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Agence France Presse -- English
June 5, 2005 Sunday 3:17 AM GMT
Desolation under the derricks: those left behind by the Azeri oil boom
BAKU
The acrid air pinches the throat; and the landscape -- bone-dry scrub
dotted with viscous black pools of oil under scores of towering steel
derricks that extend as far as the eye can see -- is a portrait of
desolation.
For Shahin, Vagif and their families, refugees from a village in
western Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces, this is home. But it
is a home where the promise of a better life implicit in the oil boom
sweeping this country is unlikely to be kept.
Just on the southern edge of the capital Baku, this section of the
Absheron peninsula is a giant wasteland, where even the dust is
saturated with oil and the land is covered with the rusting hulks of
machinery, ageing oil wells, gritty pools and random debris.
The only things that seem to be growing in this nightmarish landscape
are the oil derricks, but it is nevertheless populated by hundreds of
families.
Aside from them, only the occasional oil company employee drives
though this rough terrain sandwiched between a highway and the
coastline.
Most of the residents here are some of the 750,000 internally
displaced refugees from areas that are today controlled by Armenian
forces.
An estimated one million people from both sides were forced from
their homes by a war in the early 1990s between Armenia and
Azerbaijan.
Vagif Guliyev, 43, is one of the few people here who holds a job in
this small isolated block of houses which shelters about 100 people;
he delivers food to the staff of a local oil company.
Born in Zengilan, in the south of Azerbaijan, Guliyev said he misses
the "fresh air" of his homeland which he was forced to flee 13 years
ago. He said he regrets spending "the best years of his life," in a
place where he left his health and youth.
The consequences of pollution in this disaster zone are visible to
the naked eye: adults blame it for their high blood pressure and
rotting teeth, while for the children the situation is worse,
according to Vagif who displayed a one-and-a-half-year-old whose
growth, he claimed, had been stunted by the environment.
The bleak surroundings make the children inordinately "nervous," he
said.
As for the odor, it is so strong in the burning summer months that it
becomes "difficult to breathe," said another inhabitant, Shahin
Huseynov.
Open and smiling, residents are proud to display their homes -- an
amalgamation of unfinished buildings covered with scrap metal -- as
well as their surrounding environment -- a bare and oil-covered
terrain where their chickens and ducks live, their feet covered in
oil.
Though they are provided with water, gas, and electricity by the
government, and telephone and television function, they face a host
of other problems such as a lack of transportation.
The nearest school is located three kilometers (two miles) from the
community and passing buses owned by oil companies have instructions
not to stop here, said Hafiza Hatanova, a woman of about 60.
"That hurts us, it's a form of discrimination," she said. Relations
with the outside world are no less strained. Government assistance is
limited to 25,000 manats (five dollars, four euros) per person per
month.
Representatives of the state never come to check up on their
situation and health care is not available to the refugees.
Meanwhile the capital Baku last week celebrated the opening ceremony
of the ultra-modern four-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
which is expected to boost oil exports but the refugees remain
bitter.
"The government will get more money but where will it go?" asked
Rahman Shahmammadov, a local 40-year-old.
Nobody in this ramshackle habitat believes the pipeline, which Azeri
President Ilham Aliyev has said will usher in a new era of prosperity
for the people, will change their life.
June 5, 2005 Sunday 3:17 AM GMT
Desolation under the derricks: those left behind by the Azeri oil boom
BAKU
The acrid air pinches the throat; and the landscape -- bone-dry scrub
dotted with viscous black pools of oil under scores of towering steel
derricks that extend as far as the eye can see -- is a portrait of
desolation.
For Shahin, Vagif and their families, refugees from a village in
western Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces, this is home. But it
is a home where the promise of a better life implicit in the oil boom
sweeping this country is unlikely to be kept.
Just on the southern edge of the capital Baku, this section of the
Absheron peninsula is a giant wasteland, where even the dust is
saturated with oil and the land is covered with the rusting hulks of
machinery, ageing oil wells, gritty pools and random debris.
The only things that seem to be growing in this nightmarish landscape
are the oil derricks, but it is nevertheless populated by hundreds of
families.
Aside from them, only the occasional oil company employee drives
though this rough terrain sandwiched between a highway and the
coastline.
Most of the residents here are some of the 750,000 internally
displaced refugees from areas that are today controlled by Armenian
forces.
An estimated one million people from both sides were forced from
their homes by a war in the early 1990s between Armenia and
Azerbaijan.
Vagif Guliyev, 43, is one of the few people here who holds a job in
this small isolated block of houses which shelters about 100 people;
he delivers food to the staff of a local oil company.
Born in Zengilan, in the south of Azerbaijan, Guliyev said he misses
the "fresh air" of his homeland which he was forced to flee 13 years
ago. He said he regrets spending "the best years of his life," in a
place where he left his health and youth.
The consequences of pollution in this disaster zone are visible to
the naked eye: adults blame it for their high blood pressure and
rotting teeth, while for the children the situation is worse,
according to Vagif who displayed a one-and-a-half-year-old whose
growth, he claimed, had been stunted by the environment.
The bleak surroundings make the children inordinately "nervous," he
said.
As for the odor, it is so strong in the burning summer months that it
becomes "difficult to breathe," said another inhabitant, Shahin
Huseynov.
Open and smiling, residents are proud to display their homes -- an
amalgamation of unfinished buildings covered with scrap metal -- as
well as their surrounding environment -- a bare and oil-covered
terrain where their chickens and ducks live, their feet covered in
oil.
Though they are provided with water, gas, and electricity by the
government, and telephone and television function, they face a host
of other problems such as a lack of transportation.
The nearest school is located three kilometers (two miles) from the
community and passing buses owned by oil companies have instructions
not to stop here, said Hafiza Hatanova, a woman of about 60.
"That hurts us, it's a form of discrimination," she said. Relations
with the outside world are no less strained. Government assistance is
limited to 25,000 manats (five dollars, four euros) per person per
month.
Representatives of the state never come to check up on their
situation and health care is not available to the refugees.
Meanwhile the capital Baku last week celebrated the opening ceremony
of the ultra-modern four-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
which is expected to boost oil exports but the refugees remain
bitter.
"The government will get more money but where will it go?" asked
Rahman Shahmammadov, a local 40-year-old.
Nobody in this ramshackle habitat believes the pipeline, which Azeri
President Ilham Aliyev has said will usher in a new era of prosperity
for the people, will change their life.