Syrian crisis and Armenia
Syrian crisis is the main topic discussed internationally. We have asked representatives of main political powers of Armenia about their opinion on the crisis in Syria.
Tigran Urikhanyan, the spokesman of Prosperous Armenia party, said that the crisis in Syria concerns Armenia, too, as geographically Syria is located not far from Armenia and there is a large Armenian community in Syria. He hopes there will not be military intervention in the future. “Ethnic Armenians living there are citizens of Syria, and Armenia cannot interfere in their domestic or foreign affairs, however I think that we should be active in statements and our official position,” said Tigran Urikhanyan. He says it is worrisome that Western countries speak of chemical weapons and start looking for such only after making statements.
“I have written many reports about Western expansion in the region, which are still posted in my web site and what I am saying now is no news. However, in consideration of my official position, I have to be modest in my speech,” said Urikhanyan. “I’d recommend waiting for Yerevan’s official stance, if there is any,” added the PA spokesman.
Aram Karapetyan, leader of New Times party, said that the problem is broader that the issue of Syria. “I said this 2-3 years ago, even I have written articles on this topic, and now I am certain too that the West will solve the problem of Syria and will force out Bashar al-Assad, and generally the rule of Alawites in Syria,” said Aram Karapetyan.
Concerning future developments in the Middle East he thinks there will be bigger chaos in the region but the next problem will be between Iraq and Israel. “Syria will bring problems to Lebanon, too, which still exist there. That chaos will continue. For us, Armenians, the situation will be very bad because both Syria and Lebanon are like second fatherland for us as we have large and organized diaspora in those countries. The powers that are coming to power and are in the opposition now are pro-Turkish. For that reason Armenians are going to face tough times,” said Karapetyan and concluded that generally this process will end up with issues related to Iran. “I think this is done not by countries but by more serious powers that are using the operative capacities of states and their governments,” said A. Karapetyan. According to him, so far Assad’s regime was able to survive not because of the veto of Russia and China at the UN but due to the fact that Americans have not been able to form a force yet that would be a reliable substitute to power in Syria. “Why? Because an anti-Christian movement will start as there is a huge Christian community there, thus there may be religious clashes with potential danger of ethnic cleansing.
From this point of view the US and European states are afraid of creating a situation in Syria, which will make things more complicated like in the case of Egypt. However, it is planned and the Middle East will continue being a chaos zone, and that chaos is to evolve new regions” says Karapetyan. In answer to a question about the purposes and goals of this chaos stimulated by the West he said, “Generally transition is more important philosophic issue than any other issue. The powers that are creating chaos in the world civilization development have one goal only. In the theory of world creation there is a concept, according to which every chaos is followed by a new stabile development at a higher level.
This means that the spiral of development is stepping up to the next level of the spiral. There is a theory that people in the world power centers have understood that it is impossible to change the stagnation of the world without new civilization chaos. The situation of stagnation that exists now may bring to a worse crisis, thus a new theory has been developed to create a new political structure as a result of chaos.
As we see now, this theory is moving forward now.” Concerning Armenia’s policy related to this issue he said, “Armenia cannot do anything as it strives to solve its domestic problems. Armenia does not have an elite, government or brains of experts that could have intellectual influence. There is no academic brain potential like the one we used to have during the Soviet times, there is no lobbying. Armenia needs everything new, and the bad thing is that the chaos is coming closer to our border and it affects our diaspora, which impacts our political model (we used to have a diaspora-state political model). When in this chaos Israel will be lost, the question will be where the Christian civilization’s harbor should be and where the line for stopping that chaos should be drawn.”
Vladimir Karapetyan, head of the foreign relations committee of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) faction, says tension escalation is alarming and as the processes are happening not far from Armenia’s border, the best solution would be negotiation. “It seems the tension is growing and pressure on Assad’s regime by the West is growing too, thus I don’t exclude the possibility of strike. Meanwhile, I hope there will not be force solution of the crisis and both parties will refrain from power.” Concerning the tension in relations between the West and Russia over the crisis he said that Western countries are concerned of legitimacy of their actions, too, thus they will do their best to make sure they have legitimacy cover for their actions. “For now it is hard to say what the solution may be. However, the conflict seems to be still at the level of pressure,” he said. V. Karapetyan believes what Armenia can and should do in relation to this crisis is taking measures to make sure Armenians from those communities can come to Armenia and be safe.
To note, the crisis worsened last week, after the Syrian opposition’s announcement alleging that the government had used chemical weapons in the vicinity of Damascus. In several days American military and missile carrier ships approached the border of Syria and the American defense minister Chuck Hagel said that only the order of White House would be enough to start military operations against Syria. This was followed by the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s statement that America could not prove Syrian government’s participation in the chemical attack in the vicinity of Damascus, thus use of force without the consent of the UN Security Council would violate international laws. “There have already been statements from Paris and London saying that chemical weapons in Syria can be destroyed without the consent of the UN Security Council; that’s a very dangerous thing to do,” said Lavrov.
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, told the Russian Izvestia newspaper that in case of attack on Syria “America would fail, is it has done so far – from Vietnam till our days.”
Clashes between governmental and opposition forces in Syria started in March 2011, and according to the UN information, over 100.000 people have been killed as a result of the armed conflict.
According to the information of the Armenian Ministry of Diaspora (PR department), currently over 50.000 Armenians live in Syria. Before the crisis the Armenian community in Syria was over 80.000, and since then 30.000 have fled out, 15.000 out of them having repatriated to Armenia. By the way, in the second part of the 20th century the number of Armenians in Syria accounted more than 150.000 people.
By Aram Sargsyan
