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NO SIGN OF END TO ARMENIAN ENCLAVE DISPUTE ON THE HORIZON
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0424/1224315104620.html
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Armene, who sells traditional pancakes in Stepanakert market.
Photographs: Daniel McLoughlinManya Jafarguliyeva, who fled Nagorno-
Karabakh during the 1988-1994 conflict, in her apartment in the Azeri
capital Baku. Photographs: Daniel McLoughlinFormer tank commander
Robert Bagiryan. Photographs: Daniel McLoughlinIn
'The Azeri-Armenian conflict is still unresolved 24 years on, writes
DANIEL McLAUGHLIN in Stepanakert
ROBERT BAGIRYAN'S slight frame stiffens and his shoulders straighten
when he talks about what went before and what he is willing do again.
"It was very hard during the war. The whole city was being bombarded
and people lived in their basements, but we live freely now and will
defend that to the last. Whatever it takes."
Bagiryan was a tank commander in the 1988-1994 war that saw his ethnic
Armenian people in the region of Nagorno- Karabakh break away from
Azerbaijan and declare independence.
The fighting pitted neighbour against neighbour, as amid the chaos of
the Soviet Union's collapse, Nagorno-Karabakh's majority Armenians
demanded an end to alleged Azeri discrimination and the creation of
their own state, high in the Caucasus mountains close to Iran.
At different times, regional powers Russia and Turkey were drawn into
the battle between Azeri forces and Nagorno- Karabakh's rebels backed
by the Armenian military, in a war that killed about 30,000 people
and forced more than one million from their homes.
Twenty-four years after it began, the conflict is still unresolved,
no peace deal has been signed, the world still officially sees
Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan and Armenian and Azeri
soldiers regularly exchange deadly fire across a tense and heavily
mined ceasefire line.
As sabre-rattling around Iran stokes fears of unrest in the region,
Nagorno-Karabakh will be discussed on Friday in Dublin, when Ireland
hosts a high-level conflict resolution conference as chair of the
56-nation Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The OSCE mediates in talks to end the conflict, but in the sleepy,
tree-lined streets of Stepanakert, the mountain-ringed main town of
Nagorno-Karabakh, many people see renewed war as more likely than
lasting peace.
"The Azeris bombarded us relentlessly, it was a time of terrible stress
and the kids were traumatised," says office worker Gayane Danilyan
(50).
"We couldn't live with the Azeris again. It's impossible. All trust
has been lost."
Nagorno-Karabakh and its sponsors in Armenia say the regional
assembly's 1988 vote to break away from Azerbaijan was in line with
Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalised Soviet laws; Azerbaijan insists it
was an illegal attempt to change borders and destroy Azeri territorial
integrity.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the row over Nagorno- Karabakh,
which is deeply rooted in the history of both Christian Armenia and
Muslim Azerbaijan, fuelled virulent nationalism in both republics,
vicious pogroms and allegations of ethnic cleansing.
After initially gaining the upper hand and besieging Stepanakert,
the Azeris were forced back until Armenian troops took Nagorno-
Karabakh and seven adjoining regions of Azerbaijan.
THE RESULT is that much of Azerbaijan's internationally recognised
territory is controlled by Nagorno-Karabakh's rebels and their Armenian
allies, and about one million of Azerbaijan's nine million people were
displaced by war - one of the highest such proportions in the world.
"We all dream of going back," says Abbas Aliyev (66), in the 25sq m
room he shares with seven relatives in a dilapidated district of the
Azeri capital, Baku.
"Our children went to school here and are settled here, but we always
tell them - and our grandchildren - about Nagorno- Karabakh and our
village. They know it is their homeland."
Energy-rich Azerbaijan has spent billions of euros on its displaced
people, paying benefits, subsidising utilities and gradually moving
them into new apartment blocks like the one that is home to Manya
Jafarguliyeva (59).
"We fled across the Aras river into Iran and then crossed back into
Azerbaijan and came to Baku," she says, adjusting the black headscarf
that she wears in mourning for her husband.
"We lived for 10 years in some bad places, unfinished buildings. Then
we moved here. This flat is nice, but we are still not used to life
in the city. We miss working on the land and in our gardens. We miss
the mountain air and water."
Dashqin Shamiyev (38), a community leader in Jafarguliyeva's district,
has no doubt he will go home.
"With my passport I can travel anywhere but my own homeland. It is
our land and we will return, our president has assured us of that. We
hope for peace, but if it takes a war to solve the problem then so
be it. I fought before and would do so again. Everyone of fighting
age would sign up."
ARMENIA ACCUSES Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev, of using
bellicose rhetoric to boost support for his autocratic regime. He
became president in 2003 following the death of his father, who had
stabilised Azerbaijan after events in Nagorno-Karabakh fuelled a
period of political chaos.
The dispute poisons every aspect of relations between the neighbours:
Armenia has withdrawn from next month's Eurovision Song Contest in
Baku because Aliyev recently called Armenians the greatest enemy of
his country.
Cash-strapped Armenia feels threatened by Azerbaijan's rapid
modernisation of its military and by pressure from Turkey, Baku's
main ally, on its closed western border.
Azerbaijan is offering its rebel region the maximum degree of autonomy
and wants Armenian troops to leave areas adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh
as a first step towards peace. Armenia claims that is impossible
until its safety and status are assured by a final agreement.
Both states claim the moral high ground over this remote and beautiful
region. Baku says its territorial integrity is inviolable and Yerevan
defends the Karabakhis' right to self-determination.
The name of this place bespeaks its tangled history - "nagorno" means
"mountainous" in Russian, "kara" is Turkish for "black" and "bakh"
is Persian for "garden" - but its 100,000 people are clear on the
future: only independence or unification with Armenia will do.
"Life isn't easy here, but at least we live in our own state and feel
free," says Armene, who with her friend Donara sells traditional herb
pancakes in Stepanakert market.
The former tank commander Bagiryan is more blunt.
"We spilt our blood to escape Azeri control," he says. "If they try
anything again they'll get what they deserve. They will regret it."
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0424/1224315104620.html
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Armene, who sells traditional pancakes in Stepanakert market.
Photographs: Daniel McLoughlinManya Jafarguliyeva, who fled Nagorno-
Karabakh during the 1988-1994 conflict, in her apartment in the Azeri
capital Baku. Photographs: Daniel McLoughlinFormer tank commander
Robert Bagiryan. Photographs: Daniel McLoughlinIn
'The Azeri-Armenian conflict is still unresolved 24 years on, writes
DANIEL McLAUGHLIN in Stepanakert
ROBERT BAGIRYAN'S slight frame stiffens and his shoulders straighten
when he talks about what went before and what he is willing do again.
"It was very hard during the war. The whole city was being bombarded
and people lived in their basements, but we live freely now and will
defend that to the last. Whatever it takes."
Bagiryan was a tank commander in the 1988-1994 war that saw his ethnic
Armenian people in the region of Nagorno- Karabakh break away from
Azerbaijan and declare independence.
The fighting pitted neighbour against neighbour, as amid the chaos of
the Soviet Union's collapse, Nagorno-Karabakh's majority Armenians
demanded an end to alleged Azeri discrimination and the creation of
their own state, high in the Caucasus mountains close to Iran.
At different times, regional powers Russia and Turkey were drawn into
the battle between Azeri forces and Nagorno- Karabakh's rebels backed
by the Armenian military, in a war that killed about 30,000 people
and forced more than one million from their homes.
Twenty-four years after it began, the conflict is still unresolved,
no peace deal has been signed, the world still officially sees
Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan and Armenian and Azeri
soldiers regularly exchange deadly fire across a tense and heavily
mined ceasefire line.
As sabre-rattling around Iran stokes fears of unrest in the region,
Nagorno-Karabakh will be discussed on Friday in Dublin, when Ireland
hosts a high-level conflict resolution conference as chair of the
56-nation Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The OSCE mediates in talks to end the conflict, but in the sleepy,
tree-lined streets of Stepanakert, the mountain-ringed main town of
Nagorno-Karabakh, many people see renewed war as more likely than
lasting peace.
"The Azeris bombarded us relentlessly, it was a time of terrible stress
and the kids were traumatised," says office worker Gayane Danilyan
(50).
"We couldn't live with the Azeris again. It's impossible. All trust
has been lost."
Nagorno-Karabakh and its sponsors in Armenia say the regional
assembly's 1988 vote to break away from Azerbaijan was in line with
Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalised Soviet laws; Azerbaijan insists it
was an illegal attempt to change borders and destroy Azeri territorial
integrity.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the row over Nagorno- Karabakh,
which is deeply rooted in the history of both Christian Armenia and
Muslim Azerbaijan, fuelled virulent nationalism in both republics,
vicious pogroms and allegations of ethnic cleansing.
After initially gaining the upper hand and besieging Stepanakert,
the Azeris were forced back until Armenian troops took Nagorno-
Karabakh and seven adjoining regions of Azerbaijan.
THE RESULT is that much of Azerbaijan's internationally recognised
territory is controlled by Nagorno-Karabakh's rebels and their Armenian
allies, and about one million of Azerbaijan's nine million people were
displaced by war - one of the highest such proportions in the world.
"We all dream of going back," says Abbas Aliyev (66), in the 25sq m
room he shares with seven relatives in a dilapidated district of the
Azeri capital, Baku.
"Our children went to school here and are settled here, but we always
tell them - and our grandchildren - about Nagorno- Karabakh and our
village. They know it is their homeland."
Energy-rich Azerbaijan has spent billions of euros on its displaced
people, paying benefits, subsidising utilities and gradually moving
them into new apartment blocks like the one that is home to Manya
Jafarguliyeva (59).
"We fled across the Aras river into Iran and then crossed back into
Azerbaijan and came to Baku," she says, adjusting the black headscarf
that she wears in mourning for her husband.
"We lived for 10 years in some bad places, unfinished buildings. Then
we moved here. This flat is nice, but we are still not used to life
in the city. We miss working on the land and in our gardens. We miss
the mountain air and water."
Dashqin Shamiyev (38), a community leader in Jafarguliyeva's district,
has no doubt he will go home.
"With my passport I can travel anywhere but my own homeland. It is
our land and we will return, our president has assured us of that. We
hope for peace, but if it takes a war to solve the problem then so
be it. I fought before and would do so again. Everyone of fighting
age would sign up."
ARMENIA ACCUSES Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev, of using
bellicose rhetoric to boost support for his autocratic regime. He
became president in 2003 following the death of his father, who had
stabilised Azerbaijan after events in Nagorno-Karabakh fuelled a
period of political chaos.
The dispute poisons every aspect of relations between the neighbours:
Armenia has withdrawn from next month's Eurovision Song Contest in
Baku because Aliyev recently called Armenians the greatest enemy of
his country.
Cash-strapped Armenia feels threatened by Azerbaijan's rapid
modernisation of its military and by pressure from Turkey, Baku's
main ally, on its closed western border.
Azerbaijan is offering its rebel region the maximum degree of autonomy
and wants Armenian troops to leave areas adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh
as a first step towards peace. Armenia claims that is impossible
until its safety and status are assured by a final agreement.
Both states claim the moral high ground over this remote and beautiful
region. Baku says its territorial integrity is inviolable and Yerevan
defends the Karabakhis' right to self-determination.
The name of this place bespeaks its tangled history - "nagorno" means
"mountainous" in Russian, "kara" is Turkish for "black" and "bakh"
is Persian for "garden" - but its 100,000 people are clear on the
future: only independence or unification with Armenia will do.
"Life isn't easy here, but at least we live in our own state and feel
free," says Armene, who with her friend Donara sells traditional herb
pancakes in Stepanakert market.
The former tank commander Bagiryan is more blunt.
"We spilt our blood to escape Azeri control," he says. "If they try
anything again they'll get what they deserve. They will regret it."