Batting for Armenia, the American Way!

By Jennifer Gnana

It won't be a surprise that most people's introduction to Armenia comes through America.

From Kim Kardashian to be more specific.

The Armenian-American businesswoman and celebrity is a surprising ambassador for bringing Armenia to most people's living rooms.

The reality TV series Keeping up with the Kardashians, has been the place where millions of people have heard of a country called Armenia as well as about the Genocide.

The pop culture quotient aside, what is interesting is that large numbers of people have had their introduction to the ancient Central Asian country from the United States of America.

This underscores the powerful lobbying done with persons having greater political clout than the Kardashian clan to keep Armenia in everybody's conscience.

The Armenian lobby in the United States Congress is said to be a powerful and effective ethnic lobby in the US along with the Israelis and the Cuban Americans.

It was the Americans after all who first brought Protestantism to the oldest Christian nation and helped initiate several reforms among Armenians in the Ottoman empire.

The relations between Armenia and America hence go a long way.

With more Armenians living abroad than in their own countries, the diaspora and the lobbies they form play an important factor in the international clout and financial aid that Armenia enjoys.

Armenia too, has opened itself to welcoming its sons and daughters back.

It is one of the few countries in the world which openly welcomes trainees and interns, preferably from America to come and work.

For example, Sara Anjargolian, an American-Armenian documentary filmmaker was funded by the New York based Tufenkian Foundation to make a film on the dire poverty in Armenian countryside.

Twenty-eight percent of Armenia lives below the poverty line and heartrending footage from the documentary shoes Armenian families scavenging among rubbish heaps to feed themselves on a daily basis.

Especially after the genocide, when appeals to help the starving millions were sounded in the US and Britain, shocking images such as these continue to horrify and baffle the Armenian-American diaspora.

Anjargolia says in an interview about her documentary, 'How We Live', "Some of the feedback we received from folks within the Armenian Diaspora was a naïve shock, and sometimes a resistance and blatant denial, that this type of desperate poverty could exist in Armenia. Moreover, some who were willing to accept that it existed, expressed anger that the project “aired the country’s dirty laundry” in such a public way, and that this was bad for the county’s image."

Financial aid from the United States is what keeps the Armenian economy going.

Without foreign remittances, the landlocked country which has sealed its borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan would find it very hard to survive.

However, some say that the Armenian lobby in the US is not as powerful as it is made to be.

It has for instance, not managed to influence the United States to officially recognise the Armenian Genocide.

Though there are powerful groups such as the Armenian National Committee of America, incidentally founded after World War I by another Kardashian, Vahan who was the Ottoman Empire's consul to Washington, they haven't managed to convince the Obama administration to use to word 'genocide' when the holocaust is commemorated on April 24.

Maybe, it is time that America's most famous Armenian face rustled some support, the Kardashian way!

The Unknown Story of Armenians in the Mughal Court

By Jennifer Gnana

How many of us would have known or even imagined that the guns used by the Mughals against the Marathas were made by an Armenian?
Or the fact that one an Armenian wife formed part of Mughal Emperor Akbar's harem?
That the Mughal Court once had an accomplished Urdu and Hindi scholar Mirza Zulqarnain, who was Armenian?
How about the fact that the Scindhias of Gwalior once employed an Armenian as the commander-in-chief of their army?
These startling revelations and interesting history are some of the many gems that Shahzad Z Najmuddin's book, 'Armenia: a Resume with Notes on Seth's Armenians in India' reveals.
Posthumously published, the book begins with a tribute to Najmuddin from his friends who says that he died, not of a heart attack but “of a broken heart".
The book which is a collection of Najmuddin's recounting of the Armenian history as well as the early settlements in India, seems like a love song in itself.
Najmuddin was perhaps one of the few Pakistani Armenians and he preserves in his book family anecdotes and the struggles of his family who emigrated to Lahore from Afghanistan where Armenians were employed as gunmakers by the invading Afghan armies.
Curiosity made me wonder why someone with a Muslim name would seek to investigate and research on Armenians in India.
The name shouldn't come as a surprise as readers will discover that Armenians in India used surnames such as khoja, khan, aga and bey which are normally vested on Persian and Turkish nobility.
In an interestingly titled chapter, 'Shah Nazar Khan- He Who Came before Bofors', Najmuddin talks about Lahore's famous gun, the Zamzamah, meaning 'the lion's roar'.
Cast by the Armenian Shah Nazar Khan, the gun was used by the Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Durrani in the famous Battle of Panipat in 1761 against the Marathas.
So impressive was the gun, that Rudyard Kipling would later sing its praises as the "fire-breathing dragon" and the weapon would later take the writer's name and be simply called 'Kim's gun'.
Najmuddin then takes us to the 'Armenian Princess' Palace' which was once home to Emperor Akbar's Christian wife, in the now ruined city of Fatehpur Sikri.
Her tomb, built by Akbar's son and succesor Jehangir, is situated close to the emperor's own and Najmuddin notes with irony, "In the city of Lahore, even today, there is a mosque named after Mariam Zamani the Queen of Akbar. In today's bigoted Pakistan any suggestion that the masjid has any connection whatsoever with Akbar's Christian wife would be tantamount to blasphemy."
He also recounts how Jacob Petrus, son of an Armenian merchant, rose through the ranks to gain command of Scindhias' army in 1843.
Other notables among Emperor Akbar's diverse court, were Abdul Hai, who served as chief justice of the empire, Juliana who served as a doctor in charge of the royal 'seraglio' as well as Mirza Zulqarnain who served a a grandee (amir) of the Mughal Court.
More colourful than the Mughal history, is the account of author's family.
Najmuddin's great-great-grandfather was a 'Kabuli Armenian' and was part of the small Armenian community that lived in Afghanistan in the 1800s.
The influential Armenian diaspora maintained close links with the ruling Afghan kings and at one point, the author's great-great-aunt was queen of Afghanistan for a year!
As gunmakers for Ahmad Shah Abdali, the great Afghan invader, the author's family along with other Armenians was asked to accompany him to Kabul from Lahore where they had settled before.
With only 18 Armenians in Kabul, it became very difficult for Armenians to find a wife and observe their Christian traditions but they persevered to maintain their Armenian heritage.
The author's great-grandfather Lucas A Joseph married a Pathan Christian woman who died during childbirth.
In order to raise the five children she had borne him, Lucas needed a wife to look after them.
Trouble is, there was no Armenian woman in Afghanistan to marry.
Anxious to marry only a Christian, Joseph sought recourse from the highest authority he knew- the king.
In elegant Persian, the king of Afghanistan issued a royal firman to the Armenians settled in the nearest colony of Calcutta to help find a bride for Lucas.
With a wedding gift of ten thousand rupees, an exorbitant sum in those days, the king appealed on behalf Afghanistan's Armenians to urge their brothers to come and "relieve the loneliness" of living in such a distant land by sending a few families to Kabul.
The Calcutta Armenians were not keen to relocate to a distant country they perceived to be barbaric but wrote a flowery reply nevertheless, thanking the Afghan king for bestowing his kindness on their brethren.
Lucas did marry later, to an Armenian of course and the family would later move to Pakistan as the Sultan of Turkey had requested that Armenians be banished from Afghanistan.
The book ends with Najmuddin's notes on the most seminal work ever written on Armenians in India, 'History of the Armenians in India' by Mesrovb J Seth.
Diaspora nationalism and Seth's appeal to the British to help them gain recognition and greater political involvement form part of Najmuddin's discussion of his work.
When you close Najmuddin's book, a delightful and eye-opening read, you realise that the entire book was made from fragments of his notes and had he been alive to publish and edit, he would have contributed to a valuable and forgotten part of Indian history.
The present day Indian-Armenian relations are strengthened by history.
There is an Armenian College in Kolkata to educate Armenian children and there are Armenian Apostolic Churches scattered all over the country.
It is a pity that India is not among the nations that recognise the Armenian genocide, given the fact that it has always given home to Armenia's scattered diaspora.
One of the greatest poets of the Mughal Court, Sarmad, an Armenian summed up the sentiments of Armenians who lived here and still live here, when he wrote:

"There was an uproar and we opened our eyes from the eternal sleep,

Saw that the night of wickedness endured, so we slept again."

How to Power Armenia's Economy?

By Jennifer Gnana

Armenia could witness another Chernobyl if it didn't resolve security concerns surrounding one of its oldest nuclear plants.

The Metasmor plant which lies along a fault-line on the closed Armenian-Azerbaijani border is proving to be a gamble of sorts.

Not only is the area seismically active, it is also fraught with diplomatic and security concerns as relations with Baku have been frosty for ages, as the latter has normally sided with arch-foe Turkey, refused to recognise the Armenian genocide and have also in the past conducted pogroms against its Armenian population.

Similar to the concerns raised in the Indian nuclear plants at Jaitapur and Kudankulam, following the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan last year, the anxiety over Metasmor has only increased in intensity.

Concerns have been raised as Armenia has suffered most painfully from past earthquakes.

An earthquake in the Spitak region in the country's north killed 25,000 people in 1988 and levelled most standing structures in the region.

Fears of another devastating quake are naturally on the minds of the people as the previous disaster required $3.5billion in aid to rebuild.

While the rest of Europe has chosen to act upon the Japanese disaster by focussing more on alternative forms of energy, Armenia is not part of the change.

Germany stated early last year that it will decommission its plants by 2020 and will depend on alternative energy sources to power its economy.

Armenia on the other hand, is likely to commission yet another nuclear power plant in 2017.

The Metasmor plant is fraught with danger according to some as it not only lacks a containment vessel but it is also situated a mere 75km away from the epicentre of the Spitak earthquake.

The Russian-engineered plant is not considered safe by Azerbaijan and other countries in the region.

What they would like to avoid is another former Soviet republic experiencing a cataclysmic nuclear disaster like Ukraine did in 1986.

Armenia's energy needs hang in limbo as its friendly neighbour Iran has raised doubts over supply of oil through its oil pipelines in the Strait of Hormuz.

With the threat of sanctions on Iran looming large, Armenia's economy which took as beating in 2009 when its economy shrank by 15% due to recession, will be set for a further setback.

The country currently depends on gas-rich Russia and oil-rich Iran for its energy needs.

In a cause for further anxiety, Moody’s has downgraded Armenia's credit rating by a double notch and has added it to its watch list.

According to former Armenian foreign minister Vartan Oskanian, any recession or slowdown of the global economy can affect Armenia.

"The impact could be more direct on Armenia because European Union is Armenia's largest trading partner," he said in a recent interview with Al Jazeera's Counting the Cost programme.

Being a key trading partner to the EU and Russia as well as one of the few Iranian allies, it is in the interest of Armenia that it uses this unique position to press for negotiations and removal of possible sanctions against the Islamic republic.

Doing so will save Europe, the global economy and Armenia from further economic decline.

Balkanisation of Central Asia: The Future

By Jennifer Gnana

In the documentary The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia, there is an underlying sense of loss of tradition.

Tightrope dancing was an ancient art form in Armenia.

Following years of existence under the Soviet Union, Armenia however strongly rooted to its culture has lost some part of its heritage.

The tightrope dancing was one of them.

With the opening up of the Armenian economy to the rest of the world and the suppression of the Armenian church under Communist rule, the new generation was no longer interested in the art.

The neglect was such that the producer Vardan Hovhannisyan who grew up enjoying these performances set out to discover that there were only two masters of the tradition left, both old and both equally fearing the death of their art.

They were also old rivals but in order to preserve tightrope dancing, they shelve their differences and go about educating a young boy who is perhaps the last one in Armenia to learn and perform atop the rope.

This conflict of the ancient and the modern is reflective of the dilemma that several countries in the Caucasus face today.

Separation from the USSR and growing westernisation of their lives have contributed in part to this.

However, equally there is a growing need to reassert themselves in terms of their identity.

What Armenians under the Ottomans and the Kurds under Saddam Hussein asked for and were punished was for a greater freedom to practice their traditions and speak their language.

Under the "Bloody Sultan", Sultan Hamid, there was a campaign to remove Armenia from everybody's consciousness.

Such was the repression, that the press was banned from using the word 'Armenia' or any references to the people in any of their reports.

Modern day Turkey is no different.

One cannot talk about Kurds or rights for the Kurdish people on any street corner in Ankara today.

Any mention of self-determination for the Kurdish people is reason enough to land you in jail.

Stirrings for democracy in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq was reason enough for Saddam Hussein to use his chemical weapons on them in the infamous Anfal campaign.

His hatred was no different to the Ottoman sultan's paranoia.

What these ethnic cleansings and the genocide prove are that ideologies that seek to consolidate often trump nationalistic ideals of minorities.

Saddam Hussein was fascinated by the idea of a pan-Arab nation which would have Baghdad as the seat of power while the Ottoman Sultan likewise was keen to expand his declining empire.

In recent memory, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi fancied himself as the "King of African kings" and sought to establish a United States of Africa.

Never mind the Berbers who were treated with contempt during his rule, it was his idea of consolidation mattered and any ethnic, lingual and religious differences had to be levelled and the people had to be homogenised to facilitate unconditional obeisance to power.

What the world sees today is a resurgence in self-determination of oppressed peoples.

The independence of Armenia from USSR in 1991 was a victory for self-determination.

The Kurds are still fighting for a Kurdistan, comprising regions of northern Iraq, Turkey and Iran.

The Balakanisation of the Caucasus is inevitable.

There are so many different identities that are fighting to be heard and represented.

It is only a matter of time before the map of Central Asia is redrawn and new democratic states will emerge.

Arab Spring Needs to Look Beyond Turkey

By Jennifer Gnana

People of Tunisia and Egypt say, "Wow, look at Turkey".

That was Turkey's chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis, in conversation with Folly Bah Thibault on Al Jazeera recently.

The sweeping reform movements changing the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, which is loosely termed the Arab Spring, look for inspiration in Turkey.

With its radical reforms after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has always been the guiding light for reformation in Arab societies.

With its steady economic growth and growing self-confidence as a negotiator, Turkey's clout in the region has increased in the last year.

America's indecision at the start of the revolution in Egypt and its ambiguous stance with regard to its Fifth Fleet base Bahrain, has weakened America's hegemony in the region.

With America's old ally Hosni Mubarak, who was the face of progress in the region now on trial for human rights abuses, the post is vacant for Turkey to assume as the democratic face of the region.

While the Islamist movements in the newly liberated MENA countries don't admire Turkey's secularism, they would like to ape its system of democratic governance.

However, Turkey is hardly the candidate for a democratic inspiration.

While the country operates on some form of democracy, its laurels rest on a tainted past.

It's bloody campaign against Kurds and Armenians resulting in over a million deaths is well-documented.

For a country like Libya which began its transition to democracy with the brutal murder of its previous leader Muammar Gaddafi, this is hardly a great inspiration.

This would tantamount to upholding China's growth trajectory as a model for developing nation, ignoring its costs and the human rights abuses that have been committed in its backyard.

On the other hand, the region has much to learn from Armenia.

Unlike Turkey, it has not shoved its traditional customs under the carpet.

Armenians are a proud people and as much as they like integration with the global economy, they are acutely aware of their uniqueness of their cultural heritage.

The story goes that Mustafa Kemal, who unified the Turkish nation and is popularly celebrated as the Great Turk (Ataturk) was once ridiculed for his fez.

He vowed that once he came to power, he would outlaw the fez from the realms of the new nation.

Accordingly, the traditional hijab is banned and outward expressions of the Islamic faith have been reined in.

The enforcement is such that traditional Muslim girls wear a wig to university instead of the headscarf as one would not be allowed to study at Turkish universities if they were seen wearing a religious symbol.

Armenia on the other hand celebrates its national symbols and its unique language.

Though it has closed its borders with two of its three neighbours, it maintains good relations with the European Union, Iran and Russia, the major players in the region.

If the Arab Spring needs inspiration, it needs to look East, not to Turkey but to where Noah once found refuge.

Time for Recognition

By Jennifer Gnana

What's in a name?

An identity, a legacy and remembrance, maybe?

What if something didn't have a name?

It is highly likely that the person or event will not be remembered, cherished or studied in the years to come.

The world community's refusal and hesitance in calling the brutal massacres of the Armenian people at the turn of the previous century, is tantamount to obliterating the horrible events for posterity.

Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response calls it "double killing" because it murders the memory of the event.

Even a country such as Israel, home to the Jews who bore the full brunt of the atrocities tested on the Armenians only a few years before are hesitant to acknowledge it as genocide.

The hesitancy on part of the global community is thanks to the power wielded by Turkey in Central Asia and the Middle East.

The country is viewed as the bridge between "the East and the West, between Islam and Christianity, a bridge between Asia and Europe, a bridge between energy resources and consumers" as Turkey's chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis said recently in an interview with Al Jazeera.

As a former Islamic country that has successfully marched ahead, thanks to its secularist policies and reforms brought about by Mustafa Kemal who unified the Turkish nation, there is a new confidence in the stride of the nation.

One of the few nations in the Middle East that maintains relations with Israel, it is viewed as a strategic ally which cannot be condemned.

Moreover, as a base for US operations in Iraq, Turkey has become an indispensable friend of the West.

Do friends however, base their relationship on mutual admiration and tide over failings and atrocities?

In Turkey's case, they do.

Before assuming office, US President Barack Obama had vowed that he would see to it that he would put an end to genocides everywhere.

Now about to campaign for reelection, we may expect to hear that slogan again.

This is because in the term he has served in office, he has refused to term the massacres of Armenians as genocide.

In spite of the fact that the US House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee passed a non-binding measure calling on the Obama administration to call the killings, a genocide, the president has shied away from using the term.

The non-binding measure however, invited the wrath of Ankara which promptly recalled its ambassador to the US.

If Turkey can afford to act with such diplomatic impunity, what stops the United States from officially condemning Turkey's genocide of Armenians.

The only government so far, to recognise the Armenian genocide is France.

President Nicholas Sarkozy has been one of the vocal critics of Turkey and has continuously opposed Ankara's bid to join the European Union till it stopped denying the genocide.

A bill has been submitted to the French parliament which seeks to make it a criminal offence to deny the Jewish holocaust and the Armenian genocide.

This move has angered many in Turkey who see it as an unpleasant reminder of the past which does not suit a modern nation like Turkey.

While Turkey would not like to be clubbed along with cruel regimes of Cambodia's Pol Pot, Hitler's Germany and the genocide in Rwanda, it would do well to remember that normalising relations with its brutalised neighbour begins with calling a spade a spade.

Freedom of Press, still to be desired in the Caucasus

By Jennifer Gnana

"People in this country in the last years whether paranoid or not, have been afraid to talk even on their phones," said newly elected Turkish opposition member of parliament Professor Binnaz Toprak in a recent interview with Al Jazeera.
He could easily have been talking about its neighbourhood foe Armenia.
Press freedom is a rare find in the Caucasus region and for all the much touted democratic credentials of Turkey and Armenia, neither are seminal upholders of freedom of expression.
While Turkey has a draconian law against "insulting Turkishness", Armenia on the other hand has recently decriminalised libel, which in effect has allowed politicians to file defamation suits against newspapers that criticise them.
In Turkey, anything said against the Turkish nation, ethnicity or government institutions, is punishable by imprisonment of up to three years.
This law gained worldwide notoriety when Turkey jailed its prominent Nobel-prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk for denouncing the Turkish government's killing of Kurdish people and the genocide of Armenians.
Others, if not imprisoned have been killed.
Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist editor of the bi-lingual newspaper Agos who was once tried under the same law was assassinated in 2007.
The killing which led to huge international outcry, also brought to light the often difficult conditions journalists in the region work under.
Turkey has been ranked 138th in the Press Freedom report released by Freedom House while Armenia has been labelled "partially free".
While talking about why journalists in Turkey are being arrested under an anti-terrorism law, Turkey's chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis said that one can't question the judicial system and that journalists have to merely put up with it.
Citing his own example- he was once tried for defamation in Turkey, he made a sweeping remark, "This is how things are" and that being a young democracy, Turkey has to be excused.
In Armenia meanwhile, a news website had a defamation suit filed on it for the comments posted online by its readers.
Newspapers such as Zhamanak and Hraparak face hefty penalties from an ex-president and his family who have even threatened to seize the papers' assets.
Journalists in Armenia say that it is difficult to carry on their work when they have to face defamation suits constantly.
The Constitutional Court is reviewing the modification to the defamation law so that it becomes difficult for powerful persons to act with impunity.
Whether it is through laws to prevent denigration of national identity or gagging through defamation laws, press freedom in the Caucasus is still a long shot away.

The Armenian Genocide

By Jennifer Gnana

Louis de Berniere, in his book, Birds without Wings recounts a poignant episode that foreshadowed the eventual pogrom against Armenians throughout the Ottoman Empire and the silence of the empire's ethnically diverse subjects.

Levon the Armenian accidentally brushes against Constantinos, his neighbour in the fictional Ottoman village of Eskibahçe.

The drunken Greek lashes out against Levon and within seconds, the Armenian is on the ground pleading for his life.

His mercy plea is interesting to hear, "I am a loyal Ottoman. Long live the Sultan Padishah. I am an Ottoman Long live the Sultan. Long live the Empire.'

Constantinos lowers his foot at that instant and curses him as a pig.

What is galling, the author observes later is the initial laughter and the silence of the people who stood around and watched Levon's humiliation.

"Shame on you all," Levon says to the crowd as he makes his way out.

As events unfolded for the worse in Eskibahçe, Levon and his family would perish as they were led away to a "safe haven" as decreed by the Sultan by bands of armed Kurds called hamidye.

Only his three pretty daughters were spared, thanks to the intervention of the local Turkish landlord Rustem Bey who was benevolent to all his subjects regardless of whether they were Greek or Armenian, Christian or Muslim.

For more than a million other Armenians however, there was no Rustem Bey and no intervention as they were massacred in the most heartless manner throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Forced marches, to a supposedly better place where they would be "safe" resulted in the starvation, torture, death and rape of thousands of Armenians.

The holocaust of the Armenians, preceded that of the Jewish race by Nazi Germany.

While the latter is widely acknowledged, the former is not.

The genocide of the 1.5million Armenians was the outcome of the Armenian question that troubled the Ottoman empire during the last days of its existence.

Can Christians under the rule of the Sultan be accorded equal treatment as its Muslim subjects?

Under the caliphate, the Christians living in the empire, Armenians, the Assyrians as well as the Greeks had to pay taxes for being dhimmi, or infidels.

The overtaxed and overworked Armenians were also looked upon with despise as they occupied a lot of service sector jobs.

In the same book by de Berniere, a Greek boy teaches his Muslim friend the Greek alphabet and the latter uses the script to write Turkish.

His reason for learning to write in Greek language was to be educated so he can earn as much as the Greeks and Armenians.

Education amongst the Armenians enabled them to be skilled unlike the Muslims who were often educated only in the tenets of Islam.

The first phase of the Armenian holocaust, according to some is classified to have taken place from 1894 to 1896 when the Sultan became increasingly paranoid and hostile to any calls for reforms in the treatment of his subjects.

He blamed the Armenians for the "hostilities and endless persecutions from the Christian world".

Influenced by American Protestants who had made gradual inroads into the largely Orthodox Christian populations and established schools, the Armenians began to stir against being treated as second class citizens.

When the calls for equal treatment also seemed to come from Western powers, the Sultan became increasingly annoyed.

What irked him further was the increasing closeness of the Armenians to Russia whom they even served as volunteers in the army.

The sultan's settlement of the Armenian question was their elimination. In this he was no different from the Adolf Hitler whose 'Final Solution' was also the wiping out of the Jewish race.

Sultan Hamid's paranoia and hatred eventually led to the deaths of 80,000 to 300,000 Armenians and earned him the name "Bloody Sultan'' in the foreign press.

The newly formed Young Turks movement that deposed of the Sultan and sought to build a Turkish nation based on the rising Turkish nationalism was no kinder to the Armenians who had hoped for the much needed reforms.

When the new government led by War Minister Enver Pasha decided to win back lands claimed by the Russians, the latter conscripted Armenians to be volunteers.

When the Turks were defeated in their endeavour, Pasha blamed the Armenians for the defeat.

The mistrust that followed was translated into a blueprint for genocide, assiduously followed by Nazis only a few years later.

Armenians, by virtue of being Christians were disqualified from serving in the Ottoman army and forced to join the labour battalions instead.

A precursor to the labour camps organised by the Nazis, many Armenians were executed in these "battalions" by the Turks.

The deportation of some 250 Armenian intellectuals from Constantinople on April 24, 1915 marked the beginning of the new government's extermination campaign.

What followed after was a spectacle of utmost cruelty.

Entire populations of women and children were burned as the quickest way to kill them en masse by Turkish forces, while others were killed by being thrown overboard ships.

Turkish doctors also participated in the mass extermination campaign by administering overdose of morphine to children, gassing them as well as inoculating them with the blood of typhoid patients.

The consequence of such widespread barbarity that resulted in over a million deaths was the coining of the word 'genocide' in the year 1943.

However, definitions as they are solve little of the problem, they do not deliver justice, expiate sins or help a reconciliation and healing process.

Country Profile: Armenia, Noah's Land

By Jennifer Gnana

Legend has it that when God's fury subsided and the waters of the Great Flood receded, Noah's ark and with it the future of humanity came it rest on the Mountains of Ararat in Armenia

Hayastan, as the Persians called Armenia is in a sense the cradle of civilisation itself.

Generations of humans can trace their lineage and ancestry to the Ararat mountaintop where ancient biblical accounts state that humanity sprung forth after a vanquishing cataclysm.

Noah, together with the male and female pair of animals and humans, stepped out of the ark and into a new world.

The sins of the angels, which the Bible recounts, had prompted the wrath of God to come down heavily upon mankind.

However, with the signing of the new covenant between man and God, the rainbow that followed the receding of the deluge marked the promise that the Heavens shall never again wipe out all of humanity with another Great Flood.

It is in fact heartrending, to say the least that the mountain of hope and the national symbol of the Armenian people is no longer part of their geographical domain.

The historical mountain looms large over the skyline of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, which is believed to be one of the oldest cities in the world.

The mountain however, is present in modern day Turkey, a country with which Armenia shares a bitter and bloody relationship.

The genocide of an estimated million Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman empire and during the formation of modern Turkey have left scars and open wounds that seemingly look difficult to heal.

The refusal of Turkey to acknowledge the genocide of Armenians is one of the major contentions of the European Union when deliberating Ankara's membership to the EU.

A landlocked country in the Caucasus, Armenia was the first to break free from the iron manacles of Soviet Russia in 1991 and today enjoys good relations with the Russian Federation as well as the EU.

Probably one of the few countries to be on terms with all the warring sides of global politics, Armenia, is also friendly to Islamic Republic of Iran.

Both history and culture have contributed to the bonhomie between the world's first Christian country and the Islamic republic.

Save Tehran, Armenia is surrounded by neighbours it does not enjoy friendly relations with.

Apart from Turkey, Azerbaijan which borders Armenia has been engaged in a conflict over the status of the semi-autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian majority enclave.

With closed borders and a bitter legacy of much bloodshed on the pages of its history, Armenia has been commendable in maintaing its unique cultural heritage and marching with confidence into the twenty-first century.

The aid inflows after the genocide from wealthy and influential Armenian diaspora, especially from the United States helped resurrect its economy and the standard of living of the Armenian people.

Various challenges lie ahead in terms of reconciling the bloody past, working to alleviate poverty, bridging neighbourhood relations as well as seeking solutions to territorial disputes.

The important 'Armenian Question' today is to study the atrocious human rights abuses perpetrated on the Armenian people at the turn of the last century and ensure that such tragedies do not happen once again.

It is imperative that the country which once gave hope to humanity will now serve as a beacon for redressal of human rights abuses everywhere.