How It Feels to Be an American Sharing a Border with a Totalitarian Dictator

For the last month, Azerbaijani "environmentalist protestors" have been blocking the Lachin corridor, the only road going in or out of Nagorno-Karabkh (Artsakh), preventing supplies, medical services, and human movement in or out of the disputed region with limited exceptions.

There's a reason I used scare quotes around the label "environmentalist protestors." Even though that's how they have identified themselves, their actions are more in line with terrorists and/or puppets of a totalitarian regime intent on wiping out the Armenian population. After all, if their concern were really about illegal mining as they claim, one might reasonably expect them to block access to the mines themselves, not the entire population of 120,000 people that has nothing to do with mining.

Obviously, theories abound that the people committing this crime and threatening innocent Armenian lives are actually agents working on behalf of President Ilham Aliyev and the government of Azerbaijan to kill or force the Armenian population out of the region. This will make it all that much easier to take the territory by force, as they partially succeeded in doing during the six-week war in 2020. Without food, gas, and urgent medical services in the middle of winter, the lives of the most vulnerable will be lost, and morale will be similarly crippled among those who survive.

I was surprised to finally see major international news outlets like Forbes and the BBC officially reporting on what they are now calling a humanitarian crisis. The reason I find this surprising is due to how little public attention was given three years ago when Azerbaijan attacked and invaded Artsakh. Those major outlets that did report on it mostly took a neutral position, urging "both sides to end the conflict peacefully" and refusing to assign accountability to the aggressors, even when they repeatedly attacked civilian homes and infrastructure.

Perhaps because the recent act of blocking the Lachin corridor is not an official action sanctioned by the Azerbaijani government, the media is more willing to call them out and label a spade for what it is. They don't have to risk invoking the ire of dictatorial world powers with powerful armies who control much of Europe's precious oil supply. Perhaps in matters of politics and governments, we should wait until the official narrative has been released by forming our own interpretations and casting blame, but individuals are still subject to public scrutiny.

Last year, I became acquainted with Armenian journalist Ashkhen Arakelyan. When I met her, she had recently written the book Sadistic Pleasures: Silent Crimes of Azerbaijan. It documented her experience interviewing 14 Armenian POWs who were captured by the military of Azerbaijan during the Fourty-Four Day War in 2020. The first-hand accounts of torture and evil contained in the book are gruesome but important. Ashkhen's hope was to get the attention of international human rights organizations and the United Nations that still, somehow, manage to ignore what's going on in this part of the world despite abundant evidence for it.

I knew right away that I wanted to help Ashkhen raise international awareness of what was really going on between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Like almost everyone else living in Armenia, I was tired of seeing the world turn a blind eye to the crimes against humanity going on here. After all, the whole world has gone up in arms over Russia's invasion of and crimes against the citizenry of Ukraine. But it seems that resisting the expansion of dictatorial control doesn't serve the global political narrative when those dictators happen to come from Azerbaijan or Turkey.

Until there is international recourse, there is no security for anyone living in Armenia, least of all those in Artsakh or anywhere near the border with Azerbaijan. This includes me, an American who acquired citizenship and moved here only a few years ago. My home in Kalavan village is only about an hour from the border in Chambarak.

This is not the type of reality the average American is accustomed to dealing with back home. Freedom, security, and comfort are things we generally take for granted as the norm. And when those things are threatened, it is almost always by our own government expanding its reach into our lives and infringing on our rights. Virtually no American ever lies away at night worried that a foreign entity exerting its superior physical might could spontaneously drone strike their neighborhood or send tanks and fighter jets to take away the life they have built for themselves—or that no one would really care if they did. If such an act were even militarily possible, the whole world would be watching. Countless nations and international agencies would speak out in protest at the audacity of another nation attacking American citizens in the land of the free.

The concept of taking international security for granted is something I went out of my way to address in my economics book Everyone Is an Entrepreneur: Selling Economic Self-Determination in a Post-Soviet World in chapter five, "Asset Security—Protecting Accumulated Wealth from the Inherent Risk of Loss."

"Houses and other forms of real estate might seem like one of the safest and most reliable forms of material wealth… But houses are still vulnerable to material loss in many forms. Earthquakes and other natural disasters happen even in places not known for them. Careless mistakes lead to housefires that can grow out of control even with smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, and a nearby fire department. Improperly protected pipes can freeze and burst in winter, leading to flooding that causes untold amounts of water damage. There is even wanton vandalism to consider, as there is nothing guaranteeing that someone senseless looking to cause trouble won't spontaneously decide to throw a rock through your window."

"In my situation in Kalavan village, I even have to actively consider the threat to my house posed by Armenia's neighbors on either side that have openly expressed intentions of territorial expansion into many regions of Armenia, including specifically the province where my village is located (Gegharkunik). If the infantry of Azerbaijan or Turkey follows orders to cross international borders, march up the road to my house, and force the evacuation of my village at gunpoint, I will have little choice but to accept a total loss of the material wealth of my home here, including all the possessions I cannot physically carry with me and the many thousands of dollars worth of home renovations I have paid for."

How am I meant to defend myself against this type of threat? There is no insurance to cover such a loss. There is no lock I can put on my door that would be strong enough to keep my attackers and their automatic rifles and mortar shells out. Even the combined might of the army of Armenia is only partially effective at keeping the wolves at bay.

The only long-term tenable defense against military or humanitarian crises is international public opinion. When enough people start to care about a crime, its perpetrators receive social disincentives against continuing it. They only attack others and take from them for their own benefit to the extent that they believe they can get away with it. The punishment for harming others needs to outweigh the reward. Raising awareness is the best shot I have at continuing to exert my own freedom and existence here.

That's why I worked with Ashkhen through my company, Identity Publications, to bring Sadistic Pleasures to the Western market through popular book sales channels like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For this second edition of Sadistic Pleasures, I wrote a new foreword detailing my experience as an American-Armenian living in a village near the Azerbaijani border during that tumultuous and uncertain time.

"I am an American of partial-Armenian descent from California who became repatriated in Armenia in 2019… In September 2020, I was living a peaceful life in my village home in Kalavan in the Gegharkunik province of Armenia when news of the war with Azerbaijan over Artsakh reached my neighbors. For a month and a half, we waited each day to hear developing news of the potential for escalation and whether our village, being only an hour or so from the border with Azerbaijan, would be under threat from bombing or military invasion."

"The reality of life for Armenians living so close to neighbors with ambitions of territorial expansion fully hit me when my teenage neighbor stopped by my house to urge me to keep all my lights off at night in case drones operated by the army of Azerbaijan would be patrolling the area at night looking for populated areas to strike for the purposes of inducing terror and demoralization among Armenians. The fact that this request did not seem strange or terrifying to him made me wonder how my American friends back home might react to what would be an unthinkable situation to residents of a politically and militarily secure nation like the USA."

I went on to elaborate in the foreword why it's so important that we get this information out to the world. It's not merely a matter of the general public not caring about what happens to little old Armenia. In many cases, it's that they literally cannot legally access this information. Control of information is a necessary part of how totalitarian governments work. They indoctrinate their populations with propaganda that supports their official narrative of events and justifies all their crimes.

"During those awful six weeks and in the year since, I have been witness to endless state-sponsored internet propaganda put out by those who control the official political narrative in Azerbaijan. Those Armenians who attempt to call attention to what is really going on have been attacked by ordinary Azerbaijani people for daring to even call into question whatever the government tells them is the truth. However, the fate of independent journalists attempting to report the truth within Azerbaijan has been far worse."

"There was and continues to be an information war raging around the world about exactly what happened and who is at fault for countless crimes committed in the name of political agendas. During the war, Azerbaijan's internet access quickly became heavily censored by its own government. Even now, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Azerbaijan quite low at number 167 out of 180 in their press freedom index and condemns the country for its rampant jailing of journalists who dare speak out against their sanctioned version of history and their present actions. It should be no surprise then that what really goes on during times of military conflict and how POWs are treated remains hidden from public knowledge both domestically and abroad."

Ultimately, anyone who is forced to form their worldview under conditions of strict informational control and take violent actions at the behest of politicians is a victim too. National pride and cultural ideology are dangerous things when trying to evaluate the truth. But bringing uncomfortable facts to light eliminates inhumanity and raises awareness of important problems, which creates social pressure to solve them and hold accountable those who perpetrate them. The less that we tolerate it, the less that things can continue to go on in the unacceptable way they have. Truth and information will be our salvation.