The game rules of "Karabakh clan" in Armenia...

"Don't shoot the pianist, he's playing his best!”

This was a sacred axiom in the Wild West, judging by the work of Hollywood screenwriters. But to what degree movies actually reflect real life is a highly debatable question.

As a recent shooting in a Yerevan restaurant shows, though, Sashik Sargsyan, the Armenian president's brother, has no respect for the cowboy axiom at all. After ordering a local singer, Spitaktsi Aiko, to sing a different song in the middle of his performance, he began to shoot at his feet. Fortunately, Aiko only received minor injuries.

Frankly, such incidents are little reason for surprise in Armenia. A few years ago, then-Culture Minister Hovik Hoveyan hit an electrician on the head with a pistol after the streetlights went out near his home due to a power outage. This incident was a real sensation at the time. However, some MPs have fought right on the parliamentary floor. Today, the term "dictatorship of hooligans” is being used more and more to characterize the situation in Armenia.

It has been argued that in the early 1990s, the population was happy with Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s accession to power. However, at the time, several far-sighted political scientists said it would be not so bad if the Communists or the Dashnaks came to power, but warned of the outright horror that would ensue if hooligans came to power. These hooligans were the "revolutionaries" who earned their political and financial capital by robbing Azerbaijani villages in Armenia. They soon transferred these very "rules of the game” to Yerevan's streets. The political scientists were right. Soon enough, the country was rocked by a series of political assassinations.

Later the "Karabakh clan" took the throne. They were called "businessmen of war.” Later, though, they became known as former "warlords," and terrorists who have been made national heroes.

At a time when observers and voters are beaten at polling stations, high-ranking officials hit each other in restaurants, and half of the country's MPs have criminal nicknames, one can say with confidence that criminals hold the power in Armenia where the "cult of terror” has existed for decades.

On this backdrop, it is not surprising to see media highlighting the recent killings in Glendale, California when an unknown ethnic Armenian opened fire at a restaurant, slaying four and injuring two other Armenians.

In Glendale, the "Armenian mafia" is settling its scores with decent Americans who have a high turnout in the local elections, and try to keep the Armenians from coming to power.

From now on, restaurant shootings by ethnic Armenians will be routine in Glendale. The Armenians in California brought with them to America their own “rules of game,” which have resulted in diamond scams, kidnappings, secret arms trade and large-scale fraud in many countries throughout the world.


Nurani
Day.Az writer