As the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq approaches, the War on Terror has all but receded from public memory. It’s hard to blame ordi

The West is betraying Armenia

submited by

Style Pass

2023-02-07 15:30:05

As the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq approaches, the War on Terror has all but receded from public memory. It’s hard to blame ordinary people in the West for forgetting the wreckage left behind by their leaders. But the war’s victims can’t afford such amnesia. Among the most aggrieved are the Middle East’s Christians, who saw their ranks thinned by the instability created by the pro-democracy wars of an earlier age.

Now, another indigenous Christian community, this time in the South Caucasus, faces similarly bleak prospects. I’m speaking of the Armenians, who increasingly find themselves on the wrong side of the same with-us-or-against-us mentality that animated Washington hawks in the post-9/11 era; who are learning, too, that the European Union will happily cashier its loftiest claims about democracy and human rights when cold realpolitik demands it.

As I write, some 120,000 Armenians, including 30,000 children, have spent the best part of two months under a blockade imposed by Azerbaijan’s president-for-life, Ilham Aliyev. Food, medication and other critical necessities can’t reach the Armenians, except in meager amounts transported by the Red Cross. Amid freezing temperatures, the Baku regime periodically shuts off their gas supply, while threatening to shoot down aircraft attempting to bring humanitarian aid.