When Armenians open eyes of Armenians

By Leyla Tarverdiyeva, Day.Az

The massive looting that befell the lands of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia during and after the First Karabakh War probably knows no equal in scale and cynicism. Unfortunately, for many years the Azerbaijani side had only to state that our towns and villages were literally dissolving, being pulled apart by the Armenians brick by brick. 

The occupiers dragged everything that had been abandoned by the fleeing Azerbaijanis. Fleeing from the massacre, people had no time for their possessions, no time for household goods, sometimes they even had no time to put on shoes. And everything that was left in orphaned homes was taken away by the invaders. From Armenia, they came specifically to maraud into the captured villages and took out household utensils, furniture, and building materials by trucks.

After the genocide in Khojaly, Russian journalist Ivleeva was allowed into the city by the Armenians and filmed what was happening there. The lens of her camera caught men dragging bales of Khojaly residents' property. These are residents of neighboring Armenian villages who were waiting for the city to be cleared of residents in order to come in and rob quietly. No one bothers them.

I remembered this because one of the Armenian users of social networks, who fought in the First Karabakh War, spoke about the Armenian looting the other day. He recalled that during the occupation of Shusha in May 1992, the invaders who entered the city saw Armenian looters who were already actively looting abandoned houses. The looters entered the city even before the armed gangs and quietly did their job while the battle was going on.

Apparently, Sevak, who participated in the occupation, was indelibly impressed by this scene, so he cannot forget it to this day. Perhaps that moment became a kind of moment of truth for him, revealing to him the whole truth about the behavioral characteristics of his people. This man does not live in Armenia and therefore, apparently, is telling the truth. He openly and contemptuously says that after the occupation, the Armenians looted the largest irrigation system in the South Caucasus, dismantled railway tracks, and sold them for scrap. In short, they dragged everything that could be dragged away. Apparently, the revelations spilled out during the discussion about the Great Return program being implemented by Azerbaijan and the pace at which the liberated lands are being rebuilt.

However, Sevak did not discover America. Armenian looting is a phenomenon that neighbors should seriously address. Before the eyes of the whole world, illegal settlers, leaving Lachin and Kalbajar, took away everything that was lying badly. The Armenians themselves robbed the houses of their neighbors. I remembered the sensational video posted by Armenian blogger Vartan Ghukasyan on which depicted the robbed houses of Armenians living in Lachin. It was not the Azerbaijanis or the peacekeepers who did it, but the Armenians themselves.

"When I saw these pictures, I was shocked. The Armenians' houses in Berdzor (Lachin - ed.) were robbed by the Armenians themselves. Although robbery is an understatement. This is when electrical equipment, gold and money are taken out of houses, then this is called a robbery. But I do not know what word to find for the fact that windows, doors, tiles and toilets were taken out of houses. There is no definition of this in any language. And the most important thing is that it was not the Turks (Azerbaijanis - ed.) who did it, but the Armenians themselves! As soon as they heard that Berdzor was being rented, they rushed to empty the houses. They didn't even realize that Armenians still live in these houses," the blogger lamented. Obviously, I didn't expect this from my own people either. The shock resulted in a confession that sounded as follows: there are "many scum among the Armenians, the number of which continues to increase."

The same thing happened in Kalbajar before the Armenians left the area. And the Armenian media was shocked and shocked again. It would seem that it would be time for them to get used to it. The panorama of Aghdam, which was demolished into bricks, alone should have become a serious alarm signal for our neighbors, saying that their mentality is not all right. But no one noticed the towns and villages destroyed and looted during the occupation, and no one was interested in this. But during the mass looting in Lachin and Kalbajar, social networks already existed, and Armenian users did not hesitate, and even proudly shared their shameful deeds.
"With great regret, indignation and surprise, we record a disgusting phenomenon in the deserted Karvachar (Kalbajar - ed.) - looters. We draw the attention of law enforcement agencies - this is unacceptable under any circumstances," the Armenian media wrote in November 2020.

On the eve of the Azerbaijani army's entry into the Kalbajar region, Armenians, including those who came specifically from Armenia for looting, took everything away, cleaning out empty houses. Even lampposts were uprooted and taken out.
Another blogger, Roman Baghdasaryan, shocked his fellow countrymen again by telling the truth about the looting of graves and cultural heritage by Armenians. Baghdasaryan stated in a video he distributed that 70 percent of the tombstones in 7 districts around the former NKAO are missing. Looters did business on tombstones, tore up graves in search of gold teeth...

Armenian journalist Natalie Aleksanyan once shared her memories of her childhood during the first war. She herself happened to witness how, after the occupation, residents of Armenian villages drove trucks to the occupied Azerbaijani lands in order to plunder villages abandoned by Azerbaijanis. She admitted that she still does not understand why her tribesmen took everything out of the houses of Azerbaijanis, down to the dishes. She also does not understand how graves could be desecrated and destroyed, how corpses could be dug up in search of gold.

If we turn to earlier events, we can find a shocking truth there. In 1988, a catastrophic earthquake struck Armenia. Cities were destroyed and a huge number of people died. And again, the looters were "in place" before anyone else, before the rescuers and the military. We will not say anything, we will only quote from the memoirs of eyewitnesses published in different years in the Russian media:

"Looters are prowling in houses abandoned by people. They caught one in front of me, almost trampled to death. The military barely recaptured it. The worst thing is that not only houses are being robbed, but also the dead."

"No one was really there yet, neither rescuers nor the military, they entered the city only two days later. But looters were already scurrying through the ruins."
The hardest thing for the above-mentioned Sevak was not so much the looting of the Armenians, but the fact that the Azerbaijanis behaved completely differently even during the 44-day war. The liberators did not drag expensive equipment from the houses abandoned by the Armenians, while the Armenians, entering the occupied Azerbaijani villages, even took away toothbrushes.

Please note that everything that is said here is voiced by the Armenians themselves. This is especially valuable because it allows us to hope that for our neighbors, with all the rigidity of their ideological categories, not everything is lost.