Armenians have read a lot about the frozen conflict over the disputed mainly-Armenian populated territory of Nagorno Karabakh, but such articles are usually from partisan sources inside Armenia or Diaspora. Seldom does the Armenian press carry impartial and objective reports, and of late there has been some clandestine funding of less than objective articles on the situation in and around Karabakh to serve certain political interests.
Probably it’s a last-ditch effort to influence public opinion here before we stand a real chance of reaching a framework peace deal after presidential elections in Armenia and Azerbaijan are held next year, but anyway, the point is that we don’t read too many stories coming from the “other side.”
That’s why it’s interesting to read an article by Azerbaijani journalist Rovshan Ismayilov, with accompanying photographs by Rena Effendi, on EurasiaNet.
Thirteen years after the cease-fire agreement that brought an end to fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh, villagers still living along the Azerbaijani frontline remain trapped in a state of neither peace nor war.
Tens of Azerbaijani villages and settlements, stretching from the southwestern town of Horadiz to the northwestern Terter region, are strung along the roughly 120-kilometer-long frontline that divides Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. According to government statistics, they contain some 150,000 people.
Some, like the village of Chirahli in Agdam region, have become ghost towns; only 10 families are left to occupy the 100 houses still standing there. Still others, battle sites during the last two years of the 1988-1994 war, look as if the fighting ended only yesterday.
But still, their inhabitants stay on. “It is very difficult to live here. No money, no good prospects. But we are keen to stay in the village,” said Yashar Ahmedov, a farmer who lives in Mirashalli village on the frontlines in Agdam region, an area mostly controlled by the Armenian army. “If we leave this place then everyone else will go, too. We don’t want to give up our lands.”
Gunfire and occasional shell explosions are routine for frontline residents, making security their major concern. According to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, up to 200 people, many of them civilians, are killed each year from cease-fire violations. Even more, the ministry says, are wounded.
To avoid Armenian sniper fire from a few kilometers away, cab drivers dim their lights at night when driving to Azerbaijani-controlled villages within Agdam region. Further to the south, in villages like Horadiz in Fizuli region, some 150 meters from the frontline, houses are reinforced with horizontal cement slabs and top floor windows are sometimes covered with metal and wood to shield from such attacks.
[…]
Meanwhile, the population is growing larger. About 30,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding occupied regions were recently moved to the frontline Fizuli, Agdam and Terter regions from tent settlements around the country. The IDPs occupy new houses built by the government over the past two years out of proceeds from the State Oil Fund.
“[It] only reinforced the unemployment level,” commented Mammadov. “There are not enough jobs, not enough land for ploughing, infrastructure is underdeveloped.”
[…]
“Life is continuing,” concluded Guzanli resident Mammadov. The frontline residents who remain behind “are somehow adjusting.”
Meanwhile, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) also has an article on life in the desolate city of Shushi (Shusha) in Karabakh proper by a Georgian journalist. According to him, and also to a foreign journalist I recently spoke to, it would appear that nothing much has changed in Shushi since I last visited in 2002. Conditions are still appalling, and while efforts to turn Stepanakert into some kind of urban oasis in a war-torn land have proven successful, the situation in Shushi remains bleak.
Countless efforts by Diasporan organizations to rejuvenate the city have largely failed, and apart from the restored church there’s nothing much else of note to report.
The look of this town uniquely conveys the complex history and the pain of this region – a pain that has touched two peoples. The contrast is striking. I contrast this place with the clean, brightly lit streets and shop windows of Stepanakert in which you can still discern a small Soviet town but no longer the traces of the destructive war that every citizen here endured.
Shusha is like a different planet. There is only a flicker of life here. Around 20,000 people lived here before the conflict. Judging by the number of voters who took part in the presidential election a few days ago, the current number of inhabitants now barely exceeds three thousand.
A new modern road winds through the little houses that resemble ancient Armenian ruins and the awful tall ruined apartment blocks with dozens of empty windows yawning open. In the old town, now almost completely destroyed, a sign remains in the Azeri language saying that this is Nizami Street. A crane stands next to one of the two mosques – evidently the local authorities are restoring it to demonstrate their tolerance.
People in the town are trying to make a normal life in Shusha, but the terrible past accompanies you at every step; it’s impossible not to see it. We met some refugees from Baku in the street. These people, who have lost their homeland, have fixed themselves up something resembling apartments amid the ruins and are trying to build a new life.
An elderly man suddenly started speaking Azeri, so as to discover if there were any of his former fellow countrymen from amongst our international crowd. They told us about life here – that there is no work.
[…]
These people have lost their homes – and so have most of the Azerbaijani residents of these ruined houses and empty apartment blocks, who fled from here long ago. How many of them are still alive? Where are they now? Do they yearn for their lost homeland just as these unhappy Bakuvians do? Almost all of these people are not responsible for this tragedy, on either side. They are ordinary people, whose lives have been sliced through by history or politics or big ideas.
Stepanakert is gleaming. Every evening big crowds stroll through the central square and the park. I am reminded of Batumi in summer and I keep thinking that in a moment I will see the Black Sea and the lights of ships.
[…]
It is important to remember that the Karabakh Armenians who enjoy strolling through the gleaming streets of Stepanakert don’t see anything wrong in this. They went through a war, bombing, the death of loved ones; they feared for their own lives and the lives of their children. They believe that they defended their rights to live and to live here. Now they are working and building a new life which has no place in it for their former neighbours and former friends. They don’t want them to return because they fear that it will all start over again. All the more so because people like the refugees we met, the exiles “from the other side” are living here. And they, most likely, will never return home because the homeland they knew has now died.
[…]
When you come here you understand how different in nature are the conflicts in the Caucasus region, although they seem so similar to one another at first glance. Acquaintances here were surprised to see me and Ahra Smyr from Abkhazia working together or sitting with one another in a restaurant. Even if they didn’t say anything, it was obvious from the expression on their faces. Because it is different with them and they find it hard to picture an Armenian and an Azerbaijani sitting at the same table. Thank God, things have not gone so far with us – and, despite the conflict, we Georgians and Abkhaz can not be enemies and can even be friends.
In another country, Ahra and I understand how much our peoples and cultures actually have in common. Sooner or later we will come to understand one another. I am certain of that today as never before.
Interesting to note how tolerance between Abkhaz and Georgian can still be found whereas the ugly rhetoric of nationalism and ethnic hatred increases in Azerbaijan and is also now starting to emerge in Armenia. Interestingly, as I pointed out in my recent article for EurasiaNet this is the case even among those who profess themselves to be pro-Western. For some, the reason is genuine, but for others it’s political and a way to hit out at the government in the hope that conjuring up fears of losing Karabakh can prevent Serzh Sarkisyan from becoming president, but anyway.
Of course, it might well be hopes for peace that pushes the West to support Sarkisyan’s succession to Kocharian, but the point is that this situation of neither war nor peace will have to change. Personally speaking, I hope that it will be sooner rather than later.
