(ANALYSIS) In a bus heading to the front line, a priest blesses uniformed army volunteers and reservists. The scene is a common one, with the Armenian Apostolic Church doing its utmost to keep the Christian faith alive and raise the spirits of the men currently risking their lives on the battlefield.

Armenians are turning to God for strength as the deadly conflict over the disputed Karabakh region rages on. The current flare-up, which began Sept. 27, has officially left hundreds of people dead, possibly thousands. 

In the biggest escalation in tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan since their war’s end in 1994, Armenia’s Christian clergy stood firm with both soldiers and civilians, as they always have, while Azerbaijan’s troops continued to push back Armenia’s line of defense. On Nov. 9, both countries signed a peace agreement with Russia to end the military conflict after Azeri soldiers shot down a Russian military helicopter that was patrolling the border.

Several previous ceasefire agreements have failed. The new agreement allows Azerbaijan to hold on to areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that it has taken during the conflict, while Armenia has agreed to withdraw from several areas over the next few weeks. The deal is seen as a win for Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, and a somewhat bitter loss for Armenia.

The religious-nationalist shift 

Since Joseph Stalin, then-chief of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of Russian Communist Party, transferred Karabakh to Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921, the dispute over the mountainous region has been primarily a territorial and historical one. However, since conflict with Armenia first broke out in 1988, the involvement of the Armenian Apostolic Church has brought a religious and cultural dimension to the dispute.

Armenians are faced with constant reminders of the security threats at their border. The landlocked country is located in the South Caucasus and surrounded by Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan (all Muslim-majority countries) and Georgia.

Concepts of cultural heritage and national identity in Armenia arise primarily from the story of the country’s conversion to Christianity in 301 AD. Armenia is widely recognized as the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion. Armenians view the Karabakh region as an integral part of the world’s oldest Christian country, with several early churches located there.

Azerbaijan regards Karabakh as an important part of its own territory, with Muslim settlement by Persians and Seljuk Turks going back to the 1100’s.

This summer and fall in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Armenians were fleeing to a local church seeking shelter from Azerbaijani shelling, just as they did when the war first broke out in 1988.

“We pray to God because our guys are right, our fight is just, we are fighting for our land and we will win,” said one of these refugees, crossing herself.

On the battlefield, places of worship have been built inside the trenches where soldiers light candles and pray for victory against the enemy. Armenian clergymen have been officially integrated into the armed forces since 1997.

“Unsettled relationships with Muslim neighbors play a significant role in sustaining the place of religion in Armenian life,” explains Marian Burchardt, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. 

Read: Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Inside The Religious Fight For Nagorno-Karabakh

A recurring theme in political and media discourse is the perceived threat of extermination faced by Christian Armenians in Karabakh. 

In this geopolitical context, the links between the Armenian Apostolic Church and nationalism have been strongly developed through centuries, particularly since the collapse of the USSR that led the former Soviet Republic of Armenia to its independence in 1991.

“The frozen conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s strong alliance with Turkey, sustained these links,” says Burchardt.

Armenian politicians seeking to portray themselves as defenders of the country’s cultural and spiritual heritage in light of the lengthy conflict have long used Christianity and nationalism, two pillars of the Armenian identity, to their advantage.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has described the dispute as an “existential threat” to the nation, in which Armenians are “now simply forced to use their right to self-defense.”

On the twentieth anniversary of the Armed Forces Religious Service in 2017, then-Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan emphasized that “the Church cannot be separated from the army. It is the force that should become an important means of forming a national spirit and a new environment in our armed forces.”

According to Burchardt, the Nagorno-Karabakh deadlock refreshes and redefines the role of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Before the resolution of the conflict, “religious-nationalism could be occasionally reinforced.”

The burden of the past

In Armenia, the fight for Karabakh has been seen as nothing less than a struggle for survival. 

The specter of the 1915 Armenian Genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire, in which an estimated 800,000 to 1.5 million perished, looms large in the mind of Armenians, with Azerbaijan’s close links to Turkey only exacerbating this fear. Turkey is supporting Azerbaijan with a fresh $77 million cache of weapons while Armenia’s military ally Russia has been reluctant to step in with additional support for the present conflict.

Read: Armenia, Artsakh And Turkey’s Neo-Ottoman Dream

During the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, both Armenians and Azerbaijanis became victims of pogroms and ethnic cleansing. 

The pogroms of the Armenian population of Sumgait and of Kirovabad in 1988 and of Baku in 1990, were led by mobs of ethnic Azerbaijanis formed into groups. Because of the scale of atrocities, pogroms were immediately linked to the 1915 Genocide in the Armenian national consciousness.

The killings of at least 161 ethnic Azerbaijanis from the town of Khojaly on February 1992, according to Human Rights Watch, was committed by the ethnic Armenian armed forces and became the largest massacre in the course of the conflict. 

As many as 230,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan and 700,000 Azerbaijanis from Armenia and Karabakh have been displaced as a result of the 1988-1994 war.

The media war

While Azerbaijan’s well-funded and well-equipped military may have the upper-hand on the battlefield, Armenia does have one major advantage: its diaspora.

Up to 11 million people of Armenian heritage are estimated to be living across the globe, compared to a population of only 3 million in the country itself. These often middle-class, well-educated networks are currently waging a war of their own on social media, attempting to obstruct what they regard as Azerbaijani disinformation, explains Emma, a 25-year-old Armenian web activist.

Azerbaijan ranks 168th out of 180 nations for press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders 2020 classification, with Armenia placed at 61st.

Propaganda from both sides has been disseminated heavily on Facebook and Twitter, including graphic images purportedly showing beheaded Armenian soldiers and the bodies of Azerbaijani children killed by shelling. Photos from Syria’s Idlib province have been circulated by pro-Azerbaijan accounts, falsely claiming to show the results of Armenian shelling in the town of Ganja.

In this media war, the binary conflict between Muslims and Christians is only ratcheted up further. Around the world, the rallying cry of the Armenian diaspora has been, “Stop killing Christians,” with Azerbaijani soldiers and Turkish mercenaries compared to Islamic State jihadists.    

This rhetoric not only justifies more violence but plays on Western mistrust on Islam. 

Armenia’s diaspora are attempting to portray the Karabakh conflict as another attempt at ethnic cleansing, despite the differences between the 1915 Genocide and the present dispute. 

The roots of the Genocide lie in resentment and suspicion. The Armenian religious and ethnic minority living in the Ottoman Empire tended to be better educated and wealthier than their Turkish neighbors. This, in addition to Armenians’ campaign to win basic civil rights as they were discriminated against, led to a premeditated extermination by the Turkish government who perceived Armenians as a grave threat to the state. 

The current conflict meanwhile has its roots in the putative boundaries of Karabakh which were drawn by the Soviets in the 1920s.  

Rouben Adalian, Director of the Armenian National Institute in Washington, describes the collective memory of the genocide as: “a mechanism, a method to bring people who live dispersed to find common ground. The memory of the Armenian genocide is the most common denominator, the most common point of identity for Armenians. It serves as a rallying point and it is one that has this unique capacity.”

The traumatic memories with regards to Turkey have played a significant role in drawing Armenians abroad into the Karabakh war. According to Adalian, the Armenian diaspora shares the same stance on the problem, although he stresses that this is not necessarily a relevant argument. 

Links to the 1915 tragedy are reinforced in the political discourse. 

“They [politicians] put it in a certain context in a sense that it is a message to tell people that they have an obligation to avoid running into this similar catastrophe,” Adalian said.

This rhetoric is also employed in the religious sphere. In France, the diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church quickly called for the prevention of another genocide of the Armenian people at the hands of Turkey and Azerbaijan. 

“The diocese is calling our people and French citizens to fight for the freedom of Armenians in their ancestral territory. Time has come to raise our voice against the Armenophobia from Azerbaijan and Turkey,” the church said in a statement.

Azerbaijanis, meanwhile, fiercely criticize Armenia for weaponizing religion, radicalizing the youth with racism and expressing hateful ethnic and religious sentiment in an attempt to divert attention from their military occupation of Karabakh.  

Karabakhis are the first victims 

The ambitions of both the Azerbaijani and Armenian governments have become bigger and more bellicose as nearly three decades of international mediation led by the OSCE Minsk Group has failed to yield progress. 

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev wants Armenian forces to withdraw from the entire Karabakh region, a territory that is home to a population made up of 80% ethnic Armenians (rising to 99% in Nagorno-Karabakh), threatening “revenge on the battlefield.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, meanwhile, is calling for “Artsakh,” the ethnic Armenian government who controls the region, to be recognized internationally, warning that Armenians will otherwise find themselves subjected to ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijani-controlled areas, “and that's because Armenians are the last obstacle for Turks to the north, east and south-east,” he said.

Nationalist tendencies and religious intolerance have been radicalized by decades of mutual aggression, belligerent declarations and historic adversity. The consequence of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s bellicose rhetoric is a standoff where ordinary Karabakhis are the first victims.

“People living there need humanitarian help beyond political and historical background,” said Ash Boddy, regional director of The HALO Trust, the world’s largest humanitarian mine clearance organisation. 

The Karabakh peace deal brokered by Moscow prompts anger in Armenia.

After Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced signing an “unbelievably painful” agreement for him and Armenians, people stormed inside the Parliament and damaged the furniture.

Now, the Armenian leader will have a bigger mission if he doesn’t want to lose more than territories with this peace deal. Armenians are divided and staggered. Pashinian needs to bring his people together and bring back national pride to fight critics.

Otherwise, the same people who chose him as their prime minister when he led the Velvet Revolution back in 2018 could now turn their backs at him.

In this political crisis to come, the Armenian Apostolic Church could yet be an essential ally for the government.

Jade Lévin is a French journalist who currently reports international news for France 24. She studied International Journalism at Cardiff University and her main areas of interest lie in geopolitics and human rights. She is also a former BMX-race athlete and is addicted to sports, which led her to cover women’s sports and the business of Mixed Martial Arts.