JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS Roads I Have Traveled. . . Excerpt # 1 Nagorno-Karabakh, 1998

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Nagorno-Karabakh: August, 1998: Baroness Caroline Cox, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament’s House of Lords in London is the international head of the English-registered charity, and Stuart Windsor is the United Kingdom’s national director. They had requested the help of Project C.U.R.E. in Nagorno-Karabakh, a little-known but terribly distressed area of the old Soviet Union. 

As far back as AD 340, the Armenians can trace their Christian religious heritage through church buildings and monasteries located throughout the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. From the early 1900s to 1916, the Turks employed radical methods of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Armenians in Turkey. Those activities all but eliminated the Armenian population from Turkey. Likewise, in 1905 Azerbaijan chose to eliminate the minority population of Armenian Christians from their country. In addition to the tens of thousands of Armenian Christians killed in Azerbaijan, over half a million more fled the country as homeless refugees. In 1919 and 1920, the Turkish and Azerbaijani military forces took land masses for their own that once belonged to the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians. More ethnic cleansing of the Armenians followed. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Joseph Stalin tired of the continual tribal fighting within his Soviet Union. He thereupon arbitrarily and capriciously declared the Armenian region of Karabakh part of Azerbaijan. Stalin paid no attention to the fact that there was neither moral nor historic nor ethnic reasoning behind his action to give Nagorno-Karabakh to the Azerbaijanis. He didn’t need a reason; he was Stalin the Supreme. He totally cut off the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh from the geographical borders of Armenia. He also destroyed or closed down all monasteries and churches from that time on. 

As the Soviet system began to weaken by 1988, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to secede from Azerbaijan. On December 10, 1991, they passed a referendum for independence and freedom. Azerbaijan’s answer was to impose a harsh and effective blockade around Nagorno-Karabakh, completely cutting off food supplies and travel from the rest of the world. Further, Turkey joined in Azerbaijan’s punitive efforts against the ethnic Armenians in both Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh by imposing a choking embargo and total blockade around Armenia. They simply hoped to starve out the Armenian Christians.

Moscow’s Soviet authorities then joined in the fray and once again declared Nagorno-Karabakh under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan. The Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh sensed the seriousness the looming death sentence. They endeavored to reopen a route to connect them once again with Armenia. The Soviet Fourth Army joined forces with the Azerbaijani and the Turkish troops and attacked Nagorno-Karabakh with tanks, armored personnel carriers and helicopters. In the early fall of 1991, the joint armies made their intentions known to annul Nagorno-Karabakh’s declaration of independence and autonomy and rename its capital city, giving it a Turkish name.

Somehow the Nagorno-Karabakh forces were able to fend off not only the army of Azerbaijan but Soviet and Turkish forces as well. As all-out war raged, the idea of genocide in Karabakh grew as a final goal in the minds of the leaders of Azerbaijan. Former Azerbaijani president Abulfaz Elchibey pronounced in June 1992 that if there were still Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh by October of 1992, the people of Azerbaijan could hang him in the central square of Baku, the nation’s capital. Now, President Aliyev has been reported as saying that the only solution to the problem is the elimination of all Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Eventually, against all odds, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh were able to recapture the town of Shushi and open, once again, a corridor to Armenia through Lachin. However, it was accomplished at an incredibly high price of bloodshed and loss of life. The Karabakhi loss was not limited to just the soldiers; thousands of women and children became the express targets of the Azerbaijanis, Turks, and Soviets. Today, the blockade could once again be imposed even though a fragile cease-fire is being somewhat honored.

Thursday, August 13, I arrived from Denver at London Heathrow Airport. At 5:00 p.m., I was able to meet up with the other team members I will be traveling with to Nagorno-Karabakh. Lady Caroline Cox is the excursion leader. During the terrible war years in Nagorno-Karabakh between 1990 and 1994, she went at least once a month and rode with the helicopter pilots as they flew the dead and wounded out of Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh, across the blockaded corridor into Yerevan, Armenia.

The people of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh view her as a hero for her work in bringing supplies and aid to the Armenians, as well as standing boldly before British Parliament.

Stuart Windsor, a retired British military chaplain who lives in New Malden, Surrey, England, is the UK national director. Stuart went many times to the front lines of the war and prayed with the Armenian soldiers and held the heads of the dying men. Stuart and his wife, Ethel, will also join us on our trip from London as well as a team of five doctors from US and UK.

It was a five-hour flight from London Heathrow to Tbilisi, Georgia, south of Russia on the Black Sea. Our delegation took British Airways flight 6711 to Tbilisi and then continued on with British Airways to Yerevan, Armenia, arriving at about 8:30 this morning. As soon as the luggage was collected and we cleared customs, we took vans directly to the Armenian hotel in downtown Yerevan where we will be staying.

Next Week: From Yerevan into war-torn Stepanakert

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

  

www.jameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

AT THE INTERSECTION:CURBSIDE CAPACITIES

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Every individual stands on the curbside of the intersection of culture and economics. That is where global transformation, as well as any other change, takes place. Culture will influence, and indeed has the power within it, to change economic philosophy and economic systems at that intersection. Conversely, economic systems and ideas have the power to change a given culture.

Just think of the potential capacity for change that is wrapped up in the individuals with their personal market baskets, gathered on the curbside of that intersection. Quite frankly, I find that potential dynamism quite fascinating. There is potential capacity to perform, to yield, or to withstand any and all components of culture or any and all components of economics as they try to intersect, collide, and pass through that intersection. The components that make it through to the other side of the intersection will determine history as it is recorded.

I am additionally intrigued by the variety of emotional, moral, and behavioral capacities that influence the components of economics and culture as they pass through the intersection. The traffic flowing through the intersection of culture and economics seems to become super charged by the high octane fuel propelling the varied components as they pass through the traffic.

As I have traveled to nearly every nook and cranny of this globe, and observed hundreds of people groups and the diverse examples of civilizations, I have been amazed at the human capacity to harbor and display the phenomenon of evil. I traveled throughout Rwanda on the heels of the terrible Hutu- Tutsi genocide. I was in Congo and Angola at the time of the mass murders. I personally viewed Pol Pot’s torture chambers located at the old high school in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and witnessed where hundreds of thousands of Cambodia’s best citizens were intentionally slaughtered by their own government.

I was in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Belgrade, Serbia and witnessed the atrocities taking place. In the little country of Nagorno Karabakh I watched the genocide by the Russian Fourth Army, the Azerbaijanis, and the Turks wipe out eighty percent of that small country’s male population, and it seemed that hardly anyone even noticed. I’ve spent time at the Holocaust memorials in Jerusalem, Israel, and Washington D.C. and asked the question, “Just how can this be?”

That same capacity for evil can likewise be observed in the law-ignoring greed of local governments, corporate heads, and homegrown community thugs, as well as even fraudulent social services recipients.

But, history has also shown that the folks gathered at the intersection can receive and contain a remarkable capacity for virtue. It is possible for them to attain through invitation and development, excellence of character. And based on that excellence of character, they can choose to become agents and dispensers of kindness, generosity, fairness, sympathy, mercy, personal responsibility, justice, charity, gentleness, forbearance, righteousness, and benevolence.

The individuals standing on the curbside of the intersection have the power and opportunity to ultimately determine history. But who will actually step forward and begin the process by taking the precious items from their market basket and injecting them into the flow of traffic?

As I visualize this epic scene of the making of history at the intersection of transformation, my mind recalls an intriguing episode shared with me by a new friend as I traveled through Asia: 

        Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten.

        And seeing them, the holy one went down into deep prayer and cried,

        “Great God, how is it that a loving Creator can see such things and yet do   

        nothing about them?”

       And out of the long silence, God said, “I did do something . . . 

        I made you.”

We who are standing on the curbside of the intersection of transformation have the power to influence the direction, timing, and outcome. How will we handle the opportunity?

Next Week: Vice vs. Virtue

© Dr. James W. Jackson  

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

www.drjameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

RECONCILIATION

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Nothing has traumatized my psyche and emotions over the past nearly forty years of international travel, like the real-time observations of genocide. I have seen with my own eyes the atrocities in the Bosnia-Kosovo-Herzegovina tragedy. I experienced the killing fields of Uganda, Burundi and two episodes in Congo. I was in Nagorno Karabakh and experienced the systematic killing of 80% of its male population with almost no media coverage at all. I stood where the Turks ravaged the population of the Armenians. I have visited Cambodia and diligently observed and studied how Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge diabolically murdered everyone who did not fit their envisioned model of agrarian communism. I have visited the Jewish holocaust museums in both America and Israel, and have concluded that evil is very real, cultures are very fragile, and genocide can happen anywhere.

Witnessing the occurrence of genocide being perpetrated by the Hutus upon the Tutsis in Rwanda still plays horror movies on the wide screen of my mind. After the genocide stopped, we drove in a Volkswagen van from Kampala, Uganda, to the heart of Kigali, Rwanda. There I encountered the scenes I cannot now erase. 

Out of a population of 7.3 million people—84% of whom were Hutu, 15% Tutsi and 1% Twa—the official figures published by the Rwandan government estimated the number of victims of the genocide to be 1,174,000 slaughtered in 100 days, between April 6 and mid-July. That figures out to be 10,000 Tutsis or moderate Hutus murdered every day by their own neighbors; 400 every hour, 7 every minute. It is estimated that about 300,000 Tutsi, who had escaped to neighboring countries, survived the genocide. Thousands of widows, many of whom were subjected to a planned strategy of rape and female mutilation, became HIV-Aids infected. There were about 400,000 kids left as orphans, and nearly 85,000 of them were forced to become heads of families. The killings, on the most part, were accomplished without the use of any guns, but by hand with the use of machetes that were issued to the Hutus by their leaders, or the victims were bludgeoned to death with common gardening hoes and shovels.

It is important to see, from a cultural economics standpoint, that genocide differs from war. War, historically, is fought for tribute to be paid by the vanquished to the victor. Or wars are fought over the possession of some disputed border-land geography. But genocide takes place where there is full intention of destroying and replacing a culture. In 1994, the Hutus in Rwanda wanted to completely destroy and remove all remnants of the Tutsi culture and civilization. Their intentions were to kill every man, woman, boy, and girl who was of Tutsi blood, and every trace of Tutsi traditions, institutions, family structure and legacy, as well as all living individuals.

Once genocide has been accomplished, the aggressors assume undisputed right and sway over land (resources), labor (production), capital (business, currency, trade), education, religion, policy-making and enforcing, and the entrepreneurs are replaced by either a dictator or by a politburo.

Very little thought is given at the time of the genocide to the slaughter of the innocent civilians or any other hideous atrocities perpetrated. It is deemed imperative that the culture needs to be eradicated, and the eliminating of people is viewed as an incidental requirement. Therefore, it is impossible to enforce any standard rules or treaties of war.

The Commander and General of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi named Paul Kagame, brought a halt to the killings and gained control of the country by mid-July, 1994. By then, the facts had begun to percolate out from Kigali. The United Nations had failed miserably in fulfilling its peacekeeping assignments. The Clinton Administration and the UN actually eroded support and blocked any help from going into Rwanda to stop the aggression and genocide by the Hutus. Later, President Clinton in a Frontline television interview admitted that he regretted the decision, and later publicly stated that he believed that if he had sent 5,000 U.S. peacekeepers, more than 500,000 lives could have been saved. President Clinton has referred to the failure of the U.S. government to intervene in the genocide as one of his main foreign policy failings.

In 2000, the UN explicitly declared its reaction to Rwanda a "failure." Then Secretary General Kofi Annan said of the event, "The international community failed Rwanda, and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret."

So, following the occurrence of genocide, how does civilization reset its clock?

John Rucyahana, the Bishop of Rwanda, admitted, “I knew that to really minister to Rwanda's needs meant working toward reconciliation in the prisons, in the churches, and in the cities and villages throughout the country. It meant feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the young; but it also meant healing the wounded and forgiving the unforgivable.”

In July, 1994, Tutsi leader, General Paul Kagame, was chosen vice-president of a new unity government, and Hutu leader, Pasteur Bizimungu was chosen president so that the majority Hutus would still be highly represented in the government. Bizimungu resigned in March of 2000 in a dispute over the make-up of a new cabinet, and Kagame became president. Kagame subsequently won elections in 2003 and 2010.

During the genocide, most of the governmental institutions were destroyed, including the judicial courts. Most of the judges and prosecutors had been killed. Out of 750 judges, only fifty were left alive in the country. However, there were over 130,000 suspects who had been arrested and were being held in jails for crimes related to the genocide atrocities. Between 1996 and 2000, the courts could only process 3,343 cases. It was calculated that it would take over two hundred years to conduct the trials of the suspects in prison, not including the ones who remained at large.

The UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal to prosecute the high level officials, and Rwanda established the Gacaca Courts that traditionally dealt with local conflicts and adapted them to judge the cases of the lower level leaders and the local people. Neither of the systems proved to be satisfactory.

Reconciliation and restructuring peace is a very complicated phenomenon. It has to do with more than reparations and economic matters. It also requires changes of heart and spirit and requires employing symbolic as well as practical matters. In some ways Rwanda has experienced healing; in some ways it has not. In some ways President Kagame has been given an impossible task. The last time I visited Kigali, I listened to a couple of prominent Hutu leaders who were saying, “Nothing has changed, we still have the minority Tutsis as leaders. Next time we will complete the job.”

The cultural and spiritual clock cannot be reset, and complete healing cannot take place without a veritable miracle of reconciliation. That reconciliation requires massive doses of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Otherwise, it will not last. Otherwise, temporary repression will be experienced, and ultimately another outbreak of atrocity will be repeated.

I pray often for my Rwandan friends and for President Paul Kagame. Project C.U.R.E. has been involved in the country for many years, and I believe that true reconciliation of kindness, justice, and righteousness will serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding and violation that unduly separate human beings one from another. 

  

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SKULLDUGGERY IN SOMALIA

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

It is imperative that integrity be the cornerstone of any endeavor where everyone is expected to be better off. Napoleon Hill declares, “I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure unless built upon truth and justice; therefore, I will engage in no transaction which does not benefit all whom it affects.”

I agree with Warren Buffet’s curt advice about employing people: "In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." Integrity is a precious commodity, and when it is compromised or put up for sale in the market place of life, the result is always moral and cultural bankruptcy.

Integrity has to do with consistent behavior stemming from a core group of values or virtues. When we speak of someone’s integrity, we often use descriptors like, honesty, principles, truthfulness, strength of character, or incorruptibility. Probably, the most common descriptor used for the lack of integrity is hypocrisy, because there is an observable disconnect between the projected expectation and the actual behavior.

While working in Somalia in 2001, I was shocked by two glaring examples of the loss of integrity that impacted the culture of that historic nation. The first had to do with the presumption of the citizens that the new president possessed integrity, intelligence, and energy. In the early days of his regime, Siad Barre had dreams of unifying the twelve major tribes of Somalia and developing a strong economy by emphasizing national loyalty and pride instead of clan individualities.

He realized he needed outside help, and readily fell into the trap of accepting “help” from the Soviet Union. He swallowed the Marxist-Leninist ideals of communism and controlled markets. Those concepts and practices were an irritant to the independence and more entrepreneurial tribal clans of Somalia.

The Russians, along with thousands of Cuban troops, came creeping in, wrapping their tentacles around every life-giving artery of Somalia. Trying to rid himself of the Soviet entrapment, Siad Barre began endearing himself to the United States. He played the Soviets against the U.S. in order to get his best deal. The U.S. wanted to stop the Soviet aggression in Ethiopia as well, and the Russian’s expansion throughout Africa, so they agreed with Siad Barre to pump millions of dollars of aid money into Somalia and arm Siad Barre with the latest and most sophisticated war weaponry to protect himself from the Russians.

When the Soviets began pulling out, economic growth began taking place. Siad Barre became enamored with his own greatness and power, and his regime assumed a cultist personality intolerant of any challenge or criticism. The people of the different tribes resented the elitist cruelty. Barre abandoned all thought of unity and resorted to control by pitting the twelve tribes against each other, and the clan warlords began plotting the assassination of the leader. All of that chaos became the setting for the TV coverage of Somalia we received in the U.S. and for the “Blackhawk Down” episode in Mogadishu. Wherever there were pockets of discontent, he would send his trusted troops in to machinegun down all the livestock herds and throw into prison anyone who might speak out against him. He even sent his men into the northern area to poison the water wells of his own people. Eventually, he utilized his military arsenal of bombs, tanks, airplanes, rifles, mortars, and other weapons that had been supplied to him by both the Russians and the U.S., and employed them to murder his own people.

He visited the northern seaport city of Hargeisa (population of a half million people) and declared he would punish them for their disloyalty. He loaded the bombers given to him by the Soviets and U.S., deployed them from Hargeisa’s own international airport, and had them destroy the buildings, water systems, industries, and homes in an effort to ethnically cleanse the disloyal people of the north. Very seldom in history can you find anything as sinister or evil as what President Barre perpetrated upon Somalia. He also strafed and bombed his own cities, like Berbera and Burao, and eventually, Mogadishu. The entire country of Somalia was left in shambles.

After twenty-one years of murder, deceit, and skullduggery, Siad Barre foiled an assassination plot and escaped with his money to Kenya, then to Zimbabwe, and finally he died in Nigeria. He possessed intelligence and energy, but lacked integrity.

My second glaring example of perfidy and treachery in Somalia included the United Nations.

During the genocide, Somali citizens were desperately trying to escape as refugees and appealed to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees for help. Somehow, the rampant lack of integrity flooding over Somalia likewise washed over the U.N. The incident took place while I was in Somalia and became a textbook case of “mess up” and disgrace. The United Nations’ employees who were in charge of filling certain refugee quotas into countries such as Great Britain, Canada, and the United States were charging the refugees anywhere between $3,500 and in some cases, in excess of $5,000 U.S. money to process their application and place them into the country. That money went straight into the pockets of the individual U.N. employees. They would make the penniless refugees pay fifty shillings just to get inside the waiting room to talk to a U.N. individual. It was discovered that the U.N. employees would actually sell false documentation, phony identification papers, and bogus case histories to allow people who were not even refugees to be able to be “resettled” in the United States. The U.N. admitted that four staff members were suspected of soliciting money from the displaced persons they were paid handsomely to assist.

The U.N. officials came to the defense of their workers by building the case that the U.N. workers were really the “victims” in the situation. The U.N. had been informed for the previous two years of the employees’ scam, but claimed that the employees were placed in very difficult and stressful positions. Outside people just couldn’t understand the terrible and unbearable position of pressure and temptations the employees had been subjected to when there were nearly a quarter of a million people seeking to be placed into developed countries, and only 8,000 to 11,000 immigration spots had been made available by the well-off countries.

Finally, the United Nations directors gave the U.N. workers new assignments elsewhere, where the pressure would not be so unbearable. But they made that decision only when some refugees, who had paid their $5,000 and still never got selected to go to the United States, threatened to kill the extortionists. The U.N. had to then make a move to protect their poor, victimized representatives. No one had been brought to task or punished for the bribery scam. The U.N. employees had intelligence and energy, but did not possess integrity.

It really was not safe to go into Somalia when I did. There was no central government, no rule of law, no infrastructure, no civilized politics or security. But, the Somali community of Denver had literally begged Project C.U.R.E. to go there with one of their members and assess the medical needs of Somaliland, since the entire healthcare delivery system of the country was tragically broken, and all of the medical facilities had been sacked of supplies. We felt that Project C.U.R.E. could significantly alter the healthcare delivery system and greatly influence the everyday life of its people for many years to come.

I was astounded at the absence of integrity characterized by the Somalia mess, and was reminded of an old Rwandan proverb I had learned in Kigali: You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you.

I believe that sometimes we are commissioned to go into dark situations with the match of goodness to rekindle the flame and fan the fire of lost and compromised integrity.

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com