntington Beach police, fire and marine safety officers.

Mission Viejo: The city will host a remembrance ceremony at 8:30 a.m. to honor those who lost their lives and the heroes who responded. It will be held in The Kershaw Garden at 200 Civic Center. A moment of silence will correspond with the time the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Rancho Santa Margarita: The city along with local scout troops will be hosting a Patriot Day Ceremony at 8:30 a.m. at the Civic Center, 22232 El Paseo. Guests are encouraged to bring a chair.

Yorba Linda: The Richard Nixon Foundation will host a commemoration ceremony at 11 a.m. that will include the display of 23 tons of wreckage from the World Trade Center as its centerpiece. The display will arrive at the Nixon Library, 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd, via motorcade with escorts from local first responders. The ceremonial firefighter’s “Final Alarm” will be performed and there will be speakers and music. The steel will be on display in the Nixon Library’s parking lot and remain open 24 hours a day until Sept.18. Registration is strongly recommended at nixonfoundation.org.

Yorba Linda: Messiah Lutheran Church, 4861 Liverpool St., will have a free community concert at 5:30 p.m. to honor the 20th anniversary on its South Lawn, bring a lawn chair and there will be food trucks for picking up diner.

A shooting took place on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border. One person is wounded, the Azerbaijani media reported referring to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Border Service.

The Azerbiajani border guards detachment in the area of ​​the border post near the village of Boyuk Bahmanli on the night of September 8 noticed how three unknown persons violated the state border from Iran in the direction of Azerbaijan.

The perpetrators ignored the border guards’ warning to stop and the warning shot into the air. In order to prevent the attempted escape of the violators of the border, the border guard used weapons. One of the border trespassers was wounded, two others managed to escape.

An Azerbaijani police checkpoint has been installed on interstate road from Goris to Kapan in southern Syunik province of Armenia, reporter Anush Mirzoyan wrote on her Facebook page, sharing photos from the scene. 

“It seems we will soon be asked to get permission from the Azerbaijani side to reach Kapan from Goris” Mirzoyan wrote. 

After the government’s decision to mark the Independence Day anniversary of Armenia at Republic Square in the capital Yerevan with a “large-scale and colorful” celebration, the relatives of the servicemen who have fallen in the 44-day Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war last fall went on Facebook, condemned the holding of this celebration, and demanded that it be cancelled.

These families agree that life goes on, but we must respect the people who lost their relatives in the aforesaid war, and therefore refrain from holding such state-level events for at least a year.

But despite all this uproar and the aforesaid demand by the families of these fallen soldiers, there is still no signal coming from the government toward changing its decision in this regard.

The official visit of Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan to Georgia is over, the press service of the Government of Armenia reports.

Pashinyan returned to Yerevan, and again, he was greeted by members of the Security Council at Zvartnots International Airport. Although this isn’t mention in the government’s official press release, the photos posted on the government’s website serve as evidence of this.

“During the visit, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had meetings with Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili and President Salome Zourabichvili, paid tribute at the Heroes Square in Tbilisi and attended the official lunch served on behalf of the Prime Minister of Georgia and in honor of the Prime Minister of Armenia.

This evening, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan returned to Yerevan,” the press release states.

One official estimates the territory lost over 80 percent of its access to water during the war last year. 

Gevorg Mnatsakanyan,

Forty percent of Stepanakert has been without running water for the past month. It is a new burden for a city that has struggled to revive normalcy since the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan last autumn.

Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto capital are condemned to thirst by a confluence of factors: Internally displaced people have packed into the city, increasing the population by some 30 percent; access to most of the region’s water supply was lost in the fighting; and it has been a hot, dry summer.

“We haven’t seen rain in over 50 days and temperatures have peaked at a steady 30 degrees Celsius. Add to that the 70 to 80 thousand cubic meters more consumed monthly by the 15,000 new residents of the capital fleeing war and you get what we’re seeing,” Gagik Poghosyan, who heads Jrmugh-Koyughi, the public company responsible for local water distribution, told Eurasianet.

During the 44-day war with Azerbaijan, Armenian forces lost control of most of the lands they had held since the early 1990s, including reservoirs and canals that are now on the other side of the front line. In a June report, the International Crisis Group described several villages without water, “not only because pipes were destroyed, but because in order to fix them plumbers would have to enter an area controlled by Azerbaijani soldiers.”

At an emergency meeting on August 16, de facto president Arayik Harutyunyan unveiled plans to connect the capital’s water supply network to the nearby Patara River (Badara in Azerbaijani) through a new pipeline that will end the shortages “within one year.” 

Harutyunyan also promised to build a new dam on the Patara to create a reservoir that will provide Stepanakert and 12 surrounding villages with drinking water and irrigate over 2,500 hectares. Estimated at 15 billion Armenian drams (over $30 million), the project is the most ambitious of its kind to date, Harutyunyan said.

A new government water committee is etching out plans to drill over 40 artesian wells to provide round-the-clock service to communities across the region. Georgi Hayriyan, who was appointed by the president in July to lead the committee, estimates water losses at “over 80 percent.” 

“What makes this so painful is that the resources still available to Artsakh aren’t going to be enough to irrigate whatever agricultural land is left,” Hayriyan told Eurasianet, using the Armenian name for the region.

The government is counting on the state budget and help from outside organizations like the diaspora-backed Hayastan All Armenian Fund to make the three projects happen. Another diaspora group in Washington is lobbying Congress for $25 million in assistance related to water and sanitation.

Russian peacekeepers – who have patrolled Nagorno-Karabakh since the Moscow-brokered ceasefire in November 2020 – are providing water and security while Armenians repair infrastructure near the front lines. In the three weeks to September 3, the Russian contingent dispensed over 200 tons of drinking water to 1,500 Stepanakert residents, promising to continue to “provide local residents with water every day” until a new pipeline can be laid.

British charity HALO Trust and the International Committee of the Red Cross have also extended help. “The current water scarcity only added to the practical difficulties faced by the population following the autumn 2020 escalation,” Bertrand Lamon, head of the ICRC Mission in Nagorno-Karabakh, told Eurasianet. 

Twenty-five large water tanks donated by the Red Cross have been installed in neighborhoods hit hardest by the shortage and are being filled daily by trucks from the city’s water company. 

With this aid, and efforts by local authorities to conserve water, the situation in Stepanakert has slowly improved over the past two weeks. But Poghosyan of the public water distributor remains wary. “If this weather persists, things could get dire,” he said. 

For all their inconvenience, “there’s still a silver lining to these shortages,” said Nune Martirosyan, 47, an economics teacher in Stepanakert, whose own apartment has been without water for a month. “They’ve fostered a greater sense of community among residents as they scramble to help each other pull through.”

Gevorg Mnatsakanyan is a journalist based in Yerevan. 

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Assyrian Church of the East on Wednesday elected their new patriarch in Erbil after Mar Gewargis III Sliwa stepped down due to health reasons. The church on Wednesday elected Mar Awa Royel as the new patriarch in a ceremony held in St. John the Baptist Church in Erbil’s Ainkawa neighborhood.

“We believe that the patriarchal election is a gift from the Lord, so therefore we depend on his blessings and the grace of God and the prayers of the faithful. That is a very sublime and very high responsibility, but the Lord gives it as he wills,” Royel told Rudaw after his election. “The Assyrian Church would like to stress the fact that our roots are here in Iraq, and in this blessed land, in the region as well,” he added. In 1933, the seat of the Assyrian Church was moved from the Middle East to the United States. In 2006, construction of a new patriarch began in Erbil and the election of Royel’s predecessor saw the return of the authority of the church to the place of its roots.

“By bringing back the patriarchal sees, since 2015 with the election of his holiness Mar Gewargis and now with this election, the church wants to stress that our roots are here and we will keep them here by the grace of God, so that our church and our people can remain and continue to keep their heritage, and their language, and their culture and civilization,” he said. Gewargis had expressed his intention to step down in February of 2020 due to health reasons, but election of his successor was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Gewargis welcomed Pope Francis to Erbil in his historic visit to Iraq in March.

Royel previously served as bishop, presiding over the diocese of California. He was the first American-born bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East. He had also served as secretary of the Holy Synod of the church since 2015. There are only a few hundred thousand Christians left in Iraq. Following the US-led invasion of 2003, sectarian warfare prompted followers of Iraq’s multiple Christian denominations to flee, and attacks by the Islamic State group (ISIS) in 2014 hit minority communities especially hard. According to data from Erbil’s Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda, there were more than one million Christians in Iraq before 2003. Fewer than 300,000 remain today, many of them reside in the Kurdistan Region.

He was kind, kind, caring towards the homeland and the environment. This is how the writer, composer Sosi Khanikyan is described by his friends, who yesterday, on September 8, Sosy’s birthday, initiated the presentation of his book of poems and the charity foundation.

Sosi’s life was interrupted in March of this year as a result of an unfortunate accident, leaving her dreams and goals unfinished. To bring them to life, the friends, on the initiative of Sosi’s mother, Esther Khanikyan, set up the Sosi Khanikyan Foundation, which aims not only to popularize Sosi’s great creative legacy, but also to help talented young people pave their way.

The first work of the fund was the publication of Sosi’s book of poems “My Blue, Blue, Dream”, which was presented at the Komitas Museum-Institute. According to Sosi’s relatives, the choice of the place was not accidental. Komitas left a big mark on Sosi’s creative path, which later led him to make a documentary about the great monk. Seda Grigoryan, one of the co-founders of the foundation, speaking about Sosi and her dreams, mentioned. “Sosi was a very special person, and in his small body he summed up boundless love and devotion to the homeland, his loved ones and his work. He did everything he could with great responsibility, taking into account every detail and doing his best. Of course, his loss was a great pain for all of us, but we came here first to congratulate each other that Sosi was in our lives, and so much hope and love he left, that we decided with friends that this love should be directed to a new initiatives and ideas, and that is what the foundation serves.

We hope that the foundation will serve the realization of his dream of a great and powerful homeland based on educated youth. Sosi paved his own way, overcoming great difficulties, and we, summing up his wonderful works, plan to unite the people who know and carry the great love given to Sosi, and all those who do not know him, but share his values ​​and They are ready to pave the way for those who have talent, talent, purpose, and a little support can help them overcome difficulties and achieve great success. Therefore, the foundation has two main directions: to popularize the works left by Sosi and thanks to him to promote the professional growth of young people, mainly in the very fields in which Sosi created. Of course, all this will not be possible by our efforts alone. Everyone has the opportunity to join us. I am confident that with all our potential we will be able to continue what Sosi started. ”

The Arab Weekly

Turkey continued on Tuesday to reach out to regional rivals Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in a renewed bid to mend frayed ties that have stoked regional tensions. This comes amid an ongoing climate of mistrust in view of the absence of any concrete gestures of goodwill by Ankara.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said his country was taking “positive steps” to improve relations as Turkish and Egyptian officials were holding a second round of talks in Ankara.

“Our friends at the ministry are meeting (Egyptian officials),” he said in an interview with broadcaster NTV. “If we decide together after the meetings, we will take the necessary mutual 

steps to appoint an ambassador.”

Egypt and Turkey have not exchanged ambassadors since 2013, when relations worsened following the ousting of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, now the country’s president.

Turkey has been at loggerheads with Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia over a number of issues, most recently the conflict in Libya, where Ankara backed a Muslim Brotherhood administration in Tripoli while its Arab rivals supported the Libyan National Army, led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

“There is no lasting friendship or enmity in international relations,” said Çavuşoğlu.

The minister also held out the possibility of striking a maritime deal with Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean, similar to the one concluded with the Tripoli government in late 2019. That deal led to renewed tensions between Turkey and neighbouring Greece and Cyprus over energy exploration in the region, with Cairo also expressing its concern.

Çavuşoğlu proposed a summit of eastern Mediterranean nations to reconcile disputes.

On relations with the UAE, Turkey’s top diplomat said there were “positive steps in the normalisation process”. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke to Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, by telephone last week.

Çavuşoğlu also reiterated Turkey’s wish to resolve its dispute with the United States over its purchase of a Russian air defence system.

(This article was originally published by the Arab Weekly and is reproduced by permission.)