The Country The World Says Doesn't Exist

as of this moment I'm an international fugitive by filming this scene on this patch of dirt I'll be joining the ranks of hundreds of journalists and politicians who just wanted to come in witness a world between masters a war zone and if I said I was a tourist and that I was confused and that I completely agree to Azerbaijan's natural right to this land they might just let me get away with it I might slip under the radar but I'm not going to do that so for the rest of my life a dictatorship with a litany of human rights abuses is going to be waiting to throw me in prison because that's what it takes to tell this story and if that's what they'll do to me imagine what it's like living here [Music] what gives you the right to live where you are to sell your land to grow your crops to raise your children in a place that you think is yours what gives you that right it might sound like a complicated answer but it's actually quite simple it's force guns every law we've ever made every agreement we've ever come to every nation carved out of the dust it's all guns might makes right no matter how peaceful your nation may be the only reason you're there is because of guns the people of Karabakh understand a world where force can take away everything in an instant they're indigenous to this region and have likely lived here for over 10,000 years this area of the Caucasus is so closely associated with their inhabitation that it's deemed greater Armenia in almost every language on earth whether you call it Ararat or RT airman and Meeny Armenia or hike they've been here so long that the old testament treats them as ancient armenians fought babylon they fought Pompey Magnus and Alexander of Macedon they fought jingis Khan Tamerlan and the Mamluks they trembled before the Ottomans in Stalinist Russia their entire history is a history of dying so that other people can live and within that world of war the region of Karabakh is the only place where they've never been completely forced from their land well elsewhere in the region that bears their name exile and Genocide have driven them from their ancestral homes in the Karabakh they've never truly left the people here call themselves donkeys because they're so stubborn nobody tells them what to do not even mother Armenia the EU doesn't recognize them as a nation Russia doesn't recognize them as a nation the u.s. doesn't recognize them as a nation but they're still here and if you want to remove them you're gonna need some serious guns unfortunately Azerbaijan has those guns and they're not afraid to use them because they too think this land is theirs and they've spent more money than Armenia could ever dream of to convince the governments of the world that their right to understand how it got to this point though let's go back a bit in history although this story goes back thousands of years in this region has independence and destruction on loop a dozen times or more for the sake of brevity I'm going to focus on the last few generations alone at the outset of World War one in the Russian Revolution Armenians faced a historically difficult situation so the East a Turkish nationalist uprising had started a slaughter of minorities so brutal it led to the creation of the word genocide to the south a collapsed Persian Empire that had once served as a protector of the Armenian people was crushed by the weight of its own internal divisions and to the north the Russian Revolution was in full swing replacing the dictatorial Tsar with a dictatorial Soviet in the middle of this were a people with a little identity to call their own they'd spent so long in other empires split between rulers that they barely saw themselves as a people the genocide changed that depending on who you believe ottomans killed between 30 and 70 percent of all armenians and yet even with those numbers people from just a few hundred miles away would have been completely unaware it was even happening it remains one of the most denied atrocities in history turkey is so opposed to it becoming internationally recognized that they even murdered one of their own journalists for suggesting reconciliation in 2007 no less but as awful as it was it hardened those who survived it the Armenians have a saying we fight ourselves until the knife touches the bone then we unite and in the face of massive Nik cleansing a people separated by borders language in history began to once again see themselves as united the knife was touching the bone and out of this garden watered with blood a hero arose Garrigan neshty is perhaps the most important man in modern Armenian history he was the nationalist spark that lit the fire of Independence his writings actions and political will aimed to stave off the complete collapse of his people and to create a state to call their own it would be no exaggeration to say that his writings changed the world hundreds of thousands of Armenians who'd imagine themselves as nothing more than Soviets woke up to their identity for Armenians in Moscow Baku Turkey America Argentina and everywhere else they'd been exiled his words rang out like a bell come together defend your people fight until you're free and for the briefest few months in 1921 he'd run an independent Republic here in the hills but as strong as an edge day was he couldn't change the world a few thousand civilian soldiers cannot stop a superpower and no matter how zealots they are that didn't mean he ran this wasn't a politician in exile telling his boys back home to die for his cause he was leading from the frontlines and he would fight anyone who took away his idea of Independence he fought the Turks with the Czar and he fought the Soviets with Hitler it didn't matter who his allies were so long as they said when the dust settled his people would have a homeland but promises are nothing without the guns to back them up and no foreign nation was willing to spill their blood for the Karabakh for the next decade change came rapidly to the caucuses setting the basis for a conflict that rages right up to the modern day as the Russian Revolution pulled back the armies of the Czar age-old ethnic clashes began to crop up in Eastern Armenian Azerbaijan British oil interests had long since led them to ally with the Azzurri and war politics were nothing if not harsh the British designated Karabakh a disputed territory and agreed to look the other way if the Azerbaijani felt they wanted to make it theirs in turn they expected them to hold back the oncoming Soviets when the time came it was nearly 95% Armenian but it wasn't as simple as a British decree the world war may have ended but here war was only beginning in the face of an ongoing genocide in the West Nez day and his local donkeys disagreed wholesale to the loss of their historic homeland in the east they were ready to fight to the death and the British in Azerbaijani would make them live up to their word in 1920 the karabük capital of xuxa then one of the most prosperous towns in the entire trans caucuses was razed to the ground its entire population raped and murdered on the spot within all this turmoil Soviets with the backing of an up-and-coming Joseph Stalin began eyeing the old Empire of the Tsar and sent the red army down through the to gain favor with the Armenians they promised the return of Karabakh in exchange for support and soldiers but like most things in communist Russia what was promised didn't quite meet reality the new leader of nationalist Turkey commonly known as Ataturk had hinted that he might make friends with the isolated Soviet Russian government and in turn they felt like they might make a good communists out of him so in spite of historic ties a near 100% Armenian population and the Communist Central Committee having voted the day before to unite it with Armenia on July 5th 1921 Stalin handed the region of Karabakh to the newly created heavily Turkic Soviet Azerbaijan it was a decision that surely everyone knew would end in bloodshed for the next 60 years the Armenians watched as Azerbaijani settlers came to set up a life in the Karabakh a land they would soon to call their home and for 60 years the Armenians protested only to be crushed again and again by the unapologetic Red Army in 1988 a Soviet power was coming to a close the Armenians began a protest that would rip the SCAR into an open wound pogroms extrajudicial murder and open hostility were everywhere there were no good guys from Eastern Armenia to Azerbaijan sweeping from step on a carrot down to Baku ethnic cleansing that had been dormant for generations was brought back to the surface the Soviets didn't intervene they waited until it was all said and done after all they just wanted to control the government they didn't really care for the people hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to the region most likely to keep them alive Armenians Azaria ZD Tatar Georgians Persians all of them they made the hard choice you run or you die in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed around them the remaining people of nagorno-karabakh held a referendum to form an independent state with the Azzurri abstaining the vote was nearly unanimous but while the republics of the Soviet Union were in theory allowed to vote themselves into existence they'd never considered the Karabakh a republic on paper it to Azerbaijan and even though Russia now worried about an Islamic state would send troops to fight for the Armenians they wouldn't recognize their right to Artsakh fear of Turkish intervention was so strong that not even Armenia would recognize their fledgling little brother in the East the Republic was deemed illegal and the azhari declared war it was a war that they'd lose nearly 30 years after the outset of that war and the borders remain roughly as they ever were multiple years of total blockade fighting with handmade weapons against jihadist mercenaries from across the Muslim world and yet they've barely moved an inch azerbaijan's military budget is larger than the entire GDP of Artsakh yet they still can't take this land the human rights abuses are constant without end the Azzurri have enlisted the help of men coming back from their time and Isis bringing with them the horrible lessons of Syria in Iraq it's become common place for them to carve up the living soldiers they capture sending back their bodies while posting Facebook photos of their severed heads they've systematically destroyed cultural artifacts in ancient churches they know history supports the Armenians so they destroy the history they've dropped minds with colorful ribbons attached meant to be picked up by children colloquially naming them after Kinder Surprise eggs elderly citizens are being murdered in their homes by special forces and the Azzurri dictatorship is giving medals to those who commit these atrocities but for all the terror they've caused it's backfiring what they can't see is that an animal fights harder the further it's pushed up against the wall just ask these donkeys today not a single country on earth recognizes the Republic of Artsakh the rights of the people of Karabakh simply aren't as important as the geopolitics of superpowers the UN may say that indigenous people have rights but to quote Joseph Stalin how many divisions do they have Baku has oil and lots of it turkeys in NATO they're fighting in Syria and they control the flow of refugees to Europe nobody is trading that Alliance for a few thousand people in the hills so the Republic of Artsakh awaits they bide their time building the trappings of a state they've built museums and statues they've built children's playgrounds and universities they've built a foreign ministry because they're waiting for the world to change and they believe that someday people will see them for what they are they believe that someday history will matter but until that day they're going to be right here defending what's theirs with a gun this is rare earth [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Rare Earth

Views: 2,039,534

Rating: 4.7484541 out of 5

Keywords: Chris Hadfield, Hadfield, YouTube Documentary, Documentary, History Documentary, History, Unique Places, Tom Scott, Smarter Every Day, Vsauce, Scishow, Evan Hadfield, Rare Earth, BBC, Natgeo, National Geographic, artsakh, republic of artsakh, armenia, breakaway regions, unrecognized countries, abkhazia, south ossetia, countries with no recognition, armenian history, armenia documentary, artsakh documentary, azerbaijan, artsakh independence, armenian independence

Id: unBdquVfnug

Length: 13min 9sec (789 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/JakeBeats]

This dudes dramatics come off super disingenuous.

[u/zxqwqxz]

What is this comment section, is this hatred really called for? I mean I get it he's being dramatic but isn't that just fitting for the gravity of the subject at hand?

[u/stravant]

Probably the worst video in the series, if you haven't seen any of the others don't let this dissuade you from watching them.

[u/murphy212]

I just watched it. Great short documentary about the Republic of Artsakh. A great example of individuals fighting for self-governance and liberty. If you thought you'd heard about all the separatist movements in former Soviet republics of the Caucasus, this is for you.

[u/adaminc]

I thought this was going to be about Finland.

[u/Melvinmz]

Great work

[u/beigengreen]

would love to know more about this issue but I don't because he dealt with it with the touch of someone poking you in the eye.

[u/RetrogradeMarmalade]

Those stinging nettles in the foreground in the last scene gave me some anxiety and brought back some valuable life lessons i learned as a young city kid running around in dense vegetation.

[u/squero13]

This guy is a joke