Armenian citizen Karen Ghazaryan who accidentally crossed the border with Azerbaijan on July 15, 2018 was sentenced to 20 years of prison charged with attempting to carry out terrorist attacks in Azerbaijan. The relevant decision was ruled by Ganja Serious Crimes Court on Wednesday.

According to the court ruling, Ghazaryan is charged with several articles of the Criminal Code, as he was allegedly preparing to commit a terrorist attack using weapons and explosives.

34-year-old Ghazaryan, whom the Azerbaijani authorities are trying to present as a ‘saboteur’, has a history of mental illness, which has prevented him from being conscripted for military service.

The official Yerevan earlier slammed Baku’s attempts to present a person with serious health problems as a criminal as a ‘gross violation of the international humanitarian law’, stressing all measures are being taken to return the captive to Armenia.

Pakistan shot down two Indian Air Force aircraft after they crossed into its airspace, the army said. The incident comes amid an ongoing border crisis between the two nuclear powers.

The Pakistani Air Force downed “two Indian aircrafts inside Pakistani airspace” after they crossed the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, the army’s spokesperson, Major General Asif Ghafoor, tweeted. It was later revealed that one of the machines was a MiG 21 fighter jet.

According to the spokesperson, one aircraft fell inside the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir, while the other went down inside the territory controlled by India. Ghafoor stated in a press briefing that two pilots were “recovered and provided all necessary medical treatment.” The government later clarified that only one Indian pilot was captured.

A video released by Radio Pakistan shows the man blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.

islamabad also claimed it conducted airstrikes into Indian-held Kashmir.

At the same time, media had reported on an Indian Mi-17 military helicopter crashing inside the Indian-controlled area of Kashmir. It is not clear if it was one of the aircraft downed by Pakistan.

There were also reports of India shooting down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet. However, Islamabad dismissed them as false.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Pakistani Army stated that the military was acting “purely in self-defense.”

“War is no solution. The people of both nations deserve to live in peace,” Asif Ghafoor said.

Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, while on a trip to China, stated New Delhi wishes to avoid any “further escalation of the situation” and will “continue to act with responsibility and restraint.”

Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated dramatically on Wednesday with reports of cross-border shelling along the Line of Control in Kashmir. Pakistani officials said that at least four civilians were killed from mortar fire. The Indian Army said that five of its soldiers were wounded during the shelling from Pakistan.

On Tuesday, New Delhi sent a dozen jets to bomb what it said were terrorist camps on Pakistani soil. It was the first time since 1971, when the Indian Air Force crossed the LoC. Islamabad said that the raid failed to produce any damage on the ground and vowed to respond to any “misadventures” along the border with India.

Video posted by SAMAA TV purportedly captures moment one of two Indian MiG-21 planes shot down by Pakistan over Kashmir on Wednesday burst into a fireball, and shows onlookers gathered around the burning wreckage.

A plane can be seen tracing across the sky in the first of the videos, as a bang sounds, and next the jet descends in a sharp downward trajectory, engulfed by fire. The second video shows a rural scene, with villagers surrounding a devastated carcasss.

The authenticity of either video uploaded by the Pakistani news channel has not been independently confirmed.

The US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un have begun their high-second summit in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi with dinner, BBC reported. 

According to Donald Trump, this latest meeting would be “very successful”. Asked whether a formal end to the Korean War might be declared, he said: “We’ll see.

Kim, in his turn, said he was confident there would be an “excellent outcome that everyone welcomes”.

“I’ll do my best to make it happen,” he told reporters.

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un began on Wednesday a two-day meeting in the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. This is the second US-North Korean summit, designed to give new impetus to the results of their first meeting in Singapore last June.

On the first day of the summit, Trump and Kim Jong-un had a brief one-on-one meeting and lunch.

By Samuel Ramani

On Jan. 30, the United Arab Emirates’ minister of state for foreign affairs condemned Turkey’s plan to establish a buffer zone in northeastern Syria and said Ankara’s efforts to geographically isolate the Syrian Kurds worried both the UAE and the United States. Anwar Gargash justified his criticisms of Turkish conduct in Syria by challenging Ankara’s conflation of Kurdish nationalism with terrorism and emphasizing the constructive role that Kurdish militias played in defeating the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. 

Gargash’s expressions of solidarity with Kurdish nationalist forces in Syria reflect the UAE’s desire to contain Turkish influence in Syria and insert itself as a major stakeholder in the resolution of the Syrian conflict. The UAE’s critical attitude towards Turkish belligerence in northeastern Syria is the product of a broader rivalry between Abu Dhabi and Ankara, which was triggered by Turkey’s alignment with Qatar, Ankara’s close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and competing interests in the Horn of Africa. Tensions over these issues steadily intensified after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the UAE of supporting the 2016 coup against his government, but Syria was initially a secondary flashpoint for confrontation between Turkey and the UAE.

The extension of the UAE-Turkey geopolitical rivalry to Syria became apparent in January 2018, when Abu Dhabi stridently criticized Turkey’s decision to launch Operation Olive Branch and militarily intervene in the Kurdish majority region of Afrin. On Jan. 22, Gargash called for increased coordination between Arab countries on collective security matters. Throughout the offensive, UAE-based media outlets described the People’s Protection Units in Afrin as a resistance movement against Turkish occupation and stridently criticized the “looting” of Afrin by Turkish forces in March 2018.

Although the intensity of the conflict in northern Syria cooled after Turkey vanquished a pro-Syrian government insurgency in Afrin on March 21, the UAE continued to support Kurdish factions that resisted Turkey’s presence in northeastern Syria. In coordination with Saudi Arabia, UAE military advisers allegedly held a series of meetings with Kurdish Democratic Party and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) officials at the US base in northeastern Syria and helped prepare Kurdish militias against an eventual Turkish military intervention.

The United Arab Emirates’ security collaboration with Kurdish militias has been matched by Abu Dhabi’s provision of economic assistance to northeastern Syria. By August 2018, the UAE had invested $50 million in areas of northeastern Syria liberated from IS control, and these capital injections occurred in tandem with Saudi Arabia’s $100 million investment in areas of Syria held by the Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces (SDF). These actions caused Yeni Safak,a prominent pro-government Turkish newspaper, to predict an imminent Arab-Turkish conflict in Syria, and to accuse the UAE of sponsoring terrorism in northeastern Syria.

Yeni Safak’s predictions overstate the UAE’s commitment to the Kurdish cause, however, as the UAE’s armed forces remain overwhelmingly focused on strengthening Abu Dhabi’s sphere of influence in southern Yemen. Kyle Orton, a fellow at the Henry Jackson Society who specializes on Syria and the PKK, told Al-Monitor that the Gulf Cooperation Council’s public financing of the SDF aims to “irritate” Turkey and sully Turkey’s reputation, and will not translate into a military confrontation or proxy war with Ankara.

While the scale of UAE cooperation with the Syrian Kurds has expanded due to the Turkish threat, the UAE is also seeking to establish itself as a mediator in the Syrian conflict. On Aug. 30, the UAE’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Amira Al Hefeiti, emphasized the need for a political solution to the Syrian conflict, and described Abu Dhabi’s involvement in the July 2018 resolution of the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict as a precedent for similar UAE-backed mediation efforts in the Arab world. 

The UAE’s decision to reopen its embassy in Damascus on Dec. 27 was described by Emirati media outlets as proof of Abu Dhabi’s desire to gain a seat at the table in the Syrian conflict resolution process. As the UAE is seeking to maintain its alliance with Saudi Arabia and showcase its foreign policy independence through signature diplomatic initiatives, staking out a more prominent diplomatic role in Syria is vital for Abu Dhabi’s power projection ambitions in the Arab world.

The UAE believes it can be an effective facilitator of dialogue between various Syrian factions because of its mediation experience during the early stages of the conflict, which included a noteworthy meeting between UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on conflict resolution. Although this meeting failed to convince Assad to lighten his repression of Syrian opposition factions, the UAE distinguished itself from Saudi Arabia and Qatar by continuing to engage in back-channel dialogue with Assad, criticizing arms supplies to Islamist opposition forces and establishing close relations with the SDF-led Kurdish coalition.

Now that Syria’s Sunni Arab opposition forces are firmly on the retreat and poised to play an increasingly marginal role in the resolution of the conflict, the UAE has positioned itself to effectively mediate between Damascus and the SDF. In early 2017, the UAE strengthened ties with the SDF by emphasizing the organization’s possession of common concerns with Assad. These concerns include preventing Turkish belligerence and ensuring that the fuel markets in the town of al-Bab, which were formerly captured by IS, remain in the hands of Syrian traders.

While the US military’s close cooperation with the SDF against IS and simultaneous desire to overthrow Assad impeded SDF-Damascus cooperation for much of the war, the impending US withdrawal from Syria has caused Assad and the SDF to tentatively align against the looming threat of Turkish belligerence. The UAE has capitalized on this alignment and has sought to achieve an expeditious resolution of the Kurdish issue, as a settlement allows Abu Dhabi to implement its dual containment strategy against Iranian and Turkish influence in Syria. By arming the SDF in preparation for the withdrawal of US troops and discussing reconstruction assistance programs with Assad’s government that require a swift end to hostilities, the UAE is encouraging Syrian Kurds to focus their energies on combating Turkey, and incentivizing Assad to refrain from forcibly recapturing SDF- occupied regions of Syria.

Although the UAE’s alignment with the SDF has slipped under the radar of many analysts of the Syrian conflict, it signifies Abu Dhabi’s desire to step up its anti-Turkey containment efforts and ambitions of acting as a mediator in the Syrian conflict. As the UAE’s relations with Assad and the SDF continue to strengthen simultaneously, Abu Dhabi is well positioned to break out of Saudi Arabia’s shadow and establish itself as an important diplomatic stakeholder in Syria.

YEREVAN, Armenia – The American University of Armenia (AUA)’s Certificate in Translation (CTRA) program is pleased to announce the translation and publication of Maral Boyadjian’s novel As the Poppies Bloomed by one of its graduates, Hayarpy Sahakyan (Class of 2014).

This is the second book-length translation by Sahakyan, her first being a co-translation with Davit Matevosyan of Orhan’s Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian, which was published as part of the Aghet Series of Aktual Arvest Press.

“Maral Boyadjian’s debut novel, As the Poppies Bloomed, is a fictionalized account of her family’s experience during the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which decimated the families of all four of the author’s grandparents,” writes Christopher Atamian in his book review in HuffPost. “That is perhaps why this lovingly written and sometimes lyrical account of the events in the small village of Salor seem so real—at times the characters almost jump off the page at the reader.”

Atamian concludes: “The fact that Boyadjian, some four generations later, was able to write such a stirring novel from the safety of her Southern California home, provides some indication of the fierce will that the characters in her novel displayed when confronted with the most difficult of conditions. Poppies is a story of love, loss and in the end salvation—the best type of story we have to remind ourselves of some of the worst, and best, aspects of the human condition.”

The biggest challenge while translating the book, according to Sahakyan, “was to stay true to the author while trying to make the Armenian text read as smoothly as an original text (I don’t know to what extent I have succeeded). It took us six months to have a final edited text ready for publication.”

The Armenian version of the book was published by Vard Press and is available for purchase in all major bookstores in Yerevan.

Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, and affiliated with the University of California. AUA provides a global education in Armenia and the region, offering high-quality graduate and undergraduate studies, encouraging civic engagement, and promoting public service and democratic values.

As Poland’s media become increasingly politicized, publisher Agora and a Soros-backed fund have teamed up to buy the second-largest radio station. With elections looming, the anti-PiS coalition is preparing to fight.

Agora, which owns Poland’s largest circulation daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, recently signed a deal to buy 40 percent of Eurozet for 130.8 million zlotys ($34 million, €30 million) from Prague-based Czech Media Invest (CMI), co-owned by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.

Eurozet owns Radio Zet, Poland’s second-largest radio station with 13 percent of the market.

SFS Ventures is a vehicle that includes a fund backed by US-Hungarian billionaire philanthropist George Soros. It’s is buying the remaining 60 percent and is a Czech joint venture between Sourcefabric, founded in Prague in 2010 to support independent journalism worldwide, and Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), a fund for independent media that received seed financing from Soros’ Open Society Institute. 

MDIF said the purchase would not mean any changes in Radio Zet, which has remained independent of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party as it has sought to ‘repolonize’ public media and financially undermine independent commercial media since coming to power in late 2015. 

Pro-government publishers, some backed by loan guarantees from state-owned banks, had wanted to buy Eurozet, including Fratria, the owner of the wpolityce.pl website.

PiS cries foul

PiS has called the sale a threat to the pluralism of Polish media. “PiS along with Chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski at its head, believe that the state should do everything in its power so that stock speculators will not increase their influence over the media market,” Beata Mazurek, spokeswoman for PiS, said on Twitter in January. 

Krystyna Pawlowicz, a PiS MP, wrote in an op-ed for Radio Maryja, the idea of an apolitical media is a “harmful idealized myth” that makes it “harder to govern.”

Mutual antipathy

Kaczynski does not hide his distate for Gazeta Wyborcza and the feeling is mutual, insiders at the paper say. Kaczynski said in 2018 that the newspaper disseminates “liberalism, anti-traditionalism, anti-Catholicism” and was “against the very notion of the nation.” He accused it of using the “pedagogics of shame.”

Government ministers have forbidden government institutions to advertise in the paper and canceled subscriptions for government offices and courts. It has also tried to starve several independent print media outlets such as Polityka and Newsweek Polska by restricting advertising from public funds. According to Freedom House, this is part of a wider attempt “to weaken checks and balances, silence independent voices and control the public sphere.”

Bombers targeted suspected militant camps in Pakistan following a deadly attack on Indian soldiers. Islamabad has said there were no casualties, but New Delhi has claimed a “very large number” of fighters were killed.

The Indian government said on Tuesday that it had the right to protect itself after confirming that it had carried out an air raid on alleged militant targets in Pakistan that killed a “very large” number of fighters.

The bombing was in response to a February 14 attack on a security convoy in Kashmir. New Delhi has accused Pakistan of granting safe haven to the Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist group (JeM) that carried out the attack. At least 40 troops were killed in the worst assault on Indian troops since the insurgency in Kashmir began in 1989.

“This was a necessary step for the defense of the country, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given the armed forces a free hand,” said Prakash Javadekar, minister of human resource development.

 A “very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated,” India’s foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, said in a briefing. 

Islamabad: India should have better sense

Pakistan downplayed the strikes, claiming there were no casualties.

A spokesman for the Pakistani military, Major General Asif Ghafoor, said that the Indian bombers had “released payload in haste,” near Balakot, at the edge of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Ghafoor tweeted pictures of the alleged site purportedly showing a bomb crater in a forest area but no serious damage. 

Balakot police chief Saghir Hussain Shah told the Associated Press that the bombs had been dropped on a sparsely populated forest area.

“There are no casualties, there is no damage on the ground because of the dropping of the bombs,” he said. 

Villagers in the area where the incident occurred reported four loud bangs early Tuesday morning, but said only one person was wounded by bomb shards, according to the Reuters news agency. 

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that better sense should prevail in India, and that Islamabad would respond in kind to any “misadventure.”

EU urges restraint 

The prime ministers of India and Pakistan summoned emergency meetings of top lawmakers following the attack.

The EU called on New Delhi and Islamabad to exercise “maximum restraint.”

“We remain in contact with both countries and what we believe is essential is that all exercise maximum restraint and avoid further escalation of tensions,” EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told reporters.

China, which shares a land border with the disputed region, also called for “restraint” in a statement by its foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang.

“We hope that both India and Pakistan can exercise restraint and adopt actions that will help stabilize the situation in the region and improve mutual relations.”  

Tensions are extremely high between the two neighbors and longtime enemies after the February 14 attack. The contested Kashmir region has been the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan.

kw,es/jm (AP, dpa, Reuters)