By Varoujan Sirapian
We are healing our wounds after this defeat in the Artsakh war, endorsed by a trilateral ceasefire among Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia. However, we have not stopped thinking about the future, which is part of our work at the Tchobanian Institute.
We lost 29 years after independence. It is high time to get out of our victim mentality and draft a short- and medium-term strategy instead of looking for scapegoats. We continue to work on our plan to publish a collectively-authored book on “Armenian Strategic Thought” that we launched a few months ago.
With this in mind, we believe that the mission of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund (AF) must also be reoriented. Of course we have given and we will continue to give these days, since, once again, we are in a hurry. The situation has not been anticipated and its consequences, probably very serious, cannot be measured for a long time.
The money raised by the AF is invested at the end according to the decisions taken by the Himnatram of Armenia (except perhaps for some specific dedicated projects). The political confusion created in the aftermath of the ceasefire will not facilitate the design of a medium-term strategy for the country. It is up to us, the diaspora leaders, to provide all our vigilant help and our capacity for proposals.
About ten years ago, we asked the question of the safety (and therefore the sustainability) of projects in Artsakh (especially outside the oblast). Today, however, we see that many investments will have served no purpose, after falling into the hands of the Azerbaijanis. Without guaranteeing the security and sustainability of a territory, building there is like building on sand.
