While some Azerbaijani and Armenian cemeteries in Armenia and Azerbaijan were destroyed during and after the 1991-94 war, others were not. Photo: Mined Azerbaijani cemetery, Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik James Krikorian 2009

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in the early 1990s cost the lives of around 30,000 people and also displaced hundreds of thousands on both sides. Hundreds of settlements were razed and cultural monuments were destroyed not only during the war, but also in the 18 years since the 1994 ceasefire agreement.

But, while lamenting the loss of its own monuments situated in territory controlled by the other, each denies that it has done the same. Armenia, for example, raises the issue of the eradication of the Djulfa medieval cemetery in the autonomous exclave of Nakhichevan, but stresses that Islamic monuments in Nagorno Karabakh are being restored even if officials avoid reference to any of them as Azerbaijani.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan decries the widespread razing of settlements in the territories currently under Armenian control which also saw the loss of libraries, monuments and graveyards, and presents the restoration of the Armenian Church in downtown Baku as proof of occasional tolerance. Of course, the cross has been removed and the church now serves as a presidential archive.

Nevertheless, during a visit by the Armenian Catholicos, Garegin II, to Baku in 2010, not only did he hold a rare religious ceremony in the St. Gregory The Illuminator church, but also discussed the need for both sides to restore religious monuments with the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev. It is unclear if there was any follow up when Azerbaijani spiritual leader Sheik Pashazade visited Yerevan last year.

Both sides were responsible for the destruction of monuments, and often seem more intent to follow David Pugh’s Seven Rules of Nationalism in order to justify claims on land. In 2001, this issue became the subject of a feature I worked on with Thomas de Waal for the Los Angeles Times. Nevertheless, even if seldom heard of in the mainstream media, there are those who believe that culture is a shared value.

While helping with the research for Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, for example, I put de Waal in touch with an Armenian from Shusha, the disputed town in Nagorno Karabakh now renamed by Armenians as Shushi.

But for the efforts of a few brave Shusha Armenians, much more might have been destroyed, Mher Gabrielyan, an Armenian artist, told me how he came back to his native town on the morning of its capture on 9 May 1992 and saw with horror that marauders and vandals were burning it to the ground. Mher and a couple of his friends stood in front of one of Shusha’s two nineteenth-century mosques to stop a group of young men in an armored personnel carrier firing tank shells into its facade. They barricaded themselves inside the town museum for several days, preventing looters from stripping its collection of carpes, pots and paintings. As one of the Armenian minority in Shusha, a largely Azerbaijani town, Mher had many Azerbaijani friends. “[…] I know it’s very painful for them, and it is for us too. I personally do not consider myself the victor of this town. The town as such is dead.”

In December 2008, then Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis visited both the Armenian and Azerbaijani capitals, but plans to form an international mission to investigate the state of historical and cultural monuments in the region appears to have been delayed. “I am very disappointed by the losses,” Davis said. “Both Azerbaijan and Armenia suffered, and it is not only yours, [but also European] cultural heritage. […] They are our common values and we should protect them.“

Photographs and video by an Armenian of an Azerbaijani cemetery in the Vayots Dzor region of Armenia sent to Conflict Voices today indicates there is definitely the need. Shot this year, the graveyard has been destroyed. It is unclear how many other Armenian and Azeri monuments or graveyards have met the same fate in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh.

Nevertheless, an article by Naira Bulghadaryan for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in 2007 also reports that the picture is mixed, with some graveyards and monuments having been destroyed and others preserved.

As the [Nagorno Karabakh] conflict escalated, monuments – principally graveyards – suffered in both countries. The two Azerbaijani cemeteries of Saral – one of 20 Azerbaijani villages in Lori region – are now abandoned, with many of the headstones broken.

 

Last year, the Armenian non-governmental organisation the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly did a study of the Azerbaijani cemeteries in the region. It showed that they were mostly in a state of ruin and a decision was made to use grant money from the organisation to restore them.

 

The Armenians who now live in Saral came here from the village of Gushchi in the Khanlar region of Azerbaijan, at the same time as the Azerbaijanis of Saral fled to the former Armenian village of Chardakhlu. The incoming Armenians renamed the village Nor Khachakal. They insist that they did not destroy the graves and the cemetery had already been ruined by the time they arrived.

 

The head of Nor Khachakal village administration, Surik Truzian, recalls that people arrived from other parts of Armenia, loaded Azerbaijani gravestones into a vehicle and took them away to re-work or re-sell them. He also says that he saw someone taking photographs of the cemetery last autumn – probably at the request of the former villagers.

 

[…]

 

Eighty-year-old Dmitry Babakhanian, from the village of Kursali, near Saral, who fled Getaashen in Azerbaijan, leaving behind his family’s graves, has one dream – “to go, see my graves and come home again”. He is convinced that his Azerbaijani neighbours did not destroy the graves.

 

“Do you know what we left behind there?” he asked. “Our grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers.”

Babakhanian is also proud that the thousand or so Azerbaijani graves, some of them made of basalt and tufa, in the cemetery in Kursali have not been touched. “That would be inhuman,” he said.

 

Babakhanian says that two or three years ago, he was riding his donkey and noticed some strangers in the Azerbaijani cemetery who had slaughtered a sheep and were eating and drinking. He heard them speak Azeri and was convinced that they had somehow come to visit their old graveyard.

 

The head of the village, Lalik Bayadian, says he does not necessarily believe stories like this but that once he did see fresh flowers in the cemetery, “They came, put fresh lilac on the grave of their relatives and left again.”

From Home to Home, a 2008 documentary by an Armenian journalist working in cooperation with Azerbaijani journalist colleagues, also tells the fascinating story of a mutual agreement between Armenians and Azerbaijanis who continue to respect the past in the hope of contributing to a better future. 

An ethnic Azeri originally from Armenia reads aloud the Armenian inscriptions of the tombstones in his village in Azerbaijan. An ethnic Armenian from Azerbaijan videos the Azeri graveyard in his village in Armenia, speaking over the tape in Azerbaijani before sending it off to the families of those that used to live there instead of him. In a region where negative stories and stereotypes of the “enemy” abound, it’s an example of a promise kept between two peoples until this day that is seldom told.

Eurovision, the international music competition for members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), has been no stranger to controversy ever since it was launched in Europe in 1956, but the inclusion in recent years of post-Soviet countries has taken international rivalry over what is otherwise considered to be a somewhat kitsch event, to new heights. The three countries making up the South Caucasus are no exception and especially since Armenia participated for the first time in 2006. Georgia followed in 2007, as did Azerbaijan the following year.

In particular, although Georgia also withdrew after an aborted attempt to enter an anti-Putin song following the August 2008 war with Russia, bitter rivalry has particularly emerged between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Locked in a dispute over Nagorno Karabakh, the war that broke out in the early 1990s saw around 25,000 people killed and a million flee their homes. And although a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994, the two sides are still no closer to finding a lasting peace, with scores of conscripts from both sides dying on the frontline in cross-border skirmishes and sniper incidents every year. With the International Crisis Group (ICG) warning of the danger of a new war in the future, Eurovision, in a sense, has become a new battleground.

Scandals between the two countries, in fact, have become a regular feature of the song contest watched by over 150 million people. In 2009, for example, the inclusion in Armenia’s promotional video of a statue in the breakaway mainly Armenian-populated region prompted a strong response from Azerbaijan. And even then, when the offending monument was removed from the clip, it was anyway included as the backdrop and main image adorning the clipboard of Sirusho, Armenia’s presenter during the international televoting live on air.

The same year, in perhaps the worst incident, 43 Azerbaijanis who voted for Armenia were reportedly called in for questioning by their own National Security Service. The telephone number for viewers in Azerbaijan to vote for Armenia had, of course, been obscured locally, but some had anyway managed to work it out. One even explained his voting preference by saying Armenia’s entry sounded “more Azeri” than Azerbaijan’s entry. So, when Azerbaijan won last year’s Eurovision in Germany, earning itself the right to host the competition, alarm bells naturally rang in Yerevan.

The situation had already become controversial when questions were raised about attitudes towards members of the local and international LGBT community, let alone the prospect of Armenians performing in the capital of its regional foe. Armenia, in particular, demanded additional security guarantees for its delegation from the EBU.

In response, the European organization stated that it could not intervene, but that it was satisfied with the security provisions promised for any delegation. Indeed, the provisions for receiving a visa at Baku’s Heydar Aliyev airport were such that any Eurovision-ticket holder or EBU-accredited journalist would be granted a visa, available at a much lower rate than normal, on arrival in the country. Although not stated implicitly, that meant that anyone arriving for the event, even with an Armenian surname, could enter the country albeit only if they hadn’t visited Karabakh without official Baku’s permission.

But, with the local media increasingly full of articles seemingly preparing Armenians for a withdrawal, it anyway didn’t matter, and not least when a statement from well-known singers in Armenia called for a boycott of the competition. In particular, they made reference to the February 24 shooting of an Armenian conscript, reportedly by an Azerbaijani sniper. Somewhat embarrassingly, however, after human rights activists examined the case, the Armenian Ministry of Defense later confirmed that the conscript had actually been shot by one of his own fellow servicemen.

Left without the death to justify withdrawal from Eurovision, Armenian Public TV finally found an excuse in the form of a speech by Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, declaring all Armenians worldwide to be the enemy, and it formally withdrew from Eurovision on March 7. In reality, though, it appeared that Armenia had already decided not to participate even if, in 2010, His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, had made an official visit to Baku, conducting a religious service in the Armenian Church downtown, as had members of the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun such as Giro Manoyan.

True, Armenian boxers who competed last year at a sporting event in the Azerbaijani capital were momentarily subjected to an incident involving the throwing of stones by the Karabakh Liberation Organization comprising Azerbaijani War Veterans, but the culprits were anyway arrested. Armenian wrestlers also experienced no problems competing in Baku in 2007.

“We can conclude that the president of a Eurovision host country is officially stating that all Armenians, including those who would be included in the Eurovision delegation, are the enemies of Azerbaijan,” Public TV nevertheless announced. “Therefore, it would make no sense to send our participant to a country where they would be received as an enemy … We are convinced that the atmosphere created by this and other anti-Armenian statements and actions cannot ensure equal conditions for all singers participating in Eurovision.”

“W​​e are truly disappointed by the broadcaster’s decision to withdraw,” Eurovision Executive Supervisor Jon Ola Sand responded to the news. “Despite the efforts of the EBU and the Host Broadcaster to ensure a smooth participation for the Armenian delegation in this year’s Contest, circumstances beyond our control lead to this unfortunate decision.”

Some such as Mika Artyan, perhaps Armenia’s best-known online Eurovision commentator, were also disappointed. “They could have announced it much earlier, with dignity, with a kind of reasoning that would have gained them respect,” he wrote on his Unzipped blog. “Instead, they resorted to stupid propaganda games and outright lies. They undignified themselves to the extent of exploiting [the] death of the Armenian soldier … A disgrace.”

Perplexed, even Dorians, the front-runner to represent Armenia in this year’s Eurovision, noted the irony in the withdrawal, mentioning that the country didn’t boycott the competition when it was held in Russia in 2010. “When we were going to Russia for Eurovision, no one was speaking of security — even though in Russia nationalism knows no bounds. There, every day an Armenian is killed, but we weren’t afraid to go,” the band, which had frequently expressed its willingness to perform in Baku, wrote on its Facebook page. “Let’s remove the hatred injected within us, people of the world … Life happens only once — let us live in peace and without wars.”

But, with online activists and journalists facing intimidation, detention, and imprisonment in the oil-rich former Soviet republic, human rights and other organizations have also cast doubts on the country’s suitability to stage Eurovision. In particular, they point to forced evictions of homeowners in downtown Baku to construct the Crystal Hall Stadium where Eurovision will be held in May. “There are quite a few genuine reasons that Armenia’s Public TV may have considered to withdraw from the competition without resorting to [the reasons otherwise given],” wrote Artyan in another post on his blog.

And, although Armenians are divided on the matter with many supporting the boycott, other bloggers agreed even if for different reasons. “There was initially controversy revolving around the question of whether Armenian participants would be allowed, and if their safety would be guaranteed, and finally whether Armenian fans would be allowed and their safety would be guaranteed,” wrote Cilicia.com’s Raffi Kojian. “After much teeth gnashing by Baku, they agreed to all of these Eurovision requirements. Remarkable I’d say, but they had invested a lot in this and wanted it that bad.”

“This … is approximately the millionth time Azerbaijan has made racist and hateful comments about Armenians,” Kojian continued. “But this time Armenia decided for some reason that because of this we are not going to participate in Eurovision to punish Azerbaijan and show them. Well guess what, that’s exactly what Azerbaijan wants — so it’s a reward, not a punishment. We’ll now be a tiny, tiny footnote in the contest as non-participants, and few will hear of or care about Karabakh. We’d have had to spend millions of dollars to get the kind of PR we just threw out the window.”

“Party time in Baku, while we shot ourselves in the foot,” the well-known Diasporan blogger concluded.

The BBC’s Azerbaijani Service has published a gallery of my photographs taken in the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in 1994. Over 25,000 people were killed in the war waged in the early 1990s and a million forced to flee their homes. Since a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994 attempts to mediate a peace deal through the OSCE Minsk Group have faltered and The Economist recently put the number of deaths on the front line since then at 3,000. Below is the English text from which the captions were taken and translated into Azerbaijani:

Refuelling on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border © Onnik James Krikorian 1994

The Black Garden Revisited

When news of a humanitarian flight leaving the UK for Nagorno Karabakh reached me while working on the Picture Desk of The Independent in London in 1994, I jumped at the chance to request that the newspaper’s Picture Editor send me with it. He agreed, and in August I made my first ever trip to Armenia, or rather Nagorno Karabakh, and the South Caucasus. The ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan had just been signed and some analysts and international observers were warning that a new offensive might start within days or weeks, breaking the fragile armistice.

It didn’t, but the journey from Armenia to Karabakh was still perilous with the military helicopter I was traveling on along with other journalists and aid workers seemingly destined to smash into the side of a mountain at one point when it had no choice but to hug the terrain after a radio message warned of Azerbaijani jets in the vicinity. Yet, it wasn’t so much the military situation that interested me, but the people. More significantly, perhaps, it was those on both sides whose hopes for a lasting peace have since been continually dashed by nearly 18 years of political manipulation and intrigue.

Back then, the military buffer zone was called just that. There was no reference to the territories as ‘liberated’ by the Armenian side, even in interviews we held with the then Armenian Defense Minister, the late Vazgen Sargsyan who was assassinated in 1999. Then, just as they remain on the official level today, they were seen simply as a bargaining chip in ongoing negotiations to determine the final status of the disputed territory.

Back then, there was actually hope that a negotiated settlement could be reached, ushering in a new period of peace and stability for Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the South Caucasus.

Zori Balayan and Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan onboard an Armenian military helicopter flying over Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik James Krikorian 1994

Yet, accompanied as we were for some of the trip by the Armenian writer Zori Balayan, one of the main nationalist agitators in Armenia and Karabakh, another line was also spun: that of Armenians and Azerbaijanis being destined to remain enemies without any common ground. However, when two journalists from Time magazine and I heard that Azerbaijani Prisoners of War (PoWs) were being held on the floor of a hospital in the Karabakh capital we successfully managed to escape the organized press tour and stumbled upon something remarkable.

Azerbaijani civilian hostages held in Stepanakert, Nagorno Karabakh
© Onnik James Krikorian 1994

In addition to the PoWs, who like many of their Armenian counterparts had been conscripted against their will, Azerbaijani civilians were also being held for exchange with Armenians taken hostage by the other side. Among them were children. Many, in fact, or at least until we discovered that not all of them were Azerbaijanis. They also included Armenian children who had been allowed to play with the captives in an otherwise free environment. Until this day I remember being unable to tell them apart, and usually when I find myself observing the interaction between Armenians and Azerbaijanis at events held in Georgia and elsewhere.

And it’s true. Ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis are able to coexist with each other in countries outside the conflict zone, and they share much in common. While in Nagorno Karabakh in 1994 I photographed an Armenian wedding, for example, but the most recent marriage I shot was in 2009 in the ethnic Azerbaijani village of Karajala in Georgia. Both, as well as every Armenian wedding in between, has been pretty much identical – from the food down to the music.

I’ve also been working on documenting those villages in Georgia with a mixed ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani population and where both speak the other’s language.

Me in Khrmort, Nagorno Karabakh, 1994

That’s not to ignore the pain and suffering experienced by both sides in the conflict, but simply to say that in the years since the 1994 ceasefire it’s become more and more difficult for me to view the conflict as an ethnic one. Instead, and while nationalists and politicians on both sides appear to manipulate the conflict by insisting that it is, my main problem still remains being unable to tell most Armenians and Azerbaijanis apart. This is especially true for the children, which leads me on to my personal favorite photograph taken in Karabakh in 1994.

It was of a little girl, Gayaneh, close to Aghdam in the village of Khrmort. Visually aged well beyond her years with an expression scarred by the horrors of war, she broke into a smile only when I stuck my tongue out her from behind the camera. As she did so it was then that I found myself hoping that a lasting peace would come to the region. Unfortunately for Gayaneh and myself, as well as new generations in Armenia and Azerbaijan who are unable to remember the time when both sides did live peacefully together, we’re both still waiting…

Gayaneh, Khrmort, Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik James Krikorian 1994

More of my photographs from Nagorno Karabakh in 1994 are here.

Controlled explosion of landmines and unexploded ordnance, Askeran, Nagorno Karabakh
© Onnik James Krikorian 2010

Expectations of ending the long-running conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh are high ahead of a meeting between the two presidents hosted by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev in Kazan on 25 June. The war fought in the early 1990s ended in a ceasefire agreement signed in May 1994.

Over 25,000 died and a million forced to flee from their homes. Since then, according to The Economist, around 3,000 have died in cross-border skirmishes leading many analysts to argue that the conflict is anything but frozen. The International Crisis Group, for example, warned of the danger of an ‘accidental war’ earlier this year.

According to news reports and official statements, the hope is that Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, and his Armenian counterpart, Serge Sargsyan, will finalize and sign the basic principles that will form the basis for a final peace deal when they meet in Russia. Such hopes follow what many consider to be an unprecedented joint statement from the U.S., Russian and French presidents, representing the three countries tasked with mediating a peace deal under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group, at the G8 Summit in Deauville, France, last month. 

We, the Presidents of the OSCE Minsk Group’s Co-Chair countries — France, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America — are convinced the time has arrived for all the sides to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to take a decisive step towards a peaceful settlement.

 

We reiterate that only a negotiated settlement can lead to peace, stability, and reconciliation, opening opportunities for regional development and cooperation. The use of force created the current situation of confrontation and instability. Its use again would only bring more suffering and devastation, and would be condemned by the international community. We strongly urge the leaders of the sides to prepare their populations for peace, not war.

 

[…] We therefore call upon the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to demonstrate their political will by finalizing the Basic Principles during their upcoming summit in June. Further delay would only call into question the commitment of the sides to reach an agreement. Once an agreement has been reached, we stand ready to witness the formal acceptance of these Principles, to assist in the drafting of the peace agreement, and then to support its implementation with our international partners.

There are reportedly still some issues to resolve, but press reports indicate that the basic principles are not too dissimilar from the 1994 Bishkek Protocol signed just a few days before the ceasefire agreement came into effect. In particular, a peace deal would see the return of seven Armenian-controlled regions outside of Nagorno Karabakh proper as also demanded by UN Security Council Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884, an interim status for the disputed territory as well as the return of refugees and IDPs to their homes.

What seems to have prevented an agreement to date, however, has been the timescale for such a peace plan and the mechanisms for determining Karabakh’s status.

In particular, Armenia would prefer to return the Azerbaijani regions of Lachin and Kelbajar only after final status has been determined while Azerbaijan wants them beforehand. Meanwhile, with Armenia demanding nothing less than full independence for Karabakh, Azerbaijan is more inclined towards considering a ‘high degree of autonomy’ within its territory in much the same way as Tatarstan functions inside the Russian Federation.

Regardless, whatever its status, there is also the issue of how wide a strategic land corridor connecting Armenia and Karabakh through Lachin would be in addition to the makeup of peacekeeping forces and the nature of international security guarantees.

Nationalists in both countries will undoubtedly oppose such a peace plan, with some Armenians objecting to the return of any Azerbaijani territory outside Karabakh and many Azerbaijanis unwilling to risk the chance that the basic principles could pave the way for full independence and the loss of key cultural sites such as Shusha, a formerly majority Azerbaijani town. 

Shusha, Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik James Krikorian 2010

Some analysts also remain skeptical, with Yerevan-based Richard Giragosian telling the New York Times that the expected initial outcome of the Kazan meeting was to merely sign a document renouncing the use of force to resolve the conflict. “The two sides are simply too far apart, and there’s no political will,” he was quoted as saying. Similarly, some news reports quoting Azerbaijani officials as saying that they do not believe there will be a breakthrough at the Kazan talks. 

Azerbaijan does not want to wage war over the Armenian-backed breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, yet it sees no chance of a breakthrough in talks later this month, its deputy foreign minister said.

 

[…] Azimov said he was not optimistic for a breakthrough at the meeting of Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan in Kazan. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will mediate.

 

“I do not have an optimistic view on what may happen in Kazan. I do not expect an agreement on basic principles in Kazan but I expect some more clarity on the most critical issues,” Azimov said. He did not elaborate.

Even so, Armenian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Tigran Balayan late last night tweeted that the sides were moving closer. Later, the same news was reported in the media.

Armenia and Azerbaijan reported significant progress towards the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict following a meeting of their foreign ministers held in Moscow on Saturday.

 

The meeting was hosted and mediated by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in preparation for the upcoming Armenian-Azerbaijan summit which international mediators hope will result in a framework peace agreement on Karabakh.

 

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Foreign Ministers Edward Nalbandian and Elmar Mammadyarov narrowed their governments’ differences on “a number of key issues of the basic principles of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.” “That draft document will be discussed at the trilateral summit to be held at the end of June,” the ministry said in a statement.

For those following the Karabakh negotiations for the past 17 years, however, there seems no plausible reason not to agree and sign the basic principles later this month. Thomas de Waal, Senior Associate for Russia and Eurasia at the Carnegie Endowment and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War who recently made an impassioned plea for a third narrative of peace, puts it more bluntly. 

[…] it comes down to political will. Are the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders merely using the endlessly elusive Karabakh peace process as a device to keep the international community sweet and to demand loyalty from their populations, while never seriously wishing to sign a peace? Or are they genuinely committed to a peace agreement which would begin the long-term transformation of their region, but trapped by their own national discourse and political rhetoric and afraid to move forward? Or a bit of both?

 

This is why I welcome the line in the Deauville document which says, “Further delay would only call into question the commitment of the sides to reach an agreement.” Or to put it another way, “We now have a workable document. Prove to us you are serious and sign it.” […]

 

[…] as the Kazan meeting approaches, the stakes are raised for both peace and war in the Caucasus.

Shusha, Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik James Krikorian 2010