"Armenian heritage" exists as long as it's funded – how CHW deceives the world.

Recently, Armenian MP Tigran Abrahamyan accused international organizations of not being diligent enough in protecting the "Armenian heritage" in the liberated territories of Azerbaijan. In his opinion, these organizations are neither sincere nor compassionate enough. If they were, he argues, they would have properly responded to how Azerbaijan "demolishes, destroys, desecrates," and so on.

"If the Karabakh issue is not solely a means of manipulating and influencing Azerbaijan by geopolitical actors, then the reaction to the aforementioned actions by Baku should be harsh and restraining," Abrahamyan stated.

The Armenian MP himself did not realize he was speaking the truth. Indeed, the Karabakh issue has been a tool of manipulation and pressure on Baku by external actors from the very beginning. However, since November 2020, it no longer serves that purpose. Azerbaijan has deprived external players of the opportunity to use this issue, and these powers have never been truly interested in the Armenian question in any other form. Armenians were not used against Turkey and Azerbaijan for their own sake but were expendable, only actively employed when such opportunities arose. Now, those possibilities are exhausted, and if Abrahamyan or anyone else hopes that the way Azerbaijan reconstructs Khankendi or Hadrut will prompt punitive measures from the West, they are sorely mistaken. The Diaspora spends money in vain buying parliamentarians, politicians, and scientists, paying foreign experts and bloggers for nothing — the funds invested in this issue no longer yield results.

A couple of weeks ago, another failed attempt was made to raise a fuss about the alleged destruction of a church in one of the liberated villages in the Zangilan region of Azerbaijan. An American organization called Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) claimed to have seen "evidence" of vandalism in satellite images. In an effort to prove the church's Armenian origin, the forgers did not hesitate to display a photo of a freshly carved stone with a cross brazenly inserted into old blackened masonry. In reality, what they saw on CHW’s Google satellite images was an ancient Albanian church, which had been in a dilapidated state for over a century and had been repurposed by Armenians during the occupation. There is no doubt that the staff of Caucasus Heritage Watch and another obscure organization, Monument Watch, are fully aware of this. But for the right fee, they will not reveal the truth.

CHW is called an "American organization," but in fact, it is a product of Armenian lobbying and financing. Lobbyists connected to Cornell University established this fake operation after the 2020 war under the guise of the prestigious university, which does Cornell no favors. After the liberation of Karabakh from separatism, CHW began operating even more actively, churning out one "sensational" story after another. I recall that Armenian media widely spread news about the alleged "destruction of an Armenian cemetery" in Shusha. They claimed that Caucasus Heritage Watch had identified a road built across the cemetery using Google Maps. Following Armenian media outlets, this news spread across websites in the U.S., Europe, and Russia. Unfortunately, the same media outlets that eagerly disseminated the false report failed to retract it later. In reality, the road runs alongside the cemetery, which itself is located in an area that would be completely unsuitable for road construction.

Consider also the hype surrounding the Albanian church in the village of Susanlig in the Khojavend district. This monument, dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, had been used by Armenians for economic purposes during the occupation. But after the liberation of Gadrug, it came under the close scrutiny of falsifiers, who falsely labeled it "Armenian heritage." In November 2023, Caucasus Heritage Watch claimed that the church had been destroyed and replaced by a new building resembling it. It's unnecessary to explain that it is impossible to build and age a structure in two months so that it appears overgrown with grass and resembles a 400-year-old historical monument. Perhaps the Armenians, with their extraordinary talents, could have pulled it off, but we do not possess such "abilities."

Recently, Caucasus Heritage Watch has become a rare presence in the field. Apart from their baseless claims regarding Zangilan, the organization's latest "revelations" date back to July, although prior to that, their activity was constant. We cannot know the exact reasons, but it seems that the Armenians have simply lost interest in funding such activities, as they failed to produce the desired results. And they won’t.

"The Armenian heritage is protected only as long as it is paid for," said Rizvan Huseynov, a political scientist, historian, and director of the Center for the History of the Caucasus.

According to Huseynov, Caucasus Heritage Watch is a product of the Armenian diaspora, primarily the Californian community, with the participation of a few bribed American academics. These organizations appear and disappear as soon as funding runs out.

"Please note that the same CHW was active until the summer, but then their activity began to decline. The reason, I believe, is that the Diaspora and lobbyists from the Armenian caucus have stopped funding them."

The structure is based at Cornell University. Of the six founders, three are Armenians, and two are Western scientists who serve as mere puppets, distributing false reports and arguments on their behalf. All of this is masked by the affiliation with Cornell University and Purdue University. The organization is financed by Dashnaks, as well as by French and American Armenians, who are sold by the Armenian ANKA. So, in answer to the question of how much CHW is truly an American organization, I would say this: It is an Armenian Dashnak operation that tries to pose as a Western, international organization, hiding behind an American registration. Just look at the list of donors, and you’ll see that most are Armenian organizations, research foundations, and NGOs. In short, this is a purely Armenian lobbying structure designed to promote Armenian narratives and conceal the crimes of the Armenian military in Azerbaijan," said the historian.

According to Rizvan Huseynov, the genuine cultural and historical heritage of Armenians in Azerbaijan consists of religious sites built by Armenian settlers over the past two hundred years, since their mass migration to Azerbaijani lands from Iran, Turkey, and the Middle East. It is well-documented that with the arrival of Tsarist Russia in the region, the Armenian population grew dramatically in Karabakh, Zangezur, and the area that is now Armenia. According to Russian sources, by the early 20th century, there were 1.3 million Armenians in the Caucasus, with more than a million being immigrants.

"The settlers began to build churches and create cemeteries. Only these can be considered part of the Armenian cultural and historical heritage. Everything else is a falsified Armenian 'heritage' created on the ruins of the Albanian civilization. These artifacts cannot be considered Armenian heritage in any way. They belong to the peoples of the Caucasus, to Caucasian Albania, whose territory coincided with present-day Azerbaijan. The Albanian Church, as is well-known, was abolished by Tsarist Russia, and its spiritual, cultural, and architectural legacy, along with manuscripts, disappeared into the Armenian environment under the control of Etchmiadzin, by force. Therefore, the only thing that can be attributed to the purely Armenian heritage is what the recent Armenian settlers have built over the past two hundred years."

I would like to emphasize that before this, people of the Armenian-Gregorian faith lived in Azerbaijan, but they were ethnically diverse. These were not the ethnic Armenians who settled in Azerbaijani lands in the past two hundred years. They were Armenian-Tatars, Armenian-Kurds, Armenian-Kipchaks, and part of the Udins and Nestorians. They had no connection to the Armenian-Haykan ethnic group that currently inhabits Armenia," Huseynov concluded.

CHW, our interlocutor stressed, is presenting as destruction and vandalism the restoration work being carried out by Azerbaijan on its sovereign, internationally recognized territory. These works involve clearing the land of the ruins of houses and other structures that were destroyed by Armenians during the occupation. In other words, the Azerbaijani heritage that was destroyed by the Armenians is being falsely portrayed as "allegedly Armenian."

"It is worth noting that CHW has one report acknowledging that mosques and Azerbaijani architectural heritage were destroyed in the 1990s. However, they make no mention of who destroyed them or even the fact of the Armenian occupation. They suggest that these sites collapsed on their own in the 1990s, and that the Armenian side did not specifically destroy anything. CHW experts display remarkable blindness to the widespread destruction caused by the Armenians during the occupation. The questions are not directed at the Dashnaks, from whom nothing else should be expected, but at the Western scholars who spread these lies for Armenian payments and disgrace the title of 'scientist,'" Rizvan Huseynov stated.