Armenia fights to survive isolation
Isolated: A file photo shows the Araks river and Ararat mountain (background) on the Armenian-Turkish border. Tantalisingly close and cruelly distant, Armenia's national symbol, the legendary Mount Ararat, soars just beyond reach for a country fighting to escape isolation.Picture: AFP (FILES) A file picture taken 15 May 2004 shows the Araks river and Ararat mountain (background) on the Armenian-Turkish border. Tantalisingly close and cruelly distant, Armenia's national symbol, the legendary Mount Ararat, soars just beyond reach for a c
Saturday, March 17, 2007
TANTALISINGLY close and cruelly distant, Armenia's national symbol, the legendary Mount Ararat, soars just beyond reach for a country fighting to escape isolation.
The snow-capped mountain — named in the Bible as the place Noah's Ark grounded after the Great Flood — dominates the horizon from as far away as Armenia's capital Yerevan.
But that proximity is an illusion. The extinct volcano lies just across Armenia's hostile border with Turkey, turning a centuries-old source of inspiration into an emblem of this Christian people's growing difficulties.
"Ararat symbolises all Armenia, all the pain in our soul," Arsen Yegikian, 32, an auditor, said as he visited the church of Khor Virap, a popular viewing point on the frontier.
All four of Armenia's borders are either closed or problematic, forcing this landlocked and resource-poor state of three million people to struggle for access to the world.
Turkey shut its land border in 1993 in support of Armenia's eastern neighbour, Azerbaijan, which lost a war in the early 1990s with Armenian forces for control of Nagorny Karabakh and a swath of other Azeri territory.
On the Azeri-Armenian border, the cut-off encompasses air, rail, road, telephone and postal links.
Meanwhile, Armenians can only access their main economic and military ally Russia through Georgia to the north and the road route is all but excluded due to Russian-Georgian tensions.
The way south to Iran is open and a new pipeline bringing Iranian gas is about to enter service, but with Tehran and Washington in a dangerous stand-off many here are afraid that border could also shut.
"If something happens tomorrow with Iran — God forbid — it will be even harder," Deputy Foreign Minister Arman Kirakossian told AFP.
Increasingly Armenia, a proud nation with an ancient language and unique alphabet, finds itself left out of projects that are transforming the rest of the ex-Soviet Caucasus.
New oil and gas pipelines snaking from Azerbaijan to Western markets bypass to the north. Just last month, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey agreed to build a new east-west railway route — again missing Armenia.
The people of this starkly beautiful and rugged land are trying to fight back and last year gross domestic product (GDP) posted double-digit growth.
One key to salvation has been a diaspora estimated at almost nine million people scattered across the United States, Russia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
These are descendants of refugees from the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th century and about a million others who left the poverty of post-Soviet Armenia during the last 15 years. Their transfers to Armenia amounted to US$1.2 billion last year.AFP
The snow-capped mountain — named in the Bible as the place Noah's Ark grounded after the Great Flood — dominates the horizon from as far away as Armenia's capital Yerevan.
But that proximity is an illusion. The extinct volcano lies just across Armenia's hostile border with Turkey, turning a centuries-old source of inspiration into an emblem of this Christian people's growing difficulties.
"Ararat symbolises all Armenia, all the pain in our soul," Arsen Yegikian, 32, an auditor, said as he visited the church of Khor Virap, a popular viewing point on the frontier.
All four of Armenia's borders are either closed or problematic, forcing this landlocked and resource-poor state of three million people to struggle for access to the world.
Turkey shut its land border in 1993 in support of Armenia's eastern neighbour, Azerbaijan, which lost a war in the early 1990s with Armenian forces for control of Nagorny Karabakh and a swath of other Azeri territory.
On the Azeri-Armenian border, the cut-off encompasses air, rail, road, telephone and postal links.
Meanwhile, Armenians can only access their main economic and military ally Russia through Georgia to the north and the road route is all but excluded due to Russian-Georgian tensions.
The way south to Iran is open and a new pipeline bringing Iranian gas is about to enter service, but with Tehran and Washington in a dangerous stand-off many here are afraid that border could also shut.
"If something happens tomorrow with Iran — God forbid — it will be even harder," Deputy Foreign Minister Arman Kirakossian told AFP.
Increasingly Armenia, a proud nation with an ancient language and unique alphabet, finds itself left out of projects that are transforming the rest of the ex-Soviet Caucasus.
New oil and gas pipelines snaking from Azerbaijan to Western markets bypass to the north. Just last month, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey agreed to build a new east-west railway route — again missing Armenia.
The people of this starkly beautiful and rugged land are trying to fight back and last year gross domestic product (GDP) posted double-digit growth.
One key to salvation has been a diaspora estimated at almost nine million people scattered across the United States, Russia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
These are descendants of refugees from the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th century and about a million others who left the poverty of post-Soviet Armenia during the last 15 years. Their transfers to Armenia amounted to US$1.2 billion last year.AFP
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