Arbak Khachatryan: How to defeat state terrorism

Independent human rights advocate and geopolitical expert Arbak Khachatryan is a regular commentator for our newspaper. All his gloomy forecasts come true—about problems in Russia’s relations with Georgia, Ukraine, and Turkey, the danger of ISIS, and the economic crisis. He warned about every significant challenge to civilization long before it appeared.

But Khachatryan does more than predict; he never stops repeating that there is a way out of this nightmare. That way out lies in the principles of “People’s Diplomacy” that he promotes. Arbak Khachatryan has never placed personal safety and comfort above state interests. He wrote his first open letters to Vladimir Putin back in 2003–2004, when he was an adviser to the Russian Federation’s human rights ombudsman: “Many decisions are made for publicity and bring temporary, local gains. We see shortsighted actions that will play only a negative role for Russia in the future… I think there will be similar problems with Ukraine, where anti-Russian sentiments are gradually growing…” In spring 2015, when ISIS and Novorossiya had already become realities, Khachatryan was still urging recognition and removal of the root cause of the world’s evil: “In 2003, when I warned about Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine, they laughed.

They no longer laugh. But the true causes of the unfolding local and global crises are not being addressed either. They never will be while the old libertarian economic model operates, while the so-called ‘golden billion’ runs the world and 70 percent of Earth’s population goes hungry. Russia’s economy, the banking sector, everyone follows this model like diligent pupils. Without reorienting the economy toward serving society as a whole rather than the ‘chosen few,’ we will continue suffering defeat after defeat.

The ideological component does not matter—ISIS Salafism, Bandera-style nationalism in Ukraine, or the Houthis in Yemen. What matters is that a well-fed people will not overthrow its government.” At the same time, in April 2015, when “the Russian and the Turk” were still “brothers forever,” Khachatryan warned: “TurkStream, presented to Russians as an enormous victory, is actually a time bomb. Yes, it promises economic benefit. But that is precisely the difference between a wheeler-dealer and a statesman: the latter looks beyond the next inflow of money.”

So it is no surprise that we asked Arbak Shaumyanovich to comment on the latest heated events in Armenia. — You cautiously called what is happening in Yerevan “heated events.” Official Yerevan calls it terrorism. But on which side of the barricades was the terrorism? We know very well that terrorists seek victims regardless of age, sex, or nationality. These young men wanted no victims; they risked only their own lives, taking this desperate step out of complete hopelessness merely to change the country’s catastrophic situation.

— Look: for the last 20 years, Armenia’s state apparatus has worked only for personal interests; a “handful of people” enriched themselves and money was taken abroad. As a result, labor emigration amounted to 50 percent of the population! The remaining 50 percent drag out a miserable existence and survive only thanks to tiny remittances from those who left to work. Isn’t the state responsible for mass emigration, broken families, and poverty? Imagine 70 million people leaving a Russia of 150 million for permanent residence or work in other countries—what would you call those who allowed that?

Enemies of the people, at the very least! The causes of what happened therefore lie in a state policy of state terror toward its own people. This is state terrorism because the state apparatus is protected from its own people both materially—accounts and property abroad—and by the so-called law. For 20 years, the government has treated the people as slaves without rights, and it has received a slave revolt, because the Armenian people are not slaves and never were, and Armenia is not a raw-material appendage of modern “Roman empires.”

But Armenia’s government evidently does not remember history if it thinks that, because the “West” tries to enslave the “Third World,” it can simply enslave its own people with impunity. — Well, it was not only the “West” that had a hand here; anti-Russian rhetoric and expectations of a “Yerevan Maidan” were also heard. — Armenia is not Ukraine; it does not want a “color revolution.” If it did, the blaze would have erupted long ago. But one similarity cannot be denied: the Kremlin’s unchanging policy, and that of its appointed viceroys, since the destruction of the USSR.

Some statesmen not only turned a blind eye but were accomplices of the viceroys who grabbed property and enormous sums, hiding them in accounts controlled by America and the West—offshore accounts are also under their control. For example, hundreds of billions of dollars flowed into Ukraine over the past 20 years, but reached neither Crimea, Donbas, nor Ukraine’s population, instead settling in personal accounts. This is not simple theft; when the time comes, it is used for political and strategic purposes.

Those accounts become levers of control against Russia. Today, those people who were supposedly political figures and earned at Russia’s expense become its foremost enemies. A few days ago, Armenians from California called me. They said there was a demonstration outside Armenia’s embassy against Armenia’s president, with many people and placards… I asked them: have you ever, in these 20 years, officially approached the US tax service or the FBI to ask where officials, rulers, and deputies from Armenia got the hundreds of millions they keep in American bank accounts?

They buy mansions worth tens of millions. Investigate and return that money to the Armenian people. Then we would see what happens when it touches them personally. And it is even more astonishing that something is common knowledge but “bothers” nobody: some former Armenian leaders own shares in Russian enterprises. Quite a supplement to a pension… Though what is there to say—enormous sums have also been taken out of Russia. Have the United States or the West ever investigated the origin of these funds and informed Russia’s competent authorities?

These are all levers later used in politics. — Yes, but how can those levers be used for good? How can tracing financial flows stop world wars and terrorism? And who can, and above all will want to, do it? — Tentatively and timidly, people around the world have recently begun talking about the financial trail of wars and terrorism. Previously, that was impossible: neither at Nuremberg nor at The Hague did they even try to hold accountable those who financed Nazism and the Third Reich, for example.

As long as these puppeteers at various levels, from small states to the global scale, continue to rule and profit, there will be wars and terror. It does not matter how they are presented: on national or religious grounds, or to change territorial borders. I do not want to play the oracle again, but you see for yourselves that geopolitical processes are now galloping ahead! If we do not break this criminal international system of state terrorism now, the whole world will soon catch fire; no quiet corners will remain.

It seems they are consciously moving toward destroying or reducing Earth’s population. But what must be done to stop this bloody, barbaric feast? I have voiced this simple recipe in your newspaper repeatedly: “Everything stolen from the people must be returned to the people. And mandatory public repentance by all the creators and operators of this criminal financial system. Then we will forgive all loans issued to create small businesses and sustain an ordinary person’s family. The principle of the state’s new financial and economic strategy—whether Armenia’s or, incidentally, Russia’s—is very simple and long known: the state for the person, not the person for the state.

It goes without saying that ordinary people will support the new course.” How many more terrorist attacks must happen before the civilized world finally understands what must be done? — So far, we see the exact opposite: on the day after the terrorist attack at Istanbul Airport, the Turkish tourist destination is opened to Russians. — I have repeatedly spoken about the danger of friendly embraces with Turkey’s current leadership. But in this situation, I see a very pragmatic geopolitical move by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: taking advantage of America’s and NATO’s mistakes in Turkey and trying to shake the North Atlantic alliance from within.

Turkey is NATO’s most powerful member in Europe in terms of weaponry and numbers. And this is a very correct step: it was NATO, with US participation, of course, that ineptly failed to create a united global anti-terrorist front. Moreover, NATO’s entire bloody history places it in the front ranks of state terrorists. Through carpet bombing in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya and the senseless destruction not merely of cities but entire countries, they did not fight terrorism but only helped it spread.

So the time has come for new alliances, even if they appear unexpected at first glance.