By: Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
Ambassador Samantha Power, former US Ambassador to the UN, and now director of USAID, an office of the US State Department, traveled to Armenia on July 10 to strong-arm Prime MInister Nikol Pashinyan into buying gas from Azerbaijan, instead of Russia.
Armenia currently imports almost all of its hydrocarbons from Russia and Iran via gas pipeline.
The President Joe Biden administration supports the war in Ukraine by providing billions of dollars of weapons to Ukraine to fight Russia.
Prior to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline being destroyed, Biden had made a speech promising that the US would prevent Russia from selling gas to Germany and Europe. It is an economic war waged on Russia, as well as militarily on the battlefields.
On February 28, 2023, the American Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Seymour Hersh, published an article exposing how the Biden administration had blown up the Nord Stream 2 underwater pipeline designed to deliver gas to Germany and Europe.
The Nord Stream 2 had been sanctioned by Germany, and Biden was afraid that Germany would lift the sanctions because of a bad winter.
According to Hersh, Biden was obsessed with reelection in 2024, and wanted to win the war in Ukraine. Biden’s advisors in the Oval Office feared that Germany and Western Europe might stop weapons support to Ukraine, and the German chancellor could turn the pipeline on.
Biden placed winning the war in Ukraine above the warmth and health of the German people, even though winning a war in Ukraine is improbable, according to military experts.
The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), has criticized Power’s trip to Armenia because USAID hasn’t provided financial support to Armenians who left Karabakh and returned to their homeland Armenia as displaced persons, and victims of ethnic cleansing.
Despite previous visits and flowery speeches, Power has not initiated any funding programs for the Karabakh Armenians who lost their homes, possessions, lands and livelihoods.
In September 2023, almost 200,000 ethnic Armenians fled the battles, and eventual defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh following Azerbaijan’s victory ending three decades of ethnic Armenian separatist rule there.
Protesters on the streets of Yerevan blamed the policies of Pashinyan for the defeat.
Power arrived in Yerevan on September 25 and said, “The United States is deeply concerned about reports on the humanitarian conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh and calls for unimpeded access for international humanitarian organizations and commercial traffic.”
The ANCA say the needy are still waiting for help from Power and the Biden administration.
During Azerbaijan’s attacks on the Armenia people living in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the US supported the Azerbaijan government. There is no reason for the government of Armenia to view the US as a friend, or supporter.
By contrast, the Russian peace-keeping troops tried to perform their job in the Nagorno-Karabakh armed conflict, but in the end, Armenia was defeated.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have made peace; the armed conflict is over, but the pain of hundreds of Armenian deaths at the hands of the Azerbaijanis remains fresh in the minds and hearts of Armenians.
Now, Ambassador Power is asking Yerevan to buy their gas from a former enemy, instead of a loyal friend.
On July 15, just days after Power visited, joint military drills with the US began, and reflects the pressure Power and the Biden administration are putting on Armenia to forge closer ties with the US.
Russia had been Armenia’s main economic partner and hosts a Russian military base. Armenian authorities accused Russian peacekeepers who were deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh of failing to stop Azerbaijan’s onslaught. Moscow rejected the accusations, arguing that its troops didn’t have a mandate to intervene.
American military help was completely absent in the struggle for Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Has she no shame?” asked Sossy Saroyan in Latakia, Syria while referring to Power.
After the attack and massacre in Kessab, carried out by the US supported Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their allied Al Qaeda terrorists, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, was asked to comment on what happened in Kessab.
Power said, “The US is very concerned about what happened in Kessab, but unfortunately the armed groups there are not ones we have leverage on.”
Power had lied. The FSA was the armed wing of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), based in Istanbul, Turkey and headed by its President, Ahmed Jarba. Both the FSA and SNC received their support, funds, training and weapons from the US government through Congressional funding, and through the CIA program, “Sycamore Timber”.
To prove the US connection to the attack, destruction, occupation, massacre and kidnapping in Kessab in March 2014, Jarba visited the FSA stationed in occupied Kessab on April 11, 2014.
On May 23, 2014, Jarba was sitting in the Oval Office with US President Barak Obama and Susan Rice. On Jarba’s visit he met with Secretary of State John Kerry and received the use of two offices in Washington to be used as a US base of operation for the SNC and FSA.
On the same day that Jarba was in Kessab, US Ambassador to Turkey, Francis J. Riccardone, Jr. visited the 26 very elderly kidnap victims from Kessab who had been taken at gunpoint to Vikifly, Turkey as captives of the FSA.
Ambassador Riccardone had brought his wife with him, as she was a language specialist, and they also had a translator with them.
Ambassador Riccardone had just one question to ask of the captives who all but one was over the age of 80. His question posed to the group of captives was, “Are any of you American citizens?”
Kessab, Syria does have a number of dual citizens, Syrians by birth, who have obtained US citizenship after living, working and paying incomes taxes in the US in the past. In fact, at least four American citizens had lost their homes, farms and businesses when the US sponsored terrorists attacked Kessab.
However, the group collectively answered, “No, we are just Syrians.”
At that point, Ambassador Riccardone and his entourage got up to leave. He was there for one purpose only, to free any US captive, but none were US citizens so he left them.
The very elderly Syrian Christian Armenian kidnap victims were captives of an armed group which stated goal was to establish an Islamic government in Damascus, and to remove the existing secular government which had protected the rights of all Christians in Syria. The victims begged Ambassador Riccardone to please not leave them in captivity in Turkey, which had massacred 1.6 million Armenians in the 1916 Armenian Genocide, but to transport them to Latakia, Syria where all the residents of Kessab were sheltering at the Armenian Church.
The dozens of elderly, infirm, and immobile Armenians of Kessab were forced by Ambassador Riccardone to remain captives in a foreign country historical known for its genocidal hatred of Armenian, for three months, until they were transported by the Turkish government, allied with Obama, to Beirut, Lebanon and from there they were bused to Latakia, Syria.
Kessab has never recovered, and is a partial ghost-town because of the Obama-Biden administration.
The Armenians of Syria could teach the Armenian government a hard lesson learned from bitter experience: don’t expect help from the US, because they do not have friends, they only have interests.
Biden wanted to win the Ukraine war, and secure a ceasefire in Gaza to ensure reelection. Instead he has failed at both, and has lost the election.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.
This article is originally published at Stratgic Culture Foundation
