The Artsakh-Kosovo Comparison

The Artsakh-Kosovo Comparison

From the Bryce report of the atrocities of 1915 we read, “The reverse side of the picture is the uprooting of the nation from its native soil. The immigrant tribes from Central Asia did not make a permanent lodgment in the Armenian homelands. Some of them drifted back into Azerbaijan (the real H.) and the steppe country along the coast of the Caspian and the lower courses of the Aras (Araxes H.) and the Kur (the fake, still not called “Azerbaijan” as late as 1916. H.); others were carried on towards the north-west, along the ancient Royal Road, and imposed the Moslem faith and the Turkish language upon the population of Central Anatolia. The Armenian plateau, entrenched between Tigris, Euphrates and Aras, stood out like a rock, dividing these two Turkish eddies. Nevertheless, the perpetual shock of the Seljuk and the Mongol raids relaxed the hold of the Armenians on the plateau. The people of the land were decimated by these invasions, and when the invaders had passed on beyond or vanished away, the terrible gaps in the ranks of the sedentary population of Armenia proper were filled by nomadic Kurdish shepherds from the south-east, who drifted into Old Armenia from the mountain girdle of Iran, just as the Albanians drifted into the Kossovo Plain from their own less desirable highlands, after the population of Old Serbia had been similarly decimated by the constant passage of the Ottoman armies”.

Needles to say, this reminder of history shows that Artsakh, the eastern part of “the lower courses of the Aras and the Kur” was not the native land of the “immigrant tribes from Central Asia” nor Old Serbian Kosovo belonged to Albanians where they “drifted into …from their own less desirable highlands” nor Old Armenia with its present day derogatory appellation “Eastern Anatolia”, where the “nomadic Kurdish shepherds from the south-east …drifted into …[from] the mountain girdle of Iran” can legitimately be considered part of Kurdistan, a state that never existed throughout human history.

Yet the most flagrant double standards are at work as soon as some Armenian officials dare to bring up the desirability of applying the outcome of the Kosovo conflict according to western aspirations to Artsakh. The cold response that comes from imps like Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis is that “Karabakh is different”.

Although the comparison may not be favorable to Artsakh in case Kosovo independence is not recognized by all nations at least in the near future, let us see through only a handful of examples how much Artsakh Armenians deserve their self-determination more than the Kosovo Albanians.

• I. While Armenians are indigenous to Artsakh from the dawn of history the Albanians only “drifted into” Kosovo a few centuries ago.
  
  

• II. While Artsakh has never been a part of an independent fake “Azerbaijan”, this nonentity having been artificially counterfeited on Armenian territory in 1918 and having illegally snatched and held on to Artsakh and Nakhijevan from an internationally recognized Republic of Armenia through Turco-Bolshevik perfidy when these states were under Soviet occupation, Kosovo has been an integral part of Old Serbia.
  
  

• III. While Armenians had to defend themselves against “Azeri” genocide and war with the help of Al-Qaeda, Chechen and Afghan terrorists, Ukrainian and other Slavonic mercenaries and Soviet Russian army, NATO aerial devastation of Christian Serbia with the help of Al Qaeda terrorists on the ground secured the victory for the Muslim Albanians and caused further decimation of Serbia.
  
  

• IV. While Artsakh had an autonomous status within the USSR, however superficial, Kosovo never had any status of the sort, therefore it did not have recourse to legal processes that such a status would provide to secede from Serbia.
  
  

• V. While in that light and according to international law it is Kosovo that must be regarded as a separatist province, this cannot be applied to Artsakh which was illegally colonized in 1921 by a mini Ottoman “empire” that at the demise of the USSR declared itself the successor of the “Azerbaijan” republic of 1918-1920, where neither Artsakh nor Nakhijevan were parts of. The legal cessation of Artsakh from the yoke of the occupier is a mere loss of one of mini Ottoman’s unlawfully annexed colonies.
  
  

• VI. While using the legal processes provided by the USSR law, Artsakh declared the creation of NKR republic on September 2, 1991, when “Azeris” started shelling Stepanakert, and the Artsakh people decided the fate of their homeland through a referendum On December 10, 1991, with 99.89% voting for independence, no such referendum was held in Kosovo and the independence was declared unilaterally on February 17, 2008, with a host of powerful western states interested in decimation of Serbia to weaken Russian influence in the Balkans recognizing this illegal act immediately.
  
  

• VII. While Armenians have protected their liberated homeland by themselves since 1994, international peacekeepers have ensured the safety of Kosovo Albanians.
  
  

• VIII. Most importantly, while the reason for the Artsakh movement was the unbearable discrimination and persecution under oppressive “Azeri” yoke, the destruction, according to the Bernard Lewis plan, of Yugoslavia, the most liberal state in communist era which “threatened” to become a pro-Russian Germany in the middle of Europe and the weakening of Serbia were the principal motives of the Balkan wars.
  
  

Despite these blinding facts, the nauseating rejection of any consideration for the will of victorious Artsakh people from the western camp reeks of prejudice and exposes the emptiness of terms such as democracy, liberty and humanity. Truly, these are open to interpretation according to the whims of those who hold the reins of establishments pretending to work for peace, equality, justice and freedom and their trumpets known as “independent” mass media.