There’s this ethnic group, see, one of the first to embrace a monotheistic religion, which is dispersed all over the world, predominantly urban, predominantly engaged in trade, with a disproportionate economic influence in many nations. Last century, they are the victims of an unprecedented genocide, then establish a nation state in their ancient homeland in the middle east- a place where they haven’t had a country of their own for hundreds and hundreds of years- though most of them continue to live elsewhere. They fight a war with their muslim neighbours and end up occupying a swathe of territory- 6000 to 8000 square kilometers- as a result of which a lot of their muslim neighbours- 600,000 to a million- are forced to leave their homes.
But who wants to hear about the armenians and Nagorno-Karabakh [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh], anyway? I can’t remember seeing a single newspaper article about them in the last decade.
Area of West Bank and Gaza: 6220 square kilometers.
Area of Nagorno-Karabakh: 4400 square kilometers.
My guess as to area of additional Armenian-occupied territory in between Armenia proper and Nagorno-Karabakh: ~3500 square kilometers.
1948 refugees (Palestinian numbers): 750,000
1990-1994 refugees (Azeri numbers): 1,000,000
1990-1994 refugees (neutralish numbers): 792,000
3 comments:
Good Idea. I do remember reading about this Armenian enclave about a decade ago. A fairly intractable dispute between muslims and christians if I remember correctly. It has been ignored largely because of the lack of perceived geopolitical consequences. Can you post a couple more interesting links of this conflict?
Did you follow up all the links from the Wikipedia article? I must admit I haven't done so myself yet. I will see what more I can find...
Aha, link not working, I see... a roundabout way in is now constructed...
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