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ARMENIANS URGED TO SETTLE IN BORDER LANDS
By Will Englund
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/armenians-urged-to-settle-in-border-lands/2011/07/11/gIQAPPKeGI_story.html
July 15 2011
STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Karabakh - A former foreign minister of this
unrecognized republic in the South Caucasus wants to distribute land
in border areas to Armenians who fled Azerbaijan two decades ago when
war broke out. Arman Meliqyan says this would be compensation for the
property they lost when they fled - and it would also, intentionally,
help to wreck the proposed peace deal that is on the table.
Azerbaijan, which still claims Nagorno-Karabakh, would be certain
to see such a move as an enormous provocation. It says that, as the
result of wide-scale ethnic cleansing, a million Azerbaijanis fled
the territory now held by Karabakh forces, and that they want to
return to their homes.
Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan stopped fighting in 1994, but have
never come to terms. Both sides still shoot sporadically at each other
across the so-called line of contact. Growing tension has already
heightened fears that war could break out again - and that this time
there's a threat of drawing neighboring Russia, Iran and Turkey into
the conflict. War would also probably disrupt a key supply route used
by the United States to get equipment and other goods to its soldiers
in Afghanistan.
Meliqyan's idea is to move settlers into territories adjacent to
Nagorno-Karabakh itself that were seized by Armenian and Karabakh
fighters during the war and have been held ever since. Those
territories are now nearly empty of people, and most of the villages
within them have been left in ruins. A framework peace agreement
that Russia, France and the United States - together called the Minsk
Group - have been trying to sponsor envisions the return of most of
these lands to Azerbaijan.
If they were to be populated by ethnic Armenian settlers, that would
become considerably more difficult. This is precisely what Meliqyan,
who is completely opposed to the Minsk Group formula, hopes to achieve.
His plan inevitably raises the question of what compensation would
be available for the Azerbaijanis who also fled - out of Karabakh -
during the war. But he thinks that's Azerbaijan's problem.
Under Karabakh law, Armenians who fled Azerbaijan are entitled to
land in the territories as compensation. But the program has never
gotten underway, though a few settlers have trickled in on their own
over the years. Meliqyan, who now heads an advocacy group in Yerevan,
the capital of Armenia, says his organization has submitted 35,000
applications for land and gotten no response.
"They're not saying yes, and they're not saying no," he said of
Karabakh's leaders. "Sooner or later it will become a real question
for them."
Karabakh's president, Bako Sahakyan, said the problem is that the
territories are in such bad physical shape that it would take a major
investment in roads and utilities just to make them habitable. He also
made it clear he doesn't want to undermine the peace talks. Another
problem, said Karabakh's prime minister, Ara Harutyunyan, is that
most of those who left Azerbaijan were living in cities there, are
used to an urban way of life and would be lost trying to set up farms.
It's a half-good idea, said Saro Saroyan, a civil defense instructor
who has become one of the most outspoken advocates for these dispersed
people. (What to call them is a point of contention: Armenians use the
word "refugee," which is commonly reserved for people who have had
to cross an international border. Azerbaijanis, who don't recognize
Karabakh's independence, use the phrase "internally displaced persons,"
arguing that they're still in Azerbaijan. Some people here contend
that those who fled Azerbaijan should be called "deportees.")
The problem, as Saroyan sees it, is that a few acres of farmland would
hardly compensate someone who had to give up an apartment in Baku,
the capital of Azerbaijan, especially considering the oil wealth and
rise in property values that Baku has enjoyed since the war ended.
Saroyan left Baku in 1988, when the first stirrings of the Karabakh
independence movement were felt. He went first to Stepanakert but
eventually wound up in Shushi - known as Shusha to the Azerbaijanis
- where both his grandfathers served time in a Soviet prison in the
1930s: one for being a rich peasant, the other for being the driver of
a car in an accident that killed an important communist official. He
loves showing visitors around the old quarters of the town, which was
Karabakh's most important city when it was under Persian and later
czarist Russian rule.
But being a modern-day homesteader doesn't have much appeal for him.
He misses Baku, where his driver grandfather is buried, and he said
that, like others, he's never felt entirely at home in Karabakh.
"We're integrated in society, but we can't be integrated 100 percent,"
he said.
This article was developed in cooperation with the Pulitzer Center
on Crisis Reporting.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By Will Englund
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/armenians-urged-to-settle-in-border-lands/2011/07/11/gIQAPPKeGI_story.html
July 15 2011
STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Karabakh - A former foreign minister of this
unrecognized republic in the South Caucasus wants to distribute land
in border areas to Armenians who fled Azerbaijan two decades ago when
war broke out. Arman Meliqyan says this would be compensation for the
property they lost when they fled - and it would also, intentionally,
help to wreck the proposed peace deal that is on the table.
Azerbaijan, which still claims Nagorno-Karabakh, would be certain
to see such a move as an enormous provocation. It says that, as the
result of wide-scale ethnic cleansing, a million Azerbaijanis fled
the territory now held by Karabakh forces, and that they want to
return to their homes.
Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan stopped fighting in 1994, but have
never come to terms. Both sides still shoot sporadically at each other
across the so-called line of contact. Growing tension has already
heightened fears that war could break out again - and that this time
there's a threat of drawing neighboring Russia, Iran and Turkey into
the conflict. War would also probably disrupt a key supply route used
by the United States to get equipment and other goods to its soldiers
in Afghanistan.
Meliqyan's idea is to move settlers into territories adjacent to
Nagorno-Karabakh itself that were seized by Armenian and Karabakh
fighters during the war and have been held ever since. Those
territories are now nearly empty of people, and most of the villages
within them have been left in ruins. A framework peace agreement
that Russia, France and the United States - together called the Minsk
Group - have been trying to sponsor envisions the return of most of
these lands to Azerbaijan.
If they were to be populated by ethnic Armenian settlers, that would
become considerably more difficult. This is precisely what Meliqyan,
who is completely opposed to the Minsk Group formula, hopes to achieve.
His plan inevitably raises the question of what compensation would
be available for the Azerbaijanis who also fled - out of Karabakh -
during the war. But he thinks that's Azerbaijan's problem.
Under Karabakh law, Armenians who fled Azerbaijan are entitled to
land in the territories as compensation. But the program has never
gotten underway, though a few settlers have trickled in on their own
over the years. Meliqyan, who now heads an advocacy group in Yerevan,
the capital of Armenia, says his organization has submitted 35,000
applications for land and gotten no response.
"They're not saying yes, and they're not saying no," he said of
Karabakh's leaders. "Sooner or later it will become a real question
for them."
Karabakh's president, Bako Sahakyan, said the problem is that the
territories are in such bad physical shape that it would take a major
investment in roads and utilities just to make them habitable. He also
made it clear he doesn't want to undermine the peace talks. Another
problem, said Karabakh's prime minister, Ara Harutyunyan, is that
most of those who left Azerbaijan were living in cities there, are
used to an urban way of life and would be lost trying to set up farms.
It's a half-good idea, said Saro Saroyan, a civil defense instructor
who has become one of the most outspoken advocates for these dispersed
people. (What to call them is a point of contention: Armenians use the
word "refugee," which is commonly reserved for people who have had
to cross an international border. Azerbaijanis, who don't recognize
Karabakh's independence, use the phrase "internally displaced persons,"
arguing that they're still in Azerbaijan. Some people here contend
that those who fled Azerbaijan should be called "deportees.")
The problem, as Saroyan sees it, is that a few acres of farmland would
hardly compensate someone who had to give up an apartment in Baku,
the capital of Azerbaijan, especially considering the oil wealth and
rise in property values that Baku has enjoyed since the war ended.
Saroyan left Baku in 1988, when the first stirrings of the Karabakh
independence movement were felt. He went first to Stepanakert but
eventually wound up in Shushi - known as Shusha to the Azerbaijanis
- where both his grandfathers served time in a Soviet prison in the
1930s: one for being a rich peasant, the other for being the driver of
a car in an accident that killed an important communist official. He
loves showing visitors around the old quarters of the town, which was
Karabakh's most important city when it was under Persian and later
czarist Russian rule.
But being a modern-day homesteader doesn't have much appeal for him.
He misses Baku, where his driver grandfather is buried, and he said
that, like others, he's never felt entirely at home in Karabakh.
"We're integrated in society, but we can't be integrated 100 percent,"
he said.
This article was developed in cooperation with the Pulitzer Center
on Crisis Reporting.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress