This book is dedicated to Antranig Shahinian, an Armenian American patriot who took great pride in his cultural heritage and through his actions continued his father’s commitment to his beloved Armenian homeland.
Thanks to Arax Mikaelyan for friendship.
Author’s note
I was looking for a title which would describe best the developments which took place geographically between the town of Hadrut in Nagorno Karabakh and the river Arax starting in September 27 of 2020. Was this an Armenian catastrophe, a death trap, a massacre? I was trying to find a word which would present the depth and the entirety of this Armenian tragedy. I was not comfortable with the word catastrophe, while massacre would be insulting for our 18-20 years old boys, who we left alone in the frontline of this war.
My dear friend Gegham Baghdasaryan described it as “The Valley of Death”, which ended up becoming the title of this book.
In this same geographic area during the First Karabakh war, between the month of January and April of 1994 the Armenian military lost 400 servicemen aged between 18 to 20. At the end of the First Karabakh war regular Armenian army was used between the city of Hadrut and Horadiz.
This is not a classical book. This is my diary which I kept during the 44 days of the Second Karabakh war. It consists of articles and reports which I was unable to publish during the military escalation, as there was a Martial law imposed by the Armenian government, the official propaganda was suggesting that we are winning the war, while the Facebook Republic of Armenia did not want to hear the truth.
However, there was an even more important reason. My writings would not match with the official line, while Yerevan was spreading information or misinformation, which had nothing to do with the realities on the ground. Hence, in the era of information, in 21st century our nation was misinformed and delusional.
I published these articles only after the trilateral announcement of November 10 between Nikol Pashinyan, Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev. This is when our public found out that the Armenian city of Shushi had fallen, we surrendered, lost the war with around 8000 square km2 of territory passing under Azerbaijani control. This was not just a defeat but a capitulation after which we did not get to negotiate, but signed a document which we were forced to.
In this volume I am presenting a selection of articles and reports which I wrote during the 44-day war, as well as other publications about Nagorno Karabakh war, Armenia-Turkey relations, regional developments, which mostly touch upon the period between April 4-day war of 2016 and February of 2021.
Articles combined in this book are presented in chronological order and were previously published in the online resources like Civilnet and Ani Center for Armenian Studies (www.aniarc.am), as well as Karabakh based Analiticon magazine and Tbilisi based Jam-News platform.
You can also find maps, pictures and other useful materials in this book.
Tatul Hakobyan
Dovegh, Tavush region, Armenia, May 19, 2021
