"Did Armenians gleefully welcome Red Crescent convoys? No" US Marine veteran exposes NYT, Ocampo

The American newspaper Imperial Valley Press published an article by US Marine veteran, political consultant Raul Contreras, written in response to an article by The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof about the alleged "famine" in Garabagh. Caliber.Az reprints this article. 

When President John Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense (“Whiz Kid”) Robert McNamera wrote his 1995 “mea culpa” book he did so by stating that Kennedy’s “smart” advisors bungled the Vietnam War because they (he included) were “ignorant, (of) inattention, (and) flawed thinking, political expediency and a lack of courage.”

Americans read articles I wrote for the New York Times’ New American News Service while McNamara’s apologetic book drew attention.

Turns out I knew more about Vietnam in 1961 when McNamera was appointed Secretary of Defense than he admitted to knowing. Example, Kennedy introduced American combat troops into Vietnam to cover up the political wipe-out by Soviet leader Kruschev in a meeting with Kennedy in Vienna.

As for military views of American soldiers in Vietnam, I was but a 20 year-old US Marine Lance Corporal but I envisioned my Reserve unit would be called up to serve in Vietnam when Marines were sent.

Fast forward to today. The New York Times published an article (Sept 2) by one of its “star” columnists, Nicholas Kristof, that asks “...what if another country is taking advantage of the distraction (of Russia’s war on Ukraine) to commit its own crimes against humanity? Meet Azerbaijan.”

Disclaimer, I have no knowledge if Kristoff has ever been to Azerbaijan or its enemy Armenia. He wrote “You probably haven’t heard of Azerbaijan’s brutality toward an ethnic Armenian enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh, but it deserves scrutiny.”

Here we go again, just as I probably knew more about Vietnam and its anti-colonial war against France than Secretary McNamera knew in 1961, Kristoff cannot know what I know about Azerbaijan and its 30-years of war with next door aggressor Armenia. I have been there six times in the past eight years. I’ve written a book about Armenian war crimes and several articles about the country and its problems with Armenia.

I’ve also stood in the 500-yard-wide no man’s land between Armenian occupiers of Azerbaijani land and Azerbaijani troops on 24-hour alert.

Kristoff reveals his lack of knowledge by not reciting that the conflict started in the 1980’s with mass expulsions from Christian Armenia of multi-generational Azerbaijani Muslims that had lived in Armenia for decades.

Nor does he tell us that between 1988 and 1992, Armenia killed or expelled an estimated 200,000 Azerbaijanis from Armenia proper. Moreover, when Armenia (with Russian troops) invaded Azerbaijan in 1992 and occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan, including the entire Nagorno-Karabakh region (Garabagh - ed.), Armenians either killed or forced 700,000-800,000 Azerbaijanis from their homes. They spared no one; men, women and children fled to Baku, the capital. It grew to 2.3 million people, almost identical to the entire population of Armenia, 2.7 million.

Apparently, Kristoff hasn’t seen United Nations official reports that show that close to a million Azerbaijanis were driven from their homes. Nor has he seen the huge destruction of Aghdam, a major Azerbaijani city that Armenians occupied in 1994. They destroyed the entire city of 50,000 by the simple expediency of sending in Armenian work crews to scrounge anything of value such as copper telephone lines, telephone poles, wood from dismantled houses, glass windows, street pavers, etcetera.

Apparently, Kristoff has not seen the four separate United Nations Security Council resolutions that demanded Armenian forces withdraw from all Azerbaijani territory that Armenia ignored. Nor has he seen entire towns Azerbaijan has built from scratch so that displaced Azerbaijanis can return after 25 or more years to their land and homes – if they weren’t burned to the ground by retreating Armenians during the 2020 war Azerbaijan won.

Kristoff relies on a report by a man he knows, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, who wrote “There is an ongoing genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh,” in a recent report.

Further, Ocampo wrote: “Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon…. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”

All this because Azerbaijan closed the Lachin road that the 2020 Karabakh War ceasefire allowed between Armenia and Karabakh. Why? Because Armenians were using the Russian-protected road to smuggle contraband. The Russians did nothing to stop illicit activities. Azerbaijan stopped them.

Properly documented Armenians desiring to go to Armenia on this, the only road to Armenia, are allowed transit. However, the Azerbaijani government has allowed the Red Crescent Society (the Azerbaijani version of Red Cross International) to fill convoys of trucks with food and medical supplies for those people claiming they are being “starved to death.”

Did the Armenians gleefully welcome the convoys of 18-wheel trucks flying the Red Crescent flags? No. They blockaded the road from Aghdam with concrete barricades – Aghdam, the Armenian destroyed city of 50,000. They refused to allow the trucks into Azerbaijan’s own territory to feed their own Armenians they claim are “starving to death.”

As for former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the “expert” who “claims Armenians are being starved to death,” he would need an Azerbaijani entry visa issued by the Azerbaijanis to have ever visited the area since Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

There is no evidence he has ever been there. None, nothing, nada. There, where I have spent weeks upon weeks each time with an Azerbaijani visa.