Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has accused his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, of inaction as Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population was displaced following Azerbaijan’s final assault on the region.
‘Kamala Harris did NOTHING as 120,000 Armenian Christians were horrifically persecuted and forcibly displaced in Artsakh’, wrote former US President Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday.
‘When I am President, I will protect persecuted Christians, I will work to stop the violence and ethnic cleansing, and we will restore PEACE between Armenia and Azerbaijan’, he said.
It was during Trump’s administration that Azerbaijan launched the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in September 2020, which resulted in Armenia’s defeat and Nagorno-Karabakh’s surrender three years later.
Trump’s administration was not actively involved in establishing a ceasefire four years ago, which was pointed out by Armenians on Trump’s post.
Others additionally drew attention that, unlike Harris, Trump has said nothing about the right of return of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Aram Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Community of America (ANCA), an organisation lobbying for Armenian policies in the US, stated that Trump’s remarks on the exodus of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians indicated that ‘Armenian votes matter’.
He also pointed to a statement made by Harris in late September, in which she called for the right to return of displaced Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh.
However, a press release from the ANCA in response to Trump’s post also cited Hamparian’s allegations of Trump’s administration ‘arming and emboldening’ Azerbaijan during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.
‘President Trump, who dramatically ramped up US military aid to Azerbaijan — arming and emboldening the Aliyev regime’s 2020 attack on Artsakh — needs to do more than issue a campaign statement; he needs to deliver actual results before Election Day’, he said.
Hamparian added that Trump needed to affirm the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians’ right to return to the region, and called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule a vote on enforcing aid restrictions to Azerbaijan.
He also called on Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who is currently a member of the US Senate, to ‘cosponsor and work for the passage’ of a resolution scrutinising Azerbaijan’s use of ‘US Military aid to commit anti-Armenian war crimes’.
In August, the ANCA gave both the Trump–Pence and Biden–Harris administration failing grades on their Nagorno-Karabakh policies.
They accused Trump’s administration of ‘aiding, abetting, and emboldening Azerbaijan’s 2020 assault on the indigenous Armenians of Artsakh, for refusing to recognise the Armenian Genocide and then actively blocking Congressional remembrance of this crime, and for taking no meaningful steps to hold Azerbaijan accountable for war crimes perpetrated during the course of its 44-day Artsakh War.’
The Biden administration also received a failing grade from the ANCA for ‘arming, abetting, and emboldening Azerbaijan’s 2023 genocide of Artsakh’s indigenous Armenians, refusing to hold the Aliyev regime accountable for its crimes, undertaking no meaningful steps to secure the return of Artsakh Armenians or the release of Armenian hostages, and providing only minimal assistance to at-risk Artsakh refugees.’
