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Senator Bob Menendez slams Turkey’s military aggression against Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) and Syria and bellicose actions against Greece and Cyprus.
“Long considered a NATO ally, Turkey seems to want to break with us rather than be our partner,” said Sen. Menendez, who called on the Biden Administration to reorient the US in the Eastern Mediterranean towards democracies.
President Joe Biden announced yesterday that he would withdraw all remaining U.S. forces from Afghanistan to end the “forever war.”
Bizarrely, he made the final withdrawal date to be the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington.
Perhaps some among his top aides thought this cute or clever but it is not: it compounds a disaster by allowing Al Qaeda and their Taliban allies to transform the anniversary and augment its meaning as symbolic of victory against the United States.
Within Washington, Americans will debate whether Biden’s move is wise. Biden’s team will try to spin the withdrawal as something other than a defeat.
DC spin, however, seldom sticks outside an administration’s most partisan supporters. Others will question the cost on Afghans and especially Afghan women.
While elected Afghan officials put a good face on the move and thank America for its past assistance, behind-the-scenes, they question why if the United State was intent on withdrawal, they would—with a lopsided and unilateral peace process—kneecap the Afghan government on the way out.
Pakistanis celebrate.
Anti-Americanism within Pakistan is rife. Moderate Pakistanis are analyzing the reasons for the U.S. failure, whereas Pakistani security officials express “glee” at their “victory.” A decade ago, while researching the Pakistan chapter of my history of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes and terrorist groups, a former Pakistani intelligence chief told me calmly over tea at the Islamabad Club how the greatest mistake Pakistan had made in the wake of 9/11 was even pretending to side with the United States.
Pakistan’s merriment at masterminding America’s defeat will be short-lived, however. While Pakistan’s two-faced willingness to offer the Taliban and Al Qaeda safe-haven and facilitate their infiltration into Afghanistan has frustrated U.S. and NATO militaries for the past two decades, historically, the infiltration went the other direction.
Indeed, one reason why Pakistan’s military deep state supports radical Islamist groups is they fear that, in their absence, ethnic nationalists along Pakistan’s borders might lay claim to territories inside Pakistan.
The issue is not theoretical. More than a decade ago, I was having breakfast in a village outside Kabul with an Afghan who today occupies a senior position. We were discussing a recent terrorist attack and the Obama administration’s efforts to deflect responsibility from Pakistan’s intelligence agency (ISI). He argued correctly that diplomacy would never convince Pakistani leaders to stop their terror support; rather, he said, terror would be the only language Pakistanis would understand.
If a bomb went off in Kabul, he said, then a bomb should go off in Islamabad. If there was an explosion in Qandahar, then there should be an explosion in Lahore. The biggest impediment to implementing such a strategy? The fact that NATO troops were in the country.
U.S. Peace Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad may trust the Taliban and expect Afghan liberals, minorities, and women to follow his lead and sacrifice their freedoms in the spirit of compromise with an uncompromising group, but he is wrong. The Taliban seek to impose their ideology by force and Afghans will resist by force.
Pakistan will soon discover that such resistance may know no borders.
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor.
Two Syrian men accused of being among mercenaries that Turkey sent to fight for Azerbaijan against Armenia during last autumn’s Nagorno-Karabakh war, may stand trial on terrorism charges.
The men will be tried should the Armenian prosecutor’s office approve police findings that they were recruited to ‘terrorise civilians’ in the region, Open Caucasus Media reported on Tuesday.
Turkey deployed thousands of Syrian mercenaries to fight alongside the Azeri armed forces in the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, according to analysts, NGOs and various news reports.
The total number of Syrian fighters involved in battles in Nagorno-Karabakh reached as many as 2,580, of whom some returned to Syria after they forwent salary payments, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported in December.
In early March, Armenia called for an immediate and complete withdrawal of all foreign mercenaries deployed by Turkey and Azerbaijan in the region.
The two men, captured in November, were identified as Muhrab Muhammad Al-Shkheir, 45, and Yousef Alabed Alhajj, 28, the news website reported, citing an Armenian Investigative committee.
On Nov. 11, United Nations human rights experts called for the withdrawn of all mercenaries in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone.
Azerbaijan and Armenia, two former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus, signed a Russian-brokered truce on Nov. 10, to halt clashes after six weeks of fighting. More than 5,600 people were reported killed in the battles.
Turkey has supported Azerbaijan politically and militarily from the start of the conflict. It has also supplied Azerbaijan with unmanned drones that proved a key differential between the warring sides.
Georgia’s ultra-conservatives gained a boost to their outreach in January, after Alt Info began broadcasting on national TV. Despite being banned on Facebook, the Communications Commission granted a licence to the group to broadcast their Trump worship, conspiracy theories, and homophobic and xenophobic hate to homes nationwide.
‘Stay tuned. Don’t switch to the liberast channels’ — reads a message displayed between programming on Alt Info, a recently launched TV channel available to over 340,000 subscribers of TV provider Magticom.
‘Liberast’ is a mixture of the words ‘paederast’ — a homophobic slur used to describe gay men — and ‘liberal’. This neologism is frequently used by the far-right in Georgia, including Alt Info, against those they disagree with.
Alt Info, which up until now has relied on its social media presence, regularly reports on events in Europe and the US in Georgian with Breitbart-style alarmist framing and anti-liberal hyperbole. These include stories of Christians being ‘oppressed’ in the western democracies and migrants ‘threatening’ European cultural and national identity.
Fierce critics of gender equality, liberal drug policy, and Georgia’s ‘relaxed’ immigration policy, Alt Info have recently been fascinated by former US President Donald Trump.
Following the storming of the US Capitol building in January, debunked conspiracy theories about anti-Trump groups being behind the riot quickly spilt over to the Georgian-language internet, with groups like Alt Info being at the fore.
‘The footage has mushroomed proving the participation of Antifa and BLM [Black Lives Matter] members among the protesters as provocateurs’, Levan Vasadze, an ultra-conservative campaigner and businessman told Alt Info in an interview on 9 January.
He alleged that the storming was orchestrated by Trump’s ‘globalist’ enemies.
Their pro-Trump video discussions and other commentaries on domestic Georgian issues abruptly ended last Autumn when, a week before the 31 October parliamentary elections in Georgia, Facebook removed 130 online accounts that they said were non-transparently linked to Alt Info, as well as the Alt Info page itself.
That’s when Alt Info, claiming ‘liberal censorship’, announced it would ‘move on to the next stage of the information war’ — focusing on TV.
The Georgian Communications Commission granted Alt Info authorisation late last November, around a month after being banned from Facebook.
‘Such an abuse of freedom of expression can be explained by the Georgian government failing to recognise violent extremism as a danger, and consequently being bereft of policies directed at preventing and combating it’, Aia Beraia, an activist and researcher at Tbilisi Pride told OC Media.
Tbilisi Pride was behind the first queer pride march planned in the Summer of 2019, an event that was cancelled after Levan Vasadze called for street patrols to be formed to hunt down and tie up activists with belts. Vasadze is a frequent guest and supporter of Alt Info.
On Alt Info at the time, host Shota Martinenko hailed Vasadze’s initiative to ‘keep order… even with force’, something he said the Georgian state was failing to do.
According to Nattan Guliashvili from the Women’s Initiatives Supporting Group (WISG), Alt Info’s messages are ‘based on fascism’ but they avoid open calls for violence on TV. Guliashvili told OC Media that they were instead ‘beating around the bush’ by arguing for the supremacy of heterosexual Christian men over others and ‘similar points’.
‘There’s a need for a wider discussion in order to come up with solutions together’, Guliashvili said.
Guliashvili said that WISG was boycotting any private TV companies who were ‘in the service of big business’, accusing many of instrumentalising solidarity towards oppressed groups, including queer people, for their own gains.
According to Ucha Nanuashvili, former public Defender of Georgia and director of Tbilisi-based rights group the Democracy Research Institute, the Communications Commission checked the content ‘minimally’ before authorising and licensing Alt Info. Even these ‘minimal standards’, were already being violated, he said, and the Commission ‘should be expected to intervene’.
‘Stipulations of Article 56 of the Georgian Law on Broadcasting are clearly being violated’, Nanuashvili told OC Media.
Article 56.1 of the Broadcasting Law prohibits the airing of programmes ‘intended to abuse or discriminate against any person or group on the basis of disability, ethnic origin, religion, opinion, gender, sexual orientation or on the basis of any other feature or status’.
On 19 January, within days after Alt Info launched their own TV broadcasting, the leader of another Georgian far-right group, Georgian March, announced that they too would reach out to the public through their own new TV channel.
The Georgian Communications Commission did not respond to a request for comment.
Although conservative groups in Georgia are frequently dismissed as being ‘pro-Russian agents’, many, including Alt Info, have cast their ideological net far wider than Russia alone.
After Trump was elected in 2016, many ultra-conservative groups in Georgia appeared inspired by the new US president. Others have rather appeared to have instrumentalised his invocation, including those using his example to fight a stigma that they were pro-Russian.
WISG’s Nattan Guliashvili said that while Alt Info seemed to have Russian connections and ‘thinly veiled’ pro-Russian messages, analyses of Georgia’s far-right was frequently geopoliticised.
[Read more: Opinion | Labelling Georgia’s far-right ‘pro-Russian’ is reductionist and counterproductive]
‘We also need to talk about international religious organisations with big capital that might be based in the West. Ultra-fascism does not reach [Georgia] only from Russia’.
Sandro Bregadze, the leader of Georgian March, argued that their ideology ‘was twin to Donald Trump’s ideology’ rather than Putin’s.
Not long after Trump’s election victory, Bregadze accused the Georgian media, who he said was funded by American billionaire George Soros, of ‘discrediting the US President’ in their coverage. He even floated organising a pro-Trump demonstration in Tbilisi over the issue.
Source: https://oc-media.org/features/georgias-trump-loving-alt-right-begin-broadcasting-on-tv/
Canada-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group addressed the Foreign Minister of Canada, Marc Garneau calling for Canada’s support for return of Armenian prisoners and captives held in Azerbaijan. As the Armenian Embassy to Canada reported, the statement addressed to the Prime Minister calls specifically for full re-engagement of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries and resumption of negotiations in that framework, return of all Armenian prisoners of war by Azerbaijan and protection and safeguarding of all Armenian cultural heritage sites under Azerbaijani control.
As the authors of the letter said, the only way to find a lasting and fair solution to the conflict is through the principles enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act, and includes the principle of self-determination.
Due to threats and entries from pro-Turkish organizations, the silent demonstration to demand the returnn of Armenian PoWs under the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been canceled. As Polish politician Tomasz Lech Buczek informed that action was supposed to take place on PAril 15 at 1.00 p.m. local time.
“Safety is paramount.This is another act of hatred against the Armenians and the intimidation-based policy of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Free the Armenian prisoners of war!” Buczek wrote on his Facebook page.
To remind, a worldwide silent demonstration is being held on April 15 demanding to help return over 300 Armenian POWs and citizens kept in hostage in Azerbaijan following the Artsakh war in October 2020.
Protests are expected to take place in Toronto, Montreal, Berlin, Rome, LA, New York, Geneva, Houston, Paris. In Yerevan, the action is taking place at the UN Offices
The Union of Journalists of Armenia has issued the following statement:
“Yesterday one of the members of a pro-government group referring to itself as “Guardians of the Revolution” disseminated on his Facebook page the personal social network page of journalist for Antifake.am Mari Amirjanyan and the latter’s photo, ‘spicing it up’ with a satirical and vulgar comment and generating hatred against the journalist’s persona, as well as insulting, threatening and using swear words against her.
Today, another member of this group targeted journalist for Tert.am Ani Gevorgyan by disseminating her and her child’s photos with swear words. Ani Gevorgyan reported this.
According to news circulating in the media, various users directly or indirectly linked to the authorities have made similar threats against the journalist.
Let us remind that this group is the same group that attacked Hayeli Press Club with eggs and remained unpunished.
These people even targeted the Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia, threatening to use violence against him, and again, there was no legal evaluation of this practice.
The Union of Journalists of Armenia strictly condemns such unlawful acts targeted against the professional activities of journalists, especially when the children of journalists are targeted. This contradicts human morality, professional ethics and, at the same time, it is a criminally punishable act, the perpetrators of which must be held liable in order for such incidents to be ruled out in the future.
The Union of Journalists of Armenia demands that the law-enforcement authorities investigate what happened. Any attempt to obstruct the professional activities of a journalist is a criminally punishable act, and there needs to be an appropriate evaluation.
Simultaneously, we demand that government officials suppress people associated with them and not use them when carrying out the disgusting act of settling scores with undesired journalists.”
The remains of 201 military officers are currently being identified, he said
YEREVAN, April 14. /TASS/. Armenia has lost about 4,000 troops during the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Wednesday addressing the Armenian parliament.
“Currently, there are 3,621 casualties whose names we know, and 321 are missing in action. The remains of 201 military officers are currently being identified. Another 100 bodies were identified, however, for one reason or another, their relatives refuse to collect their remains, they do not believe expert conclusions. The total number of casualties is about 4,000 people,” he said, offering to honor their memory with a minute of silence.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, 2020, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them.
On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting from November 10. The Russian leader said the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides would maintain the positions that they had held and Russian peacekeepers would be deployed to the region. Besides, Baku and Yerevan must exchange prisoners and the bodies of those killed. Russian observation posts have been set up along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Lachin Corridor connecting Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
One of the survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide Ovsanna Mirkhanyan has passed away at the age of 106 in Lenughi village of Armenia’s Armavir province, her son Sargis Mirkhanyan told Armenpress.
“She has undergone a complex surgery. Besides, she could not get out of bed because she fell in the yard. We are 5 children. My mother had 2 daughters in Syria, they both died”, Sargis Mirkhanyan said.
Ovsanna Mirkhanyan was the last Armenian Genocide survivor of the province. She was one of the heroes of the Eyewitness project of ARMENPRESS.
YEREVAN. – They say [ex-President] Serzh Sargsyan handed over “Lele Tepe.” I said, “Go, capture [it],” and in this context there were 700 casualties? This is complete nonsense. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday stated this at the National Assembly of Armenia while presenting the report on the implementation and results of the government program for 2020, referring to a question by independent MP Taguhi Tovmasyan about the Armenian side’s shortcomings during the recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war.
Referring to the “Lele Tepe” issue, Pashinyan said: “The author of the proposal for that operation was a general [of the army], the proposal was considered acceptable by a general, the assessment of the possibility of implementing that proposal was carried out by a general, and the decision was made by a general; moreover, by generals who had the opportunity to implement that decision at that time. Yes, I was present at a part of the conversation, I moderated the discussion, and I did not express my opinion at all. I asked the highest-ranking [general]: ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘It’s a good idea.’ He assessed the situation and reported that it should and can be done. “
Pashinyan stressed that all episodes of the recent war should be investigated, starting with his own actions, but it should be an objective investigation.