100 million is wasted: who pays for the fake history of the South Caucasus

While battles are going on in the political sphere of Armenia and age-old ideological structures have already been covered with noticeable cracks due to the course of the current authorities, peace and grace reign in the scientific and propaganda plane. Everything is the same there - quiet, dusty and stuffy.

The Monumentwatch website, led by the "tigranakert" seeker Hamlet Petrosyan, made an amazing publication. Without finding any reasonable arguments to the statements from Baku regarding the destruction of the spiritual heritage of the Azerbaijani people in Armenia, the website accused Azerbaijan of "appropriating the Islamic cultural heritage located on the territory of the Republic of Armenia." Such arguments have never been heard before. Archaeology's forgers have been thinking for a long time about how to fend off the accusations, and have found an argument that should distract discussions from the natural question: where have thousands of mosques and other monuments of Islamic heritage gone?

As it turns out from the publication of the website, local scientists began working on evidence of the "Persian" origin of religious sites and tombstones in Armenia back in Soviet times. First of all, intensive work was carried out on monuments in Western Zangezur, where, despite all the repeated deportations and massacres, a fairly large Azerbaijani community remained. After the transfer of Zangezur to Armenia, an active search for arguments in favor of historical "Armenian rights" to this territory began.

Poghosyan and his team refuse to use the term "Azerbaijanis" and refer to the indigenous Azerbaijani population of the territories of present-day Armenia by the Royal Russian term "Tatars". Armenian scientists cannot refute the total destruction of the Islamic heritage, so they want to focus all their attention on the fact that this heritage is "not Azerbaijani." Otherwise, in the end, you will have to answer uncomfortable questions. Azerbaijan raises them very persistently, and whenever Armenian circles working against peace start talking about a certain "legacy of Artsakh," counterarguments are put forward from Baku very specifically and in terms of facts, and it becomes more and more difficult to circumvent these reefs.

After the Second Karabakh War, the Diaspora launched a campaign to monitor the "Armenian heritage" in the liberated territories. At the end of 2020, scientists from Cornell University and Purdue University, using funds from the diaspora, organized the so-called Caucasus Heritage Watch platform, where the word "Caucasian" served only as a distraction. In fact, the Diaspora did not pay for the Caucasian heritage, but for satellite monitoring of the alleged "Armenian heritage." Simply put, scientists from two American universities are spying on what is happening in the liberated territories of Azerbaijan via satellites. Initially, their publications attracted a lot of attention, but over time, everyone got tired of looking at the pictures. The so-called research, which, if there was an Internet connection, could be carried out by any schoolboy today, attracts the attention of only lobbyists and revanchists.

Monumentwatch was created in 2021. Hamlet Poghosyan, who had been conducting illegal excavations in the occupied Aghdam region for many years, claimed that he had already found an unknown "Tigranakert", having managed to involve foreign colleagues in falsification, and fled with the offensive of the Azerbaijani army, illegally exporting a large amount of valuable archaeological material and artifacts. Petrosyan is considered a hero in pseudoscientific circles because he got his bearings in time and managed to commit theft. And the Armenians were unable to remove the exhibits from the museums of Shusha due to "incorrect information." Fortunately, the results of illegal excavations carried out by the occupiers on the territory of Azykh for many years also remained in Azerbaijan. After the war, Petrosyan, like the rest of the nationalist mass, also initially expected that everything was about to return to the old. When hopes for a return to the former status quo collapsed, he came up with Monumentwatch. The activities of the black digger are funded by diaspora foundations.

In addition to claiming that the Islamic heritage in Armenia has nothing to do with Azerbaijanis and Turks in general, Armenian falsifiers also dispute the number of mosques recorded in archival documents. According to archival data, in 1915 there were 38 Shiite mosques in the Zangezur district alone, and 382 Shiite and 9 Sunni mosques throughout the Irevan province. Today, according to the state list of historical and cultural monuments, only 6 have been preserved, of which 5 are in the form of remains. On this basis, Armenian experts who call themselves scientists claim that there were only 6 mosques in Armenia, not almost 400. That is, what is not visible does not exist.

A WORD TO THE EXPERT

Rizvan Huseynov, historian, political scientist, Director of the Center for the History of the Caucasus:

Their current alleged concern for Armenia's Islamic heritage is funded by the American Charles and Agnes Ghazaryan Foundation. If you monitor it, you can find out interesting details. The Ghazaryan Foundation is an Armenian lobbying organization based on Armenian business. The Foundation promotes the interests of Jewish Christians. In other words, such a structure cannot possibly be interested in the fate of the Islamic heritage. If you look at their website, the hair stands on end from the caveman religious racism and caveman Armenian nationalism. And it becomes clear for what purpose this foundation allocates funds to such crooks as Hamlet Petrosyan and others who conducted illegal archaeological excavations in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and stole a large number of valuable artifacts while fleeing in November 2020.

It is touching when Armenian figures and foreign hangers-on who live on Armenian money refer to the Islamic heritage of Karabakh and Armenia as Persian or Kurdish, although the names of most religious monuments in these territories are Turkic or Azerbaijani, which is recorded in archival documents. But this is probably not a problem for forgers. They don't realize that they're only deceiving themselves and their kind.

And what is especially touching is that they take care of the Islamic heritage, turning to Islamic organizations, and telling stories about how they are trying to protect it. Who are they talking to? Organizations such as the OIC and ISESCO have repeatedly adopted resolutions at summits and conferences condemning Armenian vandalism, including against the Islamic heritage in the formerly occupied territories and in Armenia. Who are these crooks turning to, then?

This is just an informational throw-in to show that they are seriously engaged in something. But in fact, it's just eating up American taxpayers' money. This is an attempt to hide the fact that, in fact, we are talking about an attempt to transfer large sums from the United States to Armenia through front persons like archaeologists and other crooks under the guise of charity.

I think our relevant authorities can study the schemes of this grant fund. The Kazaryan Foundation allocates $100 million for grant projects for the study of Islamic and other heritage. Isn't it too much money to study the "insignificant", as Armenians claim, Islamic heritage in Armenia? Studying the movement of these huge amounts will allow us to draw some conclusions. Despite the fact that our countries are moving towards peace, there are still enough forces within Armenia, the Armenian Diaspora and the church that will try to destabilize this process. As we can see, the diaspora does not spare money for these purposes."