By Armenia Now
In 1972, a combination of political ideology and curiosity brought Yervand Minasian to Soviet Armenia from Iraq.
The young man bursting with communist naiveté was disappointed in Armenia. He had long heard his father praise Armenia, from which the family originated. Arriving, though, Minasian was refused citizenship, and was further disappointed to learn that his only chance to get a communist membership card was through bribery.
His ideology bruised and his nationalism challenged, nonetheless Minasian stayed in Armenia where for 30 years – until 2002 – he held a passport on which his status was state (in Russian) as “no citizenship.
“I always say that if I am driven out from the door, I will enter through the window,” says 68-year-old Minasian, a lecturer of Arabic in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Yerevan State University. Minasian’s father, who was from Zeytun in Western Armenia (now Turkey), wanted to repatriate as far back as 1947, when Diaspora Armenians were briefly being allowed to return to Armenia, before Josef Stalin reversed his policy. The younger Minasian, fueled with youthful ideology and communist zeal, was arrested in 1963 for distributing socialist propaganda in Iraq. He was sentenced to five years in prison, was set free after about four, then entered law school. He recalls that a classmate was Saddam Hussein.“We had no personal hostility, but we were ideological enemies,” says Minasian of the now-deposed and executed President of Iraq.
He says that in the early 1970s political persecutions against him restarted, and his family sold their house and moved to Armenia, where they lived in a hotel for six months spending all their savings brought from Iraq. In Armenia Minasian could not work as a lawyer because he did not know the Russian nor Armenian language well enough then, so he entered the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Yerevan State University, teaching modern Arabic language. Since, his whole life has been connected with that faculty and the lecturer can often been found in the corridors of the university, talking to his students.
In 2002 he finally got his Armenian citizenship. “I told the clerk of the passport department: ‘There are so many people who leave this country. I want to prove that there are also people who want to stay here’,” Minasian recalls.
Minasian’s daughter has followed her father’s path and also is a member of the language faculty of Yerevan State. His son, who plans to be a doctor, is now finishing military service in Nagorno Karabakh.
New Iraqi Armenians
Unlike Minasian, the latest flow of Iraqi-Armenians to Armenia stems not from nationalist ideology as much as from fear. Since United States-led troops invaded Iraq in 2003, an estimated 1,000 Iraqi-Armenians have fled to Armenia as refugees.These arrivals to Armenia tell of the chaos and anarchy created in Iraq which affected not only Sunni and Shia Muslims, but also Christians. They speak of cases when radical Islamic extremist groups kidnapped Armenian children, making their parents pay ransoms.
Before the war about 22,000-25,000 Iraqi-Armenians lived in Iraq; 17,000 were in Baghdad, while most of the others were in Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, and northern border towns. There were Armenian schools in all the Armenian-populated towns, as well as educational, sport, cultural and charitable institutions.
According to Arax Pashian, an expert in Middle-Eastern studies, despite the authoritarian regime during Saddam Hussein’s power (in 1979-2003), Armenians lived a safe and prosperous life in Iraq, where they enjoyed a reputation as skillful artisans. They were not active in the country’s political life, which is typical of Armenian Diaspora communities in the Middle East. Most Iraqi-Armenians left Iraq during the war. Now, according to Vigen Kedekian, of Iraqi-Armenians’ Family, Cultural NGO, less than 5,000-6,000 Armenians remain. Many of them left for other Middle East countries – Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, as well as some European countries, mainly the Netherlands, where there are favorable laws for refugees. Others also went to the United States. A number of Iraqi-Armenians (especially from Baghdad) moved to safer regions of Iraq, mainly to the Kurdish-populated northern villages.
According to data provided by the Migration Agency of the Ministry of Territorial Administration of Armenia, only 991 Armenians from Iraq have sought asylum in Armenia since 2003; 806 of them have secured residence permits. Currently about 750 of those who came to Armenia since the war, remain; others left, mainly for the U.S. and the Middle East. According to Gohar Galstian, chief coordinator of the Cultural Adaptation through Education program of Save the Children NGO (the NGO implemented a number of programs for the adaptation of Iraqi-Armenians and the improvement of their life standards in Armenia). Many Iraqi-Armenians don’t care about getting Armenian citizenship because they want to leave Armenia. Others who were accustomed to urban society in Baghdad, are unhappy with Armenian village life (where they have been relocated). While they do not fear for their lives here, neither is it easy to make a life, especially for those trying to find work.“They also have a language problem, because they do not speak Armenian well enough to get a normal job here. There are a few Iraqi-Armenians who have higher education; the others are often jewelers and auto mechanics,” Galstian says.
From Baghdad to Darbnik
The village of Darbnik, Ararat province, has become home to 26 families who escaped war in Iraq. The United Nations mission in Armenia has renovated the building of Darbnik’s former agricultural college, and prepared 46 apartments for the refugees. In April, last year, the nine-member Margarian family settled in Darbnik, after having originally fled to Armenia in 2004. The family was fearful of the outbreak of kidnapping of Christian children in Iraq, and made a decision to seek asylum in Armenia. “I could have gone to a market and never come back,” recalls the eldest member of the family, Genevel Margarian, 62, recalling the daily fear they felt in Iraq. “When I show you our photos (of their Iraq home), you will say, ‘Oh my God, how do you live here now’,” Margarian says walking along the muddy streets of Darbnik to their refugee home. Genevel came to Armenia with her husband, daughter, two sons and their wives, and two grandchildren. Her husband died since coming to Armenia, meanwhile two children were born to her younger son. Brothers Aram, 37, and Azat, 30, are married to two Christian Assyrian sisters, Nadia and Asil. “Papa (her husband) could not stand it anymore. Soon after moving here (in 20 days), he died. He said, ‘Oh my God, what kind of place is this? There is not even asphalt here’,” Margaryan says, explaining the stress her husband felt upon bringing the family to Darbnik. The widow says her husband died from grief over what was left behind.
Accustomed to more sophisticated living in pre-war Iraq, the Margarians now must adapt to living in a village where there is no garbage collection (refuse is simply dumped on the roadside) and a trip to the city (Yerevan) takes an hour by bus, where the brothers have a car repair garage. They have a satellite dish in their Darbnik house tuned to an Arabic music channel. Genevel asks her grandchildren to dance, demonstrating the Arabic dances taught by Asil.
“Life is very expensive here,” the family matriarch says. “We paid no money for water, electricity and gas in Baghdad; everything was free of charge.” Armenian winter has also been a shock. But: There is no threat of kidnapping, nor have bombs fallen. Darbnik may not offer a living, but at least offers life.
Waiting to move on
The eyes of mother Zvart Arakelian, 73, and her daughter Ani, 35, immediately fill with tears speaking about their family that has been split because of war in Iraq. Zvart and Ani live in a nephew’s home in Yerevan. The nephew left Armenia for the United States, and sends money to support them. The apartment is decorated with photos of two daughters’ weddings, and of grandchildren whom she has never seen because they were born after she fled Baghdad in 2004. The daughters and their families live in the U.S. and one son lives in a Kurdish-populated part of Iraq “because it is much safer and there is a job there”. The U.S. Embassy to Armenia has refused Zvart’s application to visit the United States, reasoning she has nothing in Armenia, and if she left would not return. She had wanted to go there to attend the baptism of grandson Serob, named for Zvart’s husband, who died in Baghdad. Ani, like her mother, wants to join her sisters living in the States. She says that they live in peace in Armenia, however, they feel very lonely here. Ani does not have many friends, and, like others who’ve ended up in Armenia by circumstance rather than choice, they do not socialize with locals, claiming that neighbors are suspicious of them. Social workers who keep check on the Iraqi-Armenian refugees say that very few apply for citizenship, choosing instead to renew residency cards once a year. Most don’t see Armenia as their permanent destination. Instead, they hope to finds the means to get to a European Union country where a “refugee of war” status entitles citizens of Iraq to better government benefits than can be found in Armenia.
Hanging on and hoping
In 2006, Adrin Grigorian, 61, came to Armenia from Basra, with her sons Shahen, 22, and Shant, 21. Before that, her daughter Maral, 24, had already come to Armenia with her aunt (Adrin’s sister). However, Maral married an Iraqi-Armenian she met in Armenia, and went back to Iraq. Grigorian and her sons rent an apartment in Yerevan. Maral and Shahen graduated from Yerevan State Engineering University, and Shant is a third-year university student. Grigorian is concerned about whether her son will find employment. She says that Maral looked for a job in Armenia for two years but never found one. Now she is worried that the same thing may happen to Shahen who graduated from the university this year. While their new life in Armenia has been a struggle, it has also held pleasant surprises. Grigorian recalls the joy of the Armenian New Year and Christmas season. “We always celebrated New Year in Iraq, but everything was different here. There were lights in the streets and shops and lots of decorated Christmas trees,” recalls Grigorian, adding that the difference from the season in a Muslim society was a delight. “This time I felt that I was really in the homeland.”
One incident, however, on the first day at the apartment, was hurtful. Boys from the building shouted at her sons, “Turks!”. The boys were simply being mischievous, shouting the worst insult they knew at strangers. But the impact was damaging. Shant and Shahen mainly make friends with other young Iraqi-Armenians living in Yerevan. They say that girls are more culturally refined than boys in Armenia. Shant is angry that “Armenian young men are at hockshops all the time, pawning their gold”.Nevertheless, Shant and Shahen say they are happy to be in an environment where everyone speaks Armenian and they do not feel alien here. Grigorian in her turn, in spite of social difficulties, has adapted. Like a true Armenian housewife, she learned how to preserve food for winter. The canned grape leaves for the coming season have been prepared since summer. Remembering her house in Basra, she says with nostalgia and sadness, “Oh, my home…” as she recalls a well-appointed three-bedroom house, and compares it to her current circumstances, living with someone else’s furniture. Currently two sisters of her late husband live in that house. But they will come to Armenia soon, too. The family is getting by in Armenia on the pension Adrin still gets in Iraq, which her sister-in-law sends by transfer, along with the retirement funds from her husband’s job working in the oil fields of Iraq. While hopeful that the sons will find work here, they are also trying to sell the house in Basra.
“If they manage to sell that house, we will be able to buy a house here with that money,” says Grigorian, who is weary of renting an apartment.
Forced here by threat
The Armenian family of 48-year old Vigen Kedekian knows painfully the dangers of war-time Iraq. In 2003, when the war began, Kedekian was wounded when a shell exploded near him close to his home in Baghdad. He ended up in bed for a year. While he was bedridden, his youngest son, who was 13 then, was kidnapped and held for several days until Kedekian paid $50,000 to the kidnappers. (The family had a good income, coming from a construction machinery spare-parts shop it owned.) The boy’s mother Haykanush says that their son was terrified, but fortunately, not hurt. For three years the Kedekians lived fearfully as the war progressed, then in 2006 they left for Armenia, bringing three sons and Haykanush’s mother. Unlike many of their compatriots, the Kedekians have fared better than most in Armenia. After renting an apartment for two years, the family eventually bought their own house in Yerevan, and this summer Kedekian opened a small coffee shop in the capital. Kedekian is also deputy head of the Iraqi-Armenians’ Family and Cultural NGO. His eldest son works at Yerevan Thermal Power Plant as an engineer and the second son sells sports apparel at the Hrazdan open market. The youngest son is a student at Yerevan State Engineering University. The Kedekians feel comfortable in Armenia, where they live in peace. They say they would never go back to Baghdad, even for two days. Kedekian’s brother, and his father, who is a bank manager, live in Iraq, but it is likely that they will move to Armenia soon, too. However, Kedekian agrees that it is necessary to struggle in order to survive in Armenia.
“There are difficulties everywhere, Armenia is not an exception. What can we do? We are a small country, we do not have a sea, we do not have ports, natural resources, etc. But it is okay, it will get better and better day by day,” Kedekian says, adding that Armenia’s problems are not felt only by those from outside, but have been an even longer struggle for those born and raised here.
Repatriation for business
Businessman Raffi Mesropian, 37 is one of the more successful Iraqi-Armenians. He was not driven here by war nor by ideology, but came as a business decision. Mesropian came to Armenia in 2004, after completing studies in the Netherlands in business administration. (In Iraq, his family had a jewelry business.) His parents and sister came to Armenia with him, although his father had been a long-time leader in the Iraqi-Armenian community in Baghdad. He says he didn’t like the “cold” life in Europe and in Armenia found a business environment where he could open a construction company that is currently building one of several high-rise apartment buildings near Yerevan’s Cascade. He also owns a real estate agency. Additionally, Mesropian acts as a liaison to the Government of Armenia, encouraging business relations with several European entities. Mesropian’s parents enjoy driving around Armenia, finding acquaintances from Iraq as well as visiting relatives.
“Sometimes when my brother-in-law or I get angry about some things in Armenia, my parents just don’t understand,” says Mesropian. “They love Armenia.” Generally, Mesropian says he gets frustrated working in an environment where too much effort is spent finding ways to skirt laws (customs, taxes, etc.) that sometimes seem to hamper business development, rather than contribute to its growth. Mesropian blames the Soviet legacy for Armenia’s failure to assimilate into the modern business culture, instead maintaining lessons learned in a bygone environment that no longer work in contemporary society’s globalization. “People are too tense in their relations,” Mesropian says. “That is the only thing I would like to change. Change in Armenia is slow, but it does happen.”
