No sooner than I’m back from Yerevan, where I presented my work on alternative and counter narratives in the context of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) in general, than yet another exchange of fire has left innocent civilians dead on the Line of Contact (LoC) separating Karabakh forces, which include a significant number of conscripts from Armenia, and the Azerbaijani military.
Having moved from the UK to Armenia in 1998 to work for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) it was only natural that I started to take an interest in an alternative music scene that, while not really existing, was emerging at the time. From 2001 onwards the situation started to change, and bands such as Gyumri’s The Bambir really grabbed my attention. By the mid-2000s other bands started to emerge and those that had been dormant during the electricity shortages of the 1990s began to re-surface.
With peace still looking elusive, and all signs pointing to the possibility of renewed fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, Stratfor recently published my photo story on ethnic Armenian-Azeri coexistence in Georgia.
Ethnic Armenians in Tsopi, Georgia, one of a few villages co-inhabited with ethnic Azerbaijanis @ Onnik James Krikorian First published by Stratfor. as part of my work on ethnic Armenian-Azerbaijani coexistence in Georgia also published by the BBC and Radio Free...
I won’t pretend to be a Eurovision fan as it’s really not my thing. Until I moved to the South Caucasus from the U.K. I never ever watched it and actually thought it something best avoided. True, standards in the international music competition have increased considerably since Eastern Europe and other former Soviet republics have participated, and the often acerbic commentary on on Twitter can be fun, but in the few years that really hasn’t been enough.
After putting together a short report on reWoven, a sustainable development project to revive and support the tradition of hand weaving carpets among Georgia’s largest ethnic minority, a year ago for BBC Azeri, I returned last week to do another report, but this time in English for Meydan TV.
After nearly 19 years of communicating online, I finally managed to meet Thomas Goltz, the American writer and journalist best known for his Azerbaijan Diary, Chechnya Diary, and Georgia Diary books. I also managed to interview him for the BBC’s Azerbaijan Service on his latest project, On Aggregate: Champions Without a Home, the story of Azerbaijan’s Qarabagh-Aghdam football team which has been unable to play home games since 1993 when their city was captured by Armenian forces during the conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh.
I’ve been meaning to attend the annual One Caucasus festival since it started three years ago, but this year’s event, held 25-28 August in the Georgian village of Tserakvi, was the first time that I have. Naturally, I put together two video reports, in Azerbaijani for the BBC’s Azeri Service, embedded further down this page, and in English for Meydan TV, directly below.
Last month saw a return visit to Tbilisi by Azerbaijani Experimental/Immersive Doom Pop band, DiHaj. Scheduled to play at the annual Tbilisi Open Air Festival, DiHaj also performed at the birthday party of veteran Georgian rocker Lado Burduli and at Vake Park’s Backstage 76. Great band.