Karabagh Is the Last Frontier of Armenian History

“Their purely military gains were insubstantial,” says BBC analyst Anatoly Karlin, “and attained at the cost of much higher losses in personnel and equipment than the worse-armed but far more motivated, skilled and dug-in NKR army. This was accomplished without any reinforcements from Armenia proper. Any hopes for a blitzkrieg campaign have been dashed.”

Volunteers and veteran fighters are moving towards the front for reinforcement. There is a patriotic fervor on the front along with some reckoning back at home.

Although Azerbaijan has learned at great cost what the diplomats have been advocating all along — that there is no military solution to the conflict — the Baku government may continue the provocations, in the hope that it can wear down the resilience of the Armenian side.

Given the military balance in the region, Turkey and Azerbaijan may refrain from an all-out war against Armenia, but they are convinced that a war of attrition may pay off in the long run.

By continually bombing the province of Tavoush in Armenia, they have scared away the border population. Turks and Azeris intend to render Armenia uninhabitable through constant hostility. That approach may gain validity if the situation in Armenia does not improve dramatically. How long can patriotism endure when army veterans return home for a life of misery, with high unemployment, disparity in living standards and rampant injustice in the application of the law?

We have to be mindful that the flow of emigration has not diminished and may have even hit a critical point.

At this time, the diaspora is mobilized. It is even alarmed that Armenian soldiers have to defend the borders with primitive weapons. Organizations as well as individuals are contributing generously. But as soon as a temporary calm is restored, this awareness and mobilization will fade away and the population will return to the grim realities of life.

Armenia is at war and we do not have the luxury of playing politics with its destiny. There is certainly corruption in the government but calling for a regime change in the midst of war can only benefit the enemy, and certainly not Armenia’s population. Even the staunchest critic of the current regime, former president Levon Ter-Petrosian, has lent his support to the administration he so often has called a “kleptocracy,” until we reach calmer seas for settling scores.

We lost our kingdom in Ani, in the eleventh century because of our internal quarrels. Similarly, the Cilician kingdom was overrun by Mamluks in 1375, because it was weakened as a result of princes fighting each other or even siding with enemy forces to spite internal foes.

The lessons of history are too stark to be ignored. Blood is being shed on the borders of Karabagh and Armenia and there cannot be any higher or nobler cause than to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Armenian soldiers, as Mr. Erdogan promises to stand shoulder to shoulder with his Azeri brothers.

Despite the war’s painful losses, Karabagh survived and the Armenian resolve deterred the enemy once again. Quoting the BBC analyst who concludes his article thus: “Now that the fog of war has cleared up, it has become clear that the Azeris even failed to retain the village of Talish. What a debacle,”

Let us rally around Karabagh until the final victory and until a permanent peace is restored.

Karabagh is the last frontier of Armenian history.