Why the TVO strike matters to Ontario workers and Doug Ford's government

CBC
Sat, October 7, 2023 

Unionized journalists and educators picket outside TVO headquarters in Toronto. The 74 workers represented by the Canadian Media Guild have been on strike against Ontario's public broadcaster and educational channel since Aug. 21 (Alex Lupul/CBC - image credit)

The ongoing strike at Ontario's public broadcaster TVO involves just 74 employees, but the fate of their contract talks could have implications both for Premier Doug Ford's government and among the 1.2 million people in the province's public sector workforce.

The unionized journalists and educators represented by the Canadian Media Guild (CMG) have been on strike since Aug. 21, and recently rejected the below-inflation wage increases in what TVO management called its final offer.

With inflation running high, unions across Canada are looking for contract settlements that at least keep pace with the rising cost of living. That desire is particularly acute among Ontario's public sector, whose wage hikes were capped at one per cent annually for three years under the Ford government's Bill 124.

That legislation "worsened the cost-of-living crisis by holding down workers wages," said Patty Coates, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

"So we're seeing workers saying enough is enough. They're fed up and they're fighting to even just keep afloat," Coates said in an interview.

This negotiating context means the TVO labour dispute has high stakes that go beyond the broadcaster and its unionized staff.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford goes over his briefing notes with Transport Minister Caroline Mulroney as the legislature resumes at Queen's Park in Toronto on Tuesday, Feb.21, 2023.

In question period this week, Treasury Board President Caroline Mulroney said she encourages the two sides to reach a deal that protects the quality of public services while respecting the taxpayers. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

Brian Lewis, former chief economist in the Ontario Public Service, says contract deals in one part of the public sector have the potential to influence bargaining outcomes elsewhere.

"Precedents can be set and established when you're bargaining with one union," said Lewis, now a senior fellow with the Munk School for Global Affairs and Public Policy.

He says both management and unions often point to recent contract agreements in the sector to support their case for what a fair deal would be, especially on wages. That means there's plenty of attention from the provincial government on the pay increases that are offered to TVO's unionized staff.

"I think it's something, given the government is such a big employer with so many bargaining agents, that might concern them about the precedent that is set for much larger (unions)," Lewis said in an interview.

Both sides say wages key outstanding issue

He foresees many more unionized public sector workers aiming to catch up on wages that have been both constrained under Bill 124 and eroded by inflation.

"The government will want to try to protect the financial bottom line," said Lewis. "The implications are very tough collective bargaining."

Steve Paikin, host of TVO's The Agenda, on the picket line in September with other unionized TVO journalists and educators. The union members rejected TVO management's latest wage offer in early October, and union leadership said it's because the offer is below inflation.

Steve Paikin, host of TVO's The Agenda, on the picket line in September with other unionized TVO journalists and educators. The union members rejected TVO management's latest wage offer in early October, and union leadership said it's because the offer is below inflation. (Michael Wilson/CBC)

The Ford government budgeted $49 million this year for TVO's annual operating grant, its primary source of funding. TVO's mandate comes from Ontario's Ministry of Education and its board reports to Education Minister Stephen Lecce.

A sign that the Ford government is tuned into the potential financial implications of the contract talks: when the opposition NDP asked Lecce in question period if he will "direct TVO management to make a fair bargain with CMG workers," the cabinet minister responsible for the treasury answered.

"We encourage the two parties to continue working to find a resolution that supports the goal of protecting the sustainability and high quality of Ontario's public services while respecting the taxpayers who pay for them," said Treasury Board President Caroline Mulroney.

Both sides in the strike say wages are the key outstanding issue.TVO's final offer to the union included annual increases of three per cent, 2.75 per cent and 1.75 per cent, starting from to the expiration of the previous contract in 2022.

The union is seeking annual increases of 4.75 per cent, 4.25 per cent and four per cent, plus a $2,500 payment for all staff whose wages were capped under Bill 124.

'We do have conversations with government': TVO

Lewis's assessment as an economist: the union's wage proposal is "close in line" with recorded and projected inflation for the three-year time period, while management's offer is "well below."

Mask-wearing protesters rally on Nov. 12, 2021, outside the office of Nepean MPP Lisa MacLeod, demanding the Ontario government repeal of Bill 124, legislation from 2019 which caps annual salary increases for many public sector employees at an average of one per cent annually for three years.

The Ford government's Bill 124, which capped public sector wage increases at one per cent annually for three years, drew protests including this one by nurses in 2021, outside the offices of Nepean MPP Lisa MacLeod. (Francis Ferland/CBC)

"We believe that the offer that we put forward actually is a very fair one," said Mitch Patten, TVO's vice president of corporate and community affairs, in a phone interview.

The unionized TVO workers represented by CMG contend that the wage increases offered are not fair. (CMG also represents 4,500 programming and production staff at CBC/Radio-Canada, including CBC News journalists.)

"We've had our wages decrease in real terms over the last decade," said Meredith Martin, the union's branch president and a producer on TVO's flagship show The Agenda with Steve Paikin.

"We're not even asking for an inflationary increase in the first year, we're saying 4.75 per cent, which is well below inflation for 2022, is a reasonable place to start," Martin said during a news conference at Queen's Park this week.

Asked what role the Ford government is playing in the negotiations, Martin said it's unclear.

"But I will say the buck always stops with the premier of the province," she said. "The CEO of TVO is a government appointee and the head of the board of directors is a government appointee and they're making decisions, as far as I can say, in consultation with the government."

Commissioner Jeffrey Orridge and the CFL "parted ways" on Wednesday, according to a news release from the league. The former executive director of CBC Sports was named the 13th CFL commissioner in March 2015.

The Ford government appointed Jeffrey Orridge as TVO's chief executive in 2020. 'Although TVO has tabled its best and final monetary offer, should CMG have a non-monetary proposal regarding any issue that it feels will help us resolve this strike, TVO is ready to meet and discuss,' Orridge said in a statement on Oct. 1 (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press/File)

"Like any public agency, we do have conversations with government about our labour negotiations," said Patten, the TVO vice president.

"I'm really not prepared to get into the details of those conversations, but I can say that the overall message has been that they are looking to us to negotiate an agreement that is both fair to the workers and respectful of the of the taxpayer dollars we manage."

Union wants binding arbitration

The strike has meant no new episodes of The Agenda, and no new content from TVO journalists on its news and current affairs website. It also means the unionized educators who create curriculum materials for the TVO Learn website are not at work.

The union is asking the government to step in and send the dispute to binding arbitration.

A series of arbitration rulings in the wake of Bill 124 have awarded larger settlements to Ontario public sector unions. A Superior Court of Justice ruling found the wage cap bill unconstitutional, but the Ford government has appealed.

Last month, the 60,000-member Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation agreed to a process that would see any outstanding contract issues resolved by binding arbitration, without a strike.

Meanwhile the 83,000-member Elementary Teachers; Federation of Ontario is holding strike votes across the province until Oct. 17.

UK intel may have tracked wrecked Chinese submarine with bugged Apple watch

The submarine incident occurred on 21 August, allegedly due to a collision with a 'chain and anchor' device intended to harm Western submarines

FP Staff Last Updated:October 07, 2023 11:07:24 IST

The sub-marine accident comes at a time when China is heavily investing in its armed forces, with plans to expand its submarine fleet to 65 to 70 submarines by the end of the decade. Reuters.

Chinese dissidents claim the UK spies may have tracked the stricken Chinese submarine in the Yellow Sea, by exploiting a sailor’s Apple smartwatch. This revelation comes as part of an ongoing inquiry into the disaster involving the Chinese Type 093 nuclear submarine, which tragically claimed the lives of all 55 crew members.

The submarine incident occurred on 21 August, allegedly due to a collision with a ‘chain and anchor’ device intended to harm Western submarines. Despite China officially denying the incident, British naval intelligence officers have privately expressed their conviction that it did indeed occur. The UK’s Ministry of Defence has chosen to remain officially silent on the matter.

According to a Daily Mail report, dissidents based outside China claim to have obtained copies of the Chinese Communist Party’s investigation report, which includes allegations of Western interference. The report appears to suggest that Chinese officials are keen to attribute blame to the West for interfering with and eavesdropping on People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) operations.

“We received an update from the Central Military Commission. In the classified report, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] believes MI6 bugged the Apple watch of a high-ranking Navy officer in Guangdong command, causing the leak of information related to the 093-417 accident,” the Mail quoted a dissident as saying.

This incident marks a significant setback for China’s naval prestige, coming at a time when the country is heavily investing in its armed forces, with plans to expand its submarine fleet to 65 to 70 submarines by the end of the decade, as part of a massive £1 trillion investment package between 2024 and 2028. China’s naval expansion has raised concerns among Western observers, who fear that China aims to assert dominance in the South China Sea and beyond, including the militarization of islands in violation of previous agreements.

The sinking of PLAN 093-417 also stands as the third-largest loss of life aboard a submarine in maritime history, with the worst being the Russian Kursk disaster in 2000, which claimed 118 lives. According to a British naval intelligence officer, the crew of the Chinese submarine died due to a system fault that resulted in “hypoxia” and a catastrophic failure of the onboard oxygen system. British submarines are equipped with technology to address such situations, unlike the ill-fated Chinese submarine.

The Type 093-417 is one of China’s six nuclear attack submarines, armed with torpedoes and cruise missiles. Measuring 351 feet in length, 30 feet in width, and capable of reaching a top speed of 30 knots, this submarine represents a significant asset in China’s naval expansion plans.

As this investigation unfolds, the international community remains watchful of the implications of these allegations on the global geopolitical landscape. The controversy surrounding the incident serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing challenges in the South China Sea and the delicate balance of power in the region.

Ethnic Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh long for home, decry Azerbaijan

Having fled the long-troubled mountainous enclave, many say they will not return as they bank on more support from Yerevan.




By Jessie Williams
 6 Oct 2023

Yerevan, Armenia – Alisa Ghazaryan was full of excitement and nerves as she started her first year at university in Stepanakert, having moved from her village home in Nagorno-Karabakh.

But just as term began, Azerbaijani forces began shelling the city, which Baku knows as Khankendi, on September 19.

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As they carried out what they cast as an “anti-terrorist operation”, the 18-year-old took shelter in the university’s basement.

“I was born there, I grew up there,” she said of her home. “When I was there, I felt completely free.”

The Ghazaryan family pictured in front of their friend’s house just outside Yerevan, where they are now staying after fleeing their home in Nagorno-Karabakh. From left: Artyom, Aren, Ina, Inessa and Alisa [Jessie Williams/Al Jazeera]

Until recently, Nagorno-Karabakh, a long-troubled mountainous enclave, was home to about 120,000 ethnic Armenians who dominated the region. Since Baku’s lightning offensive, more than 100,000, including Alisa, have fled to Armenia.

Despite assurances by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to protect their civil rights, many say they feared persecution after years of mutual distrust and open hatred between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Several displaced people Al Jazeera spoke to in Armenia said they were expecting a massacre.

According to ethnic Armenian officials, at least 200 people were killed in Baku’s assault, including 10 civilians, and more than 400 were wounded.

Baku played down the claims of civilian casualties but acknowledged “collateral damage” was possible.

Azerbaijan, which announced that 192 of its soldiers were killed in the operation, said its blitz was aimed at disarming ethnic Armenian separatists in the region, parts of which now resemble a ghost town.

The assault came after a 10-month blockade, effectively imposed by Azerbaijan after it closed the Lachin corridor to Armenia, preventing the flow of food, fuel and medicine. Baku had accused Armenia of funnelling weapons to separatists through the winding, mountain road, a claim denied by both parties.

The local unrecognised government surrendered after 24 hours of fighting. Aliyev said his “iron fist” restored Azerbaijan’s sovereignty. Late last month, Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian officials said the region will cease to exist as a self-styled breakaway republic on January 1 next year.
‘We are only here to not be on the streets’

Alisa and her family fled through the Lachin corridor, which has since been reopened.

They are staying at a friend’s house outside the Armenian capital, Yerevan. Fourteen people currently live in the cramped space, sharing two rooms.


At night, they sleep side by side on the living room floor.

“We are only here to not be on the streets,” said Alisa.

It’s a far cry from their house in Karabakh, which they had just finished renovating.

The journey to Armenia, which usually takes several hours, took days for some, as people poured out of the region.

The European Parliament this week said the “current situation amounts to ethnic cleansing”.


Those who left are scattered across Armenia, facing an uncertain future and mourning the loss of their homeland.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as Azerbaijan’s territory, including by Armenia. The ex-Soviet rivals have fought two wars over the enclave, in the nineties and in 2020. The first conflict saw ethnic Armenians seize swaths of land, resulting in the displacement of Azerbaijanis, while Baku triumphed in the 2020 war. Since then, Russian peacekeepers have operated in the region, but Armenians blame them for allowing Azerbaijan’s latest attack, which was widely condemned in the West.

Now, there are only a few hundred left in Karabakh, mainly elderly or disabled people.

“The nature was so beautiful. There are mountains and forests. Our home was right on the edge of a forest, we used to walk there a lot,” said Alisa, as she looked at a photo on her phone of a verdant hillside.

Ina, her mother, wanted to throw away the key to their house, but Alisa begged her not to.


“Maybe one day we will go back, maybe when I am an old woman,” Alisa said hopefully.

“Aliyev describes us and our heroes as terrorists, but in reality, he is the terrorist. I want the world to know that Artsakh is our motherland and not [Azerbaijan’s],” she added, using the self-styled name for the region.

Many of those displaced had already fled, in previous wars.

Angela Sazkisjan-Yan eats ice cream for the first time since the start of the Azerbaijan-imposed blockade with her niece Narine at a cafe in Abovyan, where she is staying with her sister’s family [Jessie Williams/Al Jazeera]

Angela Sazkisjan-Yan, a glamorous 65-year-old, left Baku in 1995.

“Nobody would stay [in Karabakh] because everybody clearly knows the handwriting of Azerbaijan,” she said.

Some people destroyed their furniture or dishes before they left, but Angela cleaned her flat in Stepanakert, and even left the refrigerator on and filled with food, perhaps a symbolic gesture of her hope to one day return.

“Everybody left their property but that’s a small part of it – the worst part is that we left our homeland, our roots. Even my grandparents are buried there,” she told Al Jazeera in Abovyan, northeast of Yerevan.


She is staying with her sister’s family, whom she had not seen in two years.

“I am very happy to rejoin with them because we are an inseparable part of each other, but I have a big soul ache for everything that’s happened,” she said.

Many Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh say they were split up from relatives during the blockade.

Lilit Shahverdyan, a 20-year-old freelance journalist, was in Yerevan with her sister during the tensions, while the rest of her family was at their home in Stepanakert.

“We just hugged each other and started to cry,” she said, describing the moment when she finally saw her family, in the border town of Goris, after almost a year apart.


She said the blockade made her family closer and stronger than ever.

“All we have now is just our family and just one apartment in Yerevan. Everything else – not just the property, but all our memories, life goals, and the future was in our homeland – now it’s all gone.”

As her mother locked their front door for the last time in Stepanakert, tears streamed down her face.

“It was the most beautiful house. My father built it 10 years ago. I really enjoyed waking up there every day just going to the garden, hugging my cats or talking to my neighbours. In my childhood, everything was connected to that house.”

Lilit had hoped to return to Stepanakert to work after she finishes her university course in Yerevan. Now, she wants to leave Armenia altogether.


“I’m just afraid that some sh** will happen again. And I don’t want my kids to suffer as much as I did. Armenia is not a safe place as long as we have a neighbouring dictator and we have this government. I don’t want to have another traumatised generation,” she said

.

Lilit Shahverdyan, a 20-year-old freelance journalist, was in Yerevan with her sister during the blockade, while the rest of her family was stuck at their home in Stepanakert [Jessie Williams/Al Jazeera]

Hopes of a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan seem to be fading after a crucial meeting planned for this week, between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, was cancelled by Azerbaijan at the last minute.

“It’s not only unrealistic, it’s also a crime to believe that now is the time to collaborate on a peaceful relationship,” said Angela, who said she knows 10 people who were killed in the recent fighting.

“They killed us, how can we live with them in peace?”

Ara Papian, an Armenian lawyer and former diplomat, thinks further aggression by Azerbaijan is possible in the future, particularly in the Syunik region where Azerbaijan wants to build a corridor through Armenian territory to connect with its exclave, Nakhchivan.

Even if a peace treaty is signed, Azerbaijan will “find an excuse and attack”, he predicted.

Papian accused the West of refusing to condemn and sanction Azerbaijan because some nations do not want to get on the wrong side of NATO member Turkey – Azerbaijan’s closest ally.

The European Union’s gas deal with Azerbaijan exposes the bloc’s hypocrisy, he added.

“The EU and the West do not buy oil and gas from dictator [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to not fuel the war in Ukraine, but they buy the same from Azerbaijan knowing that the money will go not to prosperity of people in Azerbaijan, it will become new weapons, which means a new war – which has happened.”

Housing is now the main priority for displaced people, said Margarit Piliposyan, deputy country director for the NGO Fund for Armenia Relief (FAR), which has been distributing food and humanitarian supplies in Vayk, a town south of Yerevan.

The Armenian government recently announced financial support for displaced people with 100,000 dram per person ($239) and then 40,000 dram per month ($96) for six months for housing costs.

However, several people told Al Jazeera they were yet to see any government assistance, such as Lira Arzangulyan, 33, and Alina Khachatryan, 31, two sisters, who fled after the latest escalation.

They moved with their four children and mothers-in-law, to Mrgavan village, in Artashat, a province in the shadow of Mount Ararat, where more than 100 displaced families now live.

They were previously displaced from their home in Martuni after the 2020 war.

The house is small with peeling wallpaper and one gas stove. It is cold inside – even on a mild September day. The owner is letting them stay there for free, for now.

Armenians who fled Turkish rule decades ago despair over Nagorno-Karabakh. 'This appears to be our fate'


Nabih Bulos
Thu, October 5, 2023 

Lebanese Armenians clash with police outside the Azerbaijani Embassy near Beirut during a protest against the recapture of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave from separatist Armenian authorities. (Hussein Malla / Associated Press)

Hilda Doumanian stood in the main hall of the Anjar museum, scanning the glass cases holding items her ethnic Armenian forebears salvaged from their lands before they escaped to Lebanon more than eight decades ago.

"This appears to be our fate: to be forcibly displaced every few decades," she said, walking up to one of the displays: A collection of rust-encrusted kitchenware and bundles of braided silk from a village loom. Ancient-looking rifles. Religious vessels. Bibles so old their pages appeared more suspended dust than paper.

"The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century," she said, slowly shaking her head in resignation, referring to the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire.

"Now in the 21st century we see the first genocide, and it's Armenians again."

A gardener tends to the plants at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in the historic town of Anjar in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley. The memorial commemorates the mass killings of Armenians as part of the genocide under the Ottoman Empire in 1915. (Joseph Eid / AFP via Getty Images)

On Doumanian's mind was the exodus taking place over the last two weeks from what many Armenians see as their ancestral homelands — a further erasure of their history.

More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians, fearing ethnic cleansing at the hands of their Azerbaijani adversaries, have abandoned their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, the mountainous enclave inside Azerbaijan's internationally recognized borders where they had established their self-declared state.

Read more: Amid fury over Nagorno-Karabakh, could Armenia's government fall next?

In the more than 30 years of its existence, the Republic of Artsakh, not formally recognized by any nation, had established the trappings of a country — a government, a standing army, a flag. But it all crumbled before a withering Azerbaijani blitzkrieg last month, with the enclave's leaders forced to surrender and announce the republic's dissolution by the end of the year.

Though Azerbaijan's government offered to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh's ethnic Armenian population as equal citizens, most, unwilling to countenance Azerbaijani rule, fled into Armenia in a refugee convoy that at its peak stretched more than 60 miles. Fewer than a thousand remain behind. Those who fled cite the Azeris' decades-old animus toward Armenians and the triumphalist rhetoric of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for their distrust, no matter what Azerbaijan says.

For millions in Armenia and the diaspora, the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the long-held dream of constructing a state on Armenian homeland, was a blow. The shock resonates in a personal way in Anjar, whose residents are almost all ethnic Armenians whose ancestors fled here from Musa Dagh, or Moses Mountain, a territory in what is now southern Turkey.

An ethnic Armenian woman from Nagorno-Karabakh carries her suitcase to a tent camp after arriving in Goris, Armenia. (Vasily Krestyaninov / Associated Press)

When the people of Musa Dagh heard of the coming genocidal campaign in 1915, they refused to obey Turkish authorities' command to leave their houses in the mountains. They resisted for a month and a half, losing 18 people before a French naval vessel rescued and took them to Egypt, where they stayed for four years, returning after the Ottoman Empire's loss in World War I.

In 1939, when French authorities controlling the area under a postwar mandate handed it to Turkey, the inhabitants of Musa Dagh faced yet another agonizing choice: Accept Turkish control or leave. Fearing a repeat of the bloodshed in 1915, they were escorted out by French troops to settle in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, on land bought from an Ottoman feudal lord.

Read more: 'Staying, for us, is impossible.' Thousands of ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh

"We refused to live under the Turks, because we knew they would do the same thing as before," Doumanian said.

Watching a new wave of displacement hit Armenians brought back memories of long-held pain, said Isabel Kendirjian, a bedridden but alert 90-year-old who still remembers coming to Anjar when she was 6.

"It's the same thing that happened to us. This is how we felt back then," she said.

"They gave us eight days to leave Musa Dagh. We took everything we could and went on the buses to here," she said. "There was nothing. Very few trees. We lived in tents."

A Lebanese Armenian steps on a defaced poster showing Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. (Hussein Malla / Assoiated Press)

The new Anjaris stayed in those tents for roughly two years while authorities built up the town, organizing it into six neighborhoods, each named after a village in Musa Dagh. The houses the French provided were single-room structures measuring 12 square feet along with a bathroom.

"Four people, 20 people, it didn't matter. Everyone was in one room," Doumanian said."We still call them beit Faransi, a French house, to this day."

Tensions between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians date to the days of the Ottoman Empire, but the war for Nagorno-Karabakh was rooted in the fall of a more contemporary empire: the Soviet Union.

In 1988, inside the roiling Soviet landscape, the enclave's ethnic Armenian majority chose to secede from one Soviet republic, Azerbaijan, and unite with another, Armenia. The move sparked an ethnic conflict with Azeris that saw massacres and pogroms on both sides, and an estimated million displaced people, mostly Azeris.

Six years later, by which time the Soviet Union had collapsed, the ethnic Armenians won. They claimed Nagorno-Karabakh (which Armenians call Artsakh) and its surrounding districts in what other nations viewed as a violation of international law.

Read more: Nagorno-Karabakh's separatist government says it will disband by year's end

Donations poured in from the Armenian diaspora, including from the the late California businessman and philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian, whose largesse helped funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to fund schools and a major highway in the fledgling republic. Stop-start negotiations over the years never got anywhere.

In the meantime, Azerbaijan had used its vast oil and gas riches to retool its army. Armenia's confidence in its ability to keep the status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh, not to mention its contempt for an enemy it had long dismissed as cowardly, meant that it was woefully unprepared when Azerbaijan launched an assault in 2020 and snatched back most of the land it lost.

A cease-fire guaranteed by Russia, Armenia's main patron, was to be the prelude to a peace treaty. But tensions continued, culminating in Azerbaijan blockading the territory in December, then launching a lightning onslaught last month that routed the Artsakh Republic's army. Moscow, preoccupied with its war on Ukraine and displeased with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's recent overtures to the West, stood by as Azerbaijan pursued its campaign.

Pashinyan, aware of his military's limitations and with little diplomatic backing, refused to intervene, infuriating many Armenians.

Varian Khoshian, the mayor of Anjar, feels ashamed at the loss. His passion about the concept of Artsakh runs so deep that he named his son — now an officer in the Lebanese army — after it.

He blamed the rout on Pashinyan and his policy of antagonizing Armenia's traditional ally, Russia, for the West's sake, pointing to another sign of fraying ties with Moscow that came Tuesday when Armenia's parliament ratified the International Criminal Court's founding Rome Statute.

Because the court in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine, the ratification means Armenia would have to arrest Putin if he stepped on Armenian soil. The Kremlin called the decision "incorrect," a position with which Khoshian agreed.

"We had a strong umbrella. We like the West, sure, but we got a smaller umbrella from America that doesn't cover us," he said.

Read more: Armenian Americans say another genocide underway in Nagorno-Karabakh, rally for U.S. action

During Lebanon's 15-year civil war, Khoshian learned to work with groups he didn't like, but it was for the good of Anjar; Pashinyan should have done the same, the mayor said.

"I don't love the Russians. But I need them for my homeland," Khoshian said. "That's how you have to think. Otherwise you lose."

Despite all that, he insisted the war for Nagorno-Karabakh was not over.

"I can't give up. We will come back. We have to," he said. "Those lands are the property of our ancestors."

And it was more than just a matter of emotions.

"We know the value of Artsakh, its strategic location for Armenia," Khoshian said.

Armenian Lebanese protesters clash with security forces near Beirut. 

( Houssam Shbaro / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Azerbaijan, he continued, was intent on taking parts of southern Armenia for a land corridor linking its territory to Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan's exclave on Armenia's southwestern side.

"It's the first domino. Once Artsakh falls, you'll find other Armenian cities in the south falling."

Armenians have been demanding a stronger military response, with protests among diaspora groups in Southern California and frequent demonstrations in Yerevan, Armenia's capital, against Pashinyan and what many see as his capitulation.

In Armenian-dominated neighborhoods in Beirut, graffiti targets Azerbaijan's president, Aliyev, and his top ally, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The stenciled graffiti calls Aliyev a killer and declares that Karabakh will always be Armenian. Lebanon's main Armenian party held a demonstration in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy that turned violent. In Anjar, high schoolers had their own anti-Turkish protest, carrying placards with Erdogan's face and chanting their support for Artsakh.

Read more: They lay competing claims to Nagorno-Karabakh. The war over it defines them both

Yessayi Havatian, an agricultural supplies merchant and Anjar historian, wondered whether the future fate of Karabakh Armenians would be to go to war again, or whether they would become like the Armenians of Musa Dagh, cut off from their ancestral lands.

"Our people thought of going back. For 14 years they refused to plant orchards on the land here. Why? Because they said, 'We're not going to stay that long.' They believed they would go home," Havatian said.

Whatever Karabakh Armenians choose, he added, it was clear that Armenians couldn't pursue the war as they had in the past.

"We the Armenians made a mistake: We relied on someone other than us to defend us. The world watched our people forcibly displaced and did nothing. And no one will do anything," he said.

"No one will defend Armenia other than the Armenians. That's the solution."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

“We don’t have any other place to go so we’re going to stay here. The houses for rent are too expensive, we can’t afford it. We are still uncertain and in shock,” said Alina.

The children play in the other room as their mothers cry softly. Lira’s mascara runs across her cheek as she says how much she misses visiting her mother’s grave in Karabakh.

They both lament the Russian peacekeepers, who Lira described as being “indifferent and doing nothing” to protect or help them.

The first United Nations monitoring mission visited Karabakh on Sunday.

“Why didn’t they come when we had nothing to eat? It is empty now, there is no one living there. If they came before this escalation started and they gave us hope and a guarantee that there is someone to support us, then we would have stayed there,” said Lira.

Their children run in and hug them close.

“I hope this next generation will change and maybe when our kids grow up they will be able to go back there, maybe as a tourist, to see where they’re from,” Alina added.

Sisters Lira Arzangulyan and Alina Khachatryan with their children outside the house they are staying in after fleeing their home in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh [Jessie Williams/Al Jazeera]
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Israeli arms quietly helped Azerbaijan retake Nagorno-Karabakh, to the dismay of region’s Armenians

Ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh travel on a truck on their way to Kornidzor, Armenia, on Sept. 26, 2023. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, officials and experts say, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the Armenian enclave in its territory back under its control.

(Stepan Poghosyan, Photolure photo via AP, File)

 A convoy of cars of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh move to Kornidzor in Syunik region, Armenia, on Sept. 26, 2023. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, officials and experts say, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the Armenian enclave in its territory back under its control.  


An ethnic Armenian woman from Nagorno-Karabakh sits inside an old Soviet style car as she arrives in Goris, in Syunik region, Armenia, on Sept. 27, 2023. Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, officials and experts say, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the Armenian enclave in its territory back under its control.

(AP Photo/Vasily Krestyaninov, File)

BY ISABEL DEBRE
October 5, 2023

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel has quietly helped fuel Azerbaijan’s campaign to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, supplying powerful weapons to Azerbaijan ahead of its lightening offensive last month that brought the ethnic Armenian enclave back under its control, officials and experts say.

Just weeks before Azerbaijan launched its 24-hour assault on Sept. 19, Azerbaijani military cargo planes repeatedly flew between a southern Israeli airbase and an airfield near Nagorno-Karabakh, according to flight tracking data and Armenian diplomats, even as Western governments were urging peace talks.

The flights rattled Armenian officials in Yerevan, long wary of the strategic alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan, and shined a light on Israel’s national interests in the restive region south of the Caucasus Mountains.

“For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people,” Arman Akopian, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel, told The Associated Press. In a flurry of diplomatic exchanges, Akopian said he expressed alarm to Israeli politicians and lawmakers in recent weeks over Israeli weapons shipments.

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“I don’t see why Israel should not be in the position to express at least some concern about the fate of people being expelled from their homeland,” he told AP.

Azerbaijan’s September blitz involving heavy artillery, rocket launchers and drones — largely supplied by Israel and Turkey, according to experts — forced Armenian separatist authorities to lay down their weapons and sit down for talks on the future of the separatist region.

The Azerbaijani offensive killed over 200 Armenians in the enclave, the vast majority of them fighters, and some 200 Azerbaijani troops, according to officials.

There are ramifications beyond the volatile enclave of 4,400 square kilometers (1,700 square miles). The fighting prompted over 100,000 people — more than 80% of the enclave’s ethnic Armenian residents — to flee in the last two weeks. Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has termed the exodus “a direct act of an ethnic cleansing.” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry strongly rejected the accusation, saying the departures are a “personal and individual decision and (have) nothing to do with forced relocation.”

Israel’s foreign and defense ministries declined to comment on the use of Israeli weapons in Nagorno-Karabakh or on Armenian concerns about its military partnership with Azerbaijan. In July, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Baku, the Azerbaijan capital, where he praised the countries’ military cooperation and joint “fight against terrorism.”

Israel has a big stake in Azerbaijan, which serves as a critical source of oil and is a staunch ally against Israel’s archenemy Iran. It is also a lucrative customer of sophisticated arms.

“There’s no doubt about our position in support of Azerbaijan’s defense,” said Arkady Mil-man, Israel’s former ambassador to Azerbaijan and current senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “We have a strategic partnership to contain Iran.”

Although once resource-poor Israel now has plenty of natural gas off its Mediterranean coast, Azerbaijan still supplies at least 40% of Israel’s oil needs, keeping cars and trucks on its roads. Israel turned to Baku’s offshore deposits in the late 1990s, creating an oil pipeline through the Turkish transport hub of Ceyan that isolated Iran, which at the time capitalized on oil flowing through its pipelines from Kazakhstan to world markets.

Azerbaijan has long been suspicious of Iran, its fellow Shiite Muslim neighbor on the Caspian Sea, and chafed at its support for Armenia, which is Christian. Iran has accused Azerbaijan of hosting a base for Israeli intelligence operations against it — a claim that Azerbaijan and Israel deny.

“It’s clear to us that Israel has an interest in keeping a military presence in Azerbaijan, using its territory to observe Iran,” Armenian diplomat Tigran Balayan said.

Few have benefited more from the two countries’ close relations than Israeli military contractors. Experts estimate Israel supplied Azerbaijan with nearly 70% of its arsenal between 2016 and 2020 — giving Azerbaijan an edge against Armenia and boosting Israel’s large defense industry.

“Israeli arms have played a very significant role in allowing the Azerbaijani army to reach its objectives,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms sales.

Israeli long-range missiles and exploding drones known as loitering munitions have made up for Azerbaijan’s small air force, Wezeman said, even at times striking deep within Armenia itself. Meanwhile, Israeli Barak-8 surface-to-air missiles have protected Azerbaijan’s airspace in shooting down missiles and drones, he added.

Just ahead of last month’s offensive, the Azerbaijani defense ministry announced the army conducted a missile test of Barak-8. Its developer, Israel Aerospace Industries, declined to comment on Azerbaijan’s use of its air defense system and combat drones.

But Azerbaijan has raved about the success of Israeli drones in slicing through the Armenian defenses and tipping the balance in the bloody six-week war in 2020.

Its defense minister in 2016 called a combat drone manufactured by Israel’s Aeronautics Group “a nightmare for the Armenian army,” which backed the region’s separatists during Azerbaijan’s conflict with Nagorno-Karabakh that year.

President Ilham Aliyev in 2021 — a year of deadly Azerbaijan-Armenian border clashes — was captured on camera smiling as he stroked the small Israeli suicide drone “Harop” during an arms showcase.

Israel has deployed similar suicide drones during deadly army raids against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

“We’re glad for this cooperation, it was quite supportive and quite beneficial for defense,” Azerbaijani’s ambassador to Israel, Mukhtar Mammadov told the AP, speaking generally about Israel’s support for the Azerbaijani military. “We’re not hiding it.”

At a crucial moment in early September — as diplomats scrambled to avert an escalation — flight tracking data shows that Azerbaijani cargo planes began to stream into Ovda, a military base in southern Israel with a 3,000-meter-long airstrip, known as the only airport in Israel that handles the export of explosives.

The AP identified at least six flights operated by Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines landing at Ovda airport between Sept. 1 and Sept. 17 from Baku, according to aviation-tracking website FlightRadar24.com. Azerbaijan launched its offensive two days later.

During those six days, the Russian-made Ilyushin Il-76 military transport lingered on Ovda’s tarmac for several hours before departing for either Baku or Ganja, the country’s second-largest city, just north of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In March, an investigation by the Haaretz newspaper said it had counted 92 Azerbaijani military cargo flights to Ovda airport from 2016-2020. Sudden surges of flights coincided with upticks of fighting in Nagorno-Karabkh, it found.

“During the 2020 war, we saw flights every other day and now, again, we see this intensity of flights leading up to the current conflict,” said Akopian, the Armenian ambassador. “It is clear to us what’s happening.”

Israel’s defense ministry declined to comment on the flights. The Azerbaijani ambassador, Mammadov, said he was aware of the reports but declined to comment.

The decision to support an autocratic government against an ethnic and religious minority has fueled a debate in Israel about the country’s permissive arms export policies. Of the top 10 arms manufactures globally, only Israel and Russia lack legal restrictions on weapons exports based on human rights concerns.

“If anyone can identify with (Nagorno-Karabakh) Armenians’ continuing fear of ethnic cleansing it is the Jewish people,” said Avidan Freedman, founder of the Israeli advocacy group Yanshoof, which seeks to stop Israeli arm sales to human rights violators. “We’re not interested in becoming accomplices.”

As Azerbaijan claims final victory in Nagorno Karabakh, arms trade with Israel comes under scrutiny

Story by By Max Saltman, CNN •

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

On September 19, the day Azerbaijan began its offensive in the majority Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Marut Vanyan heard an ominous noise in the sky over his hometown.

“I’m not a military expert,” Vanyan, a journalist, recalled. “But I heard very, very clearly… the roar above me. I’m sure it was a drone.”

Vanyan, a lifelong resident of Stepanakert, once Nagorno-Karabakh’s largest city, recognized the sound from 2020, when Azerbaijan waged a 44-day war for the territory and surrounding regions with the help of Turkish and Israeli weapons.

Vanyan took a video of the sky above Stepanakert, gray and cloudy, the whine of a propeller distinct in the background, and posted it on X.

According to Leonid Nersisyan, a defense analyst and researcher at the Applied Policy Research Institute (APRI) Armenia, an independent think tank, it was the sound of Israel Aerospace Industries’ Harop, a loitering munition known for the piercing noise it produces as it descends on a target.

Azerbaijani forces used the Harop – often referred to as a “suicide drone” – and other Israeli drones throughout the war of 2020. CNN has contacted IAI for comment.

The nose of the Harop unmanned combat air vehicle developed by Israel Aerospace Industries is displayed during the Autonomous Robotics Unmanned System Expo, in the coastal city of Rishon Le Tsyion, south of Tel Aviv on November 26, 2014

 . - Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images© Provided by CNN

Though their relationship is relatively discreet, Israeli equipment makes up most of Azerbaijan’s arms imports, according to arms researchers. Azerbaijani officials touted Israel’s weapons as integral to their country’s success in Nagorno-Karabakh during the 2020 war.

Israel’s ‘fingerprints’

Now, as over 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh in the latest conflict there, Israeli-Azerbaijani ties have come under scrutiny, with an editorial in Israel’s most prominent left-wing newspaper Haaretz proclaiming that the country’s “fingerprints are all over the ethnic cleansing” in Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Drones were used constantly” in the 2020 war, as well as in this latest conflict, a former lieutenant colonel in the Artsakh Defense Army – the Armenian separatist republic’s military force in Karabakh - told CNN on the condition of anonymity. (Artsakh is the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh and the self-proclaimed republic that existed there.)

Azerbaijan “used Harop kamikaze strike drones…Hermes-450 and Orbiter-1K, Orbiter-2, Orbiter-3 reconnaissance drones,” the ex-officer said. All were produced by Israeli arms companies.

Azerbaijan won the 2020 war in a little over a month, regaining much of the territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated and governed, until now, almost exclusively by ethnic Armenians, following the expulsion of ethnic Azeris in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

September’s battle barely took 24 hours, leaving the whole of Karabakh under the control of Azerbaijan after months of blockade. All of the roughly 120,000 ethnic Armenians in the territory have either fled to Armenia or are expected to flee, fearing full-fledged ethnic cleansing or mass atrocities, although Azerbaijan has insisted that it would respect their rights there.

Azerbaijan and Israel are close military partners. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), more than 60% of Azerbaijani weapons imports came from Israel between 2017 and 2020, making up 13% of Israeli exports during the same period. SIPRI research reveals that Azerbaijan purchased a wide variety of drones, missiles, and mortars from Israel between 2010 and 2020.

However, according to SIPRI senior researcher Pieter Wezeman, certain specifics are unknown about the extent of the ongoing Azerbaijani-Israeli weapons trade.

“We had quite some information before 2020 and then it stops,” Wezeman said. “And that doesn’t really make sense because in 2020 Azerbaijan used a significant amount of its equipment… Most likely they have continued their relationship with Israel, but that’s about as far as we know.”

The trade is believed to be particularly active in periods just before Azerbaijan has gone to war. A March 2023 investigative report by Haaretz found that flights by an Azerbaijani airline between Baku and Ovda air base, the only airport in Israel through which explosives can be flown, spiked in the months just before Azerbaijan attacked separatist positions in Karabakh in September 2020.

Likewise, Haaretz reported in mid-September that the same company flew between Baku and Ovda less than a week before Azerbaijan began its latest assault in Nagorno-Karabakh. CNN reached out to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense and the airline in question, but did not receive a response. The Israeli Ministry of Defense, which oversees Ovda Airport, had no comment.

“We don’t know what was on board, but very likely it is something related to the military equipment that Israel already has supplied to Azerbaijan before,” Wezeman said.

Beyond guns and ammunition

The weapons trade between Israel and Azerbaijan mirrors their diplomatic relationship, once described in a leaked US diplomatic cable as “like an iceberg, nine-tenths of it… below the surface.” Despite decades of bilateral cooperation, Azerbaijan only opened an embassy in Israel this year.

Azerbaijan soldiers stand guard as at the Lachin border station, as cars leave Karabakh to Armenia, on September 26. - Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images© Provided by CNN

But their ties go beyond guns and ammunition: OEC figures show that Israel bought 65% of its crude oil from Azerbaijan in 2021. The countries are also believed to share intelligence on Iran, Israel’s archenemy, with which Azerbaijan shares a border and which has a substantial ethnic Azeri population that constitutes the country’s largest minority. Azerbaijan has also reportedly allowed the Israeli spy agency Mossad to use it as a hub to spy on Iran. (The Israeli Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the matter.)

According to Efraim Inbar, an expert on Israel-Azerbaijan relations and president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, ties between the two have grown stronger since 2020.

“Oil and arms sales continue. Azerbaijan feels greater pressure from Iran whose international position is improving,” Inbar told CNN in an email. “There is no great sympathy (in Israel) for Armenia that is seen as an Iranian ally.”

In a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel said Israeli weapons are being fired at “peaceful civilians” despite Israeli civil society being “very pro-Armenia in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh and recognition of the Armenian genocide.” (Israel’s government does not recognize the mass murder of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I as genocide, fearing damage to its relationship with Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire.)

Arms sales ‘good for Israel’

But there is little political opposition in the country to selling arms to Azerbaijan, Inbar said.

“Arms sales do not receive much publicity,” he added. “The contribution of Israeli drones to Azerbaijan’s war is well known, however. Israelis are proud of their weaponry. Arms sales are considered good for Israel.”

Yet despite their high visibility in Karabakh, the role of drones should not overshadow that of other Israeli weapons, according to Nersisyan, the defense analyst at APRI Armenia.

“People consider them to be some kind of a super weapon,” he said. “Of course, they are very important, but there are roles of other types of weapons.”

Among those are Israel’s LORA missiles, which Azerbaijan first purchased from Israel in 2017 according to SIPRI.

In October 2020, Azerbaijan repeatedly struck the area near an electrical substation in Stepanakert using Israeli-made weapons. The former lieutenant colonel in the Artsakh Defense Army told CNN he witnessed one of these attacks personally. The diameter and depth of the crater there showed that the Azerbaijani military had used a LORA missile, he said, adding that it hit a residential building.

The question remains as to how far Israel is willing to go in supporting Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia. An ongoing border crisis between the two countries has resulted in Azerbaijani incursions into Armenian territory, and Azerbaijani troops currently occupy land well within Armenia’s borders in its southern Syunik province. Many in Armenia worry that an emboldened Azerbaijan will attempt to invade their country, which Azerbaijan denies. Some fears center around Nakhchivan, a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan that borders Turkey and Armenia, and Baku’s desire for a transport corridor linking it with the rest of the country.

“Azerbaijan doesn’t have any military goals or objectives on the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia,” Hikmet Ajiyev, the foreign policy advisor to Ilham Aliyev, told Reuters on October 1.

Israeli ‘realpolitik’

Some in the international community are calling for action against Azerbaijan in the wake of the Armenian exodus from Karabakh. In the United States, where there is a large Armenian diaspora, nearly 100 members of Congress have called for sanctions on Baku, and lawmakers in the European Union have also called on the bloc to consider punitive measures.

Wezeman, the researcher at SIPRI, said Israel could come under pressure from its Western allies to reconsider arms sales to Azerbaijan.

“It will damage its relations with Azerbaijan, but at the same time, Israel will have to think about its relations with European states, which are more important partners.”

A spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Defense said they had no comment when reached by CNN.

Efraim Inbar said Israel wants to keep its reputation of being a reliable supplier to Azerbaijan.

“In any case,” he added, “Azerbaijan is much more important for Israel than Armenia. It is realpolitik that drives Israeli foreign policy.”

Israeli arms airlift helped Azerbaijan recapture Karabakh - report
International Astronautical Congress Baku 

credit: Resul Rehimov Reuters

5 Oct, 2023 
Dean Shmuel Elmas

At least six cargo planes of Azerbaijani carrier Silk Way Airlines transported advanced weapons from Israel Air Force's Ovda base to Baku in September, AP reports.

At least six cargo planes of Azerbaijani carrier Silk Way Airlines transported advanced weapons from Israel Air Force's Ovda base to Baku between September 1 and September 17, "The Associated Press" reports. Using the weapons from these flights, Azerbaijan was able to launch its operation to recapture the Nagorno-Karabakh region and resolve its more than 30-year old conflict with Armenia.

"For us, it is a major concern that Israeli weapons have been firing at our people," Arman Akopian, Armenia’s ambassador to Israel, told AP.

The report says that in the September operation more than 200 Armenians were killed, most of them soldiers. As it happens, Armenia has become a close regional ally of Iran and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is a close friend of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. For its part Azerbaijan has become Israel's closest friend in the Muslim world and supplies Israel with 40% of its oil.

AP reports that more than 1,000 Armenians fled the Nagorno-Karabakh region during the fighting, although Azerbaijan called on the Armenians to remain and take up Azerbaijani citizenship.

Israel's military cooperation with Azerbaijan began many years ago and has been key in Baku's battle to retake Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia. Amongst other things Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Harop loitering munitions and LORA missiles greatly contributed to Azerbaijan's victory.

In recent years, trade between Israel and Azerbaijan has been expanding, amounted to $1.718 billion in 2022. Since then the momentum has continued as this week's sale of two IAI satellites - a surveillance satellite and communication satellite - demonstrates.

Demonstration of Israeli power at Baku exhibition

This week Israel is presenting the best of its products as part of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2023 exhibition in Baku. The Israel Space Agency and IAI are taking part, and the inauguration ceremony of the Israeli pavilion was attended by, among others, IAI president and CEO Boaz Levy and the Deputy Ambassador of Israel In Baku Yoav Bistritzky At the same time, IAI signed an agreement on Tuesday with the Azerbaijan space agency Azercosmos for the sale of two OptSat500 satellites, which according to a report in Azerbaijan is worth $120 million.

In addition to OptSat500, which simultaneously captures SAR images and electro-optical images, IAI is exhibiting TecSAR XP, a satellite with high agility and high-quality imaging capability. Among other advanced satellites, IAI is presenting the MCS communication satellite, and the OptSat3000 electro-optical satellite.

Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 5, 2023.