15.2 km South of Lachin, Kashatagh Region, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2006

The last two days saw an opportunity to meet up with Caucasus editor of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), Tom de Waal, while he was in town to launch the Armenian translation of his book on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War. Tom and I traveled through Karabakh for some of the research for his book and also worked together on a story for the Los Angeles Times on cultural monuments in the disputed territory in 2001.

Anyway, as I hadn’t seen Tom since the launch of the Russian translation of the book in Yerevan last November it was great to meet up with him over dinner with the lovely Amberin Zaman and her husband, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy Joseph Pennington, on Monday, and again last night at an IWPR bash before he returned to London. As with the first edition of the English version of the book, the cover photo was again mine with more inside.

Anyway, now that there are English, Russian and Armenian versions of the book, there should be one in Azeri in the near future. Armenian Public Radio covered the launch of the book.

The US Embassy and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting Armenia Branch held a discussion at the US Embassy on October 1 to mark the release of the Armenian translation of British journalist Thomas de Waal’s book “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War.”

The book presents a careful reconstruction of the history of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and its aftermath, based on six months traveling through the South Caucasus, more than 120 original interviews, and unique archives.

The widely-read book was first published in English in 2004. A Russian translation of the book came out in November 2006 and discussions were held in Yerevan, Tbilisi and Baku.

Thomas de Waal is editor of the Caucasus Reporting Service of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. He is also known as co-author of A Small Victorious War, a book on the conflict in Chechnya. De Waal completed a degree in Russian and Modern Greek at Oxford, has worked for the BBC, The Moscow Times and The Times in London and Moscow.

As you can see from the sidebar to this blog, I thoroughly recommend Black Garden to anyone interested in a chronological account to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. A review of the book can be found here, and the English version can be purchased through Amazon.com here.

Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / EurasiaNet 2007

Yevrobatsi has translated the text that accompanied photographs from yesterday’s State Funeral of Prime Minister Andranik Markarian into French. EurasiaNet has aready made the text available in Russian, but its nice when others also take the time to translate it, as Yevrobatsi has.

L’Arménie a dit adieu, le 28 mars, au Premier Ministre ayant servi le plus longtemps pendant la courte histoire de l’Arménie indépendante post-soviétique. Andranik Markarian est mort le 25 mars d’une crise cardiaque, moins de deux mois avant les élections législatives.

Même si le Premier Ministre, âgé de 55 ans, était connu pour sa santé fragile et qu’il se déplaçait fréquemment à l’étranger pour suivre des traitements pour les maladies cardiaques, cette mort a tout de même été un choc pour beaucoup de gens. Cet évènement se révèle être un des évènements politiques les plus importants avant les élections de mai, qui sont vues comme un des tests de démocratisation les plus importants pour cet Etat du sud Caucase.

[…]

Des délégations des États-unis, de Russie, de Grèce, de l’OTAN, de l’OSCE, et des membres des Etats indépendants furent parmi ceux qui ont assisté aux funérailles à l’Opéra Académique d’Etat, et au Théâtre de Ballets du centre de Erevan. La Turquie, accompagnée de l’Azerbaïdjan, n’ayant pas de relation diplomatique avec l’Arménie, ont envoyé leur ambassadeur géorgien à la cérémonie.

Yevrobatsi’s translated version of the EurasiaNet photo story is here.

Thanks to Bekaisa for posting a link to a list of Armenian blogs on Live Journal. Most are in Russian so I have no idea what the content is like, but it’s probably an online community far larger than the English-language Armenian Blogosphere and should therefore not be overlooked. In case you missed it, here’s the link:

http://armenianforums.com/armenian-livejournal.htm

Mkhitarist Seminary, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / CNEWA One Magazine 2006

I’ve been a little quiet of late because of work and in particular an article and photos that I had to produce for One Magazine, a publication of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA). After viewing my Lightstalkers portfolio, the magazine’s photo editor approached me for a story on the return of the Mkhitarist Fathers to Armenia.

As I like stories on subjects that are seldom covered here, I jumped at the chance. The Mkhitarist Fathers are particularly interesting as Wikipedia explains.

The Mechitarists (Armenian: Մխիթարեան), also spelled Mekhitarists, are a congregation, founded in 1712 by Mechitar, of Armenian Benedictine monks in communion with the Catholic Church.

Their eponymous founder, Mekhitar, was born at Sebaste in Armenia in 1676. He entered a monastery, but under the influence of Western missionaries he became possessed with the idea of propagating Western ideas and culture in Armenia, and of converting the Armenian Church from its alleged monophysitism (a christological heresy in Roman Catholic viewpoint) and reuniting it with the Latin Church.

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Lola Koundakjian of the Armenian Poetry Project and Life in Travel forwarded me a link to a new blog on Armenia this morning. Not so unexpected perhaps, but always interesting to take a look, this time the blog is from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — otherwise more commonly known as the Mormons.

The main page, however, indicates that it is not an official blog. Still, it’s an interesting precedent for organized religion with a focus on Armenia.

I want this site to be a resource for newly called missionaries and their families. When I was called during the summer of ‘99, there was no one to give us any information about this new mission. I wanted to build a website that could be informative and inspiring to those missionaries who will go and continue the work my companions and I started.

This site is in no way affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and does not speak for it. Also, it is not an official mission website. It is just information about the mission, the country, the people and a reflection of our experiences there as missionaries.

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Yezidi child, Armavir Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1998

After my most recent article on the division among Armenia’s largest ethnic minority for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) was translated into German by Dengê Êzîdiyan, news that some of my supporting interviews on the Yezidis have also been translated into the same language by another. A week ago, Karl G. Mund from Yeziden Colloquium contacted me to ask permission to translate my interviews with Dr. Christine Allison, which I of course gave.

A friend at Dengê Êzîdiyan informed me about an interview with Dr. Christine Allison that had just appeared on the IWPR-website (IWPR = institute of war & peace reporting) asking me to translate the piece for publication on their homepage. I was already familiar with the name of Onnik Krikorian since I reported some time before about his extraordinary photo-report about a Yezidi funeral in Armenia.

After finishing that translation I continued surfing through Onnik’s website where I found all the interviews he used for that report including two interviews with Dr. Christine Allison. During a former visit to Mala Êzîdiyan in Oldenburg I had already peered through her scientific work “The Yezidi Oral Tradition in Iraqi Kurdistan”, cf. the review by Dr. Christiane Bulut on our homepage.

Thus I found a veritable raisin to peck for this issue of my column. And looking through other interviews by Onnik Krikorian showed that the conflict he reported for IWPR has been ongoing for about 15 years. Becoming acquainted with the material I realized that there is really a sensitive problem which cannot be solved by keeping silent. It is more connected to historical/political than to religious issues.

And it is deeply connected with the historical situation of Armenians since the late 19th century, also with relations of the Armenian population not only concerning the Turkish population but also to significant portions of the Kurdish population during the last 3 decades of the Ottoman Empire (i.e. approximately 1893 – 1923). I think the recent uproar throughout Turkey over the new genocide-laws in France gives reason for Kurds, both in Armenia as in other countries to review that time with the utmost objectivity and without any trace of prejudice.

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Stepanakert, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1994

I’ve just come back from a quick drink with Tom de Waal, Caucasus Editor of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, before he had to shoot off for some reception, and IWPR’s Armenia Country Director, Seda Muradyan. Beforehand, Tom launched the Russian translation of his book on the Karabakh conflict, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War. Eurasianet reviewed the book, which also includes photographs by yours truly, here.

Today, the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – located within the boundaries of Azerbaijan but populated largely by Armenians — has become one of those “political flashpoints” that few beyond the region understand or pay much heed to. Journalist Thomas de Waal, a veteran observer of the Caucasus, helps fill the need for an authoritative, clear-eyed, balanced account of a conflict that only occasionally appears on the international media radar screen.

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With the Armenian President scheduled to make an official visit to Kazakhstan tomorrow, PanArmenian.net says that it will coincide with the second meeting of the Kazakh-Armenian Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation. However, Artyom at iArarat jokes that all might not be as it seems.

And so the rumor has it, that after meeting Premier George Walter Bush and complaining about the Borat phenomenon and the adverse effects thereof, Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev is planning a meeting with his Armenian counterpart Robot Robert Kocharyan to raise the issue of Azamat Bagatov’s Armenian background and find out whether they can jointly execute the guy.

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Stepanakert, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1994

Tom de Waal, Caucasus Editor for London-based the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), will be holding a discussion in Yerevan on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh on Monday 6 November 2006 at 3.30p.m.

Here’s the full press release for anyone interested in attending, although I guess you should contact sedaiwpr@web.am first.

The Armenian branch of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) is pleased to invite you to the presentation of the Russian translation of “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War” by British journalist Thomas de Waal and a following discussion of the book November 6th 2006, at 15:30 p.m..

Thomas de Waal is also the renowned co-author of the book called “The Small Winning War” about the conflict in Chechnya.

The Russian translation of the “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War” was published a year ago. The Armenian and the Azerbaijani translations of the book are also ready for publication.

The presentation and the discussion will be held at the office of the Armenian branch of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting at Yeznik Koghbatsi, 39.

The working language of the discussion is Russian.

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Gohar Saroava, a Moslem Kurd, helps a Yezidi child prepare for a cultural event, Shamiram, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2004

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) has just published my article on new problems for Armenia’s largest ethnic minority. As mentioned in an article I wrote for Transitions Online in 2004, and as I recently posted on this blog, what some see as the artificial division of the Yezidis in Armenia has manifested itself as problems in the area of minority language education.

At the beginning of September, at an event staged in the Yezidi village of Alagyaz, government officials said that new textbooks in minority languages would be distributed to schools in minority-populated villages, while UNICEF said it would provide stationary and other supplies.

Less than a month later, however, Yezidis in Alagyaz and ten surrounding villages were complaining. Their language is the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, but the books funded and provided by the government were instead written in Ezdiki. While the latter is still Kurdish by another name, the alphabet chosen for publication was in the unaccustomed Cyrillic alphabet instead of the more usual Latin or Arabic scripts.

“All schools have at present is old Soviet-era textbooks,” said Gohar Saroava, a young journalist with the Mesopotamia newspaper in Yerevan and one of the few Muslim Kurds remaining in Armenia. Others, however, are more outspoken. “These [new] books are a shame and we don’t want to have this rubbish,” said Torkom Khudoyan, vice-president of the National Committee of Yezidis of Armenia.

Speaking to IWPR, both UNICEF and Hranush Kharatyan, head of the Armenian government’s department for national minorities and religious affairs, confirmed reports that the new textbooks are being rejected, but said that it was outside their remit to intervene. Critics, however, argue that the situation should never have arisen in the first place and allege it is part a continuing attempt to promote a non-Kurdish identity among Armenia’s Yezidis.

[…]

Nahro Zagros, an ethnic Kurdish PhD student from Iraq studying the ethno-musical traditions of Yezidis at the University of York, concurs. Zagros says that he also stumbled upon what many consider to be the artificial division of the community on a recent visit to Armenia. “The school in Shinkani has refused these textbooks, and teachers from Rya Taze, Alagyaz, Dirik, Orta Chia, Amri Taze and Jamushlow have also rejected them,” he said.

[…]

Some experts believe that the government has only succeeded in alienating the Yezidis through its education policies. One academic from Europe speaking to IWPR on the condition of anonymity said, “The state seems to be distinctly encouraging the Ezdiki faction and has not latched on to the fact that Kurmanji and Ezdiki, which were the same language for the entire Soviet period, are still the same. The most obvious and cost-effective compromise would be to produce Ezdiki-Kurdish schoolbooks in a mutually agreed alphabet.”

The full article is here. Incidently, supporting interviews on the division in Armenia’s Yezidi community can be found here.

Now that Artyom is back from Armenia and Karabakh, he’s posted news of an Armenian connection in the controversy that is Borat. The U.K.’s Guardian newspaper reports that as everyone’s favourite Kazakh journalist made his way around the U.S. for the mockumentry, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, his sidekick, Azamat, was played by ethnic Armenian actor Ken Davitian.

The film involves Borat leaving his home in Kazakhstan to come to the United States and record a documentary at the behest of the Kazakh Ministry of Information. He leaves behind his mother, wife and the town rapist, bringing along his obese producer Azamat. While in America he watches an episode of Baywatch and falls in love with Pamela Anderson, so he buys a dilapidated ice cream truck and drives from New York to Los Angeles to have her vagin and make her his wife. Through the course of his trip he interviews people from across the country. Most of the movie is not staged; rather, Cohen, in character as Borat, interviews and interacts with people who do not know they are being filmed for a movie (they later sign releases allowing the footage to be used). In one scene, which rather worryingly is not staged, Borat goes into a gun shop and asks the man behind the counter: “Which gun would be best to shoot the Jews?” The man recommends to Borat a 9mm handgun without flinching. Some other comedic highlights include a naked wrestling match between Borat and Azamat which spills over into a crowded business seminar, and Borat’s appearance on a crowded beach wearing only a tiny green wrestling thong which stretches from his crotch over his shoulders. Also throwing a decorative bag over Pamela Anderson’s head to try to capture her to marry her. For the movie, Borat made a song called “You, Be My Wife” with spectacular and bizarre Croatian keytar player Belinda.

According to Wikipedia, while Borat, played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen from Da Ali G Show speaks Hebrew, Polish and Czech to Americans who can’t differentiate it from Kazakh, Davitian speaks Armenian. Anyway, as a big Ali G and Borat fan, I’m really looking forwards to seeing this film if it ever makes it to Armenia. The film’s official site here.