VICKEN CHETERIAN

According to journalist Jafar Talafari, ISIS kidnapped 1300 Turkmen civilians among them 460 women and girls and 120 children. Just like ISIS kidnapped and enslaved Yazidi women, they treated Turkmen Shiite women in the same manner. Yet, Turkmen society out of conservatism does not publicize this crime, and the fate of the majority of kidnapped remains unknown.

ISIS spread its horrors on Sinjar from August 3, 2014, until November 13, 2015, when Kurdish and Yazidi fighters, supported by Coalition airstrikes, retook the town. Yet only a minority of its inhabitants went back home. The city itself which once had 70 thousand inhabitants, has no more than 2 thousand now.

In Bakhmut, Russia and Ukraine are locked in a war of attrition. All sides seem determined to continue a war in which thousands of young soldiers are sacrificed, for unrealistic objectives. Political will to end the war is lacking, which makes any ceasefire agreement difficult to achieve.

Azerbaijan, the economy of which is completely based on hydrocarbon production and exportation, and a contributor to global warming which is devastating our planet, a country where the slightest protest movement is repressed by police, is suffocating Karabakh Armenians by organizing a siege under slogans such as “stop ecocide”, “save nature”. When Orwell wrote 1984 and coined the term “doublespeak”, he had exactly this into consideration: totalitarianism deforming language and thought: the independent activities of civil society are replaced by soldiers of an authoritarian state.

Russia was not the guardian of peace, nor a side favouring conflict resolution. In fact, Russia tried to maintain its influence by balancing between conflict parties – as in Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. Russian military presence in Armenia did not hinder Azerbaijan from launching the Second Karabakh War. When this balancing act was not possible, then Russia opted direct military intervention, as in Georgia in 2008.

On September 12, Azerbaijan launched a massive attack along the eastern border of Armenia. This Azerbaijani attack has changed the geopolitical map of the South Caucasus, where great power competition will only be accentuated.

Intense negotiations continue between Armenian and Turkish diplomats to normalize bilateral relations and open the long-closed border, and with-it raising expectations. How close are we to a breakthrough?

There is a deepening political crisis in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) – or the Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq. Following the news from a distance, one would get alarmed that the crisis might go out of hand, fear that the crisis might even turn once again into inter-Kurdish conflict. How does the situation look from the ground?

Father Levon Yeghyaian receives me in his office and explains the difficulties of his community in Qamishli; the city had 1800 families before the conflict erupted, now only 700 families remain. In neighbouring Hassakah there are only 89 families, while in Derik (al-Mailikiyah) 69 Armenian families live.

As we pass next to regime checkpoints in the centre of the city, my driver cautions not to film, as we risk being stopped and interrogated. The Syrian regime still has presence in Qamishli, preserving some government buildings there known as “security square”. The Qamishli airport, just to the south-west of the city, is also under regime control.