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Karabakh Conflict: Armenia Gives Azerbaijan Back Its Herder

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  • Karabakh Conflict: Armenia Gives Azerbaijan Back Its Herder

    EurasiaNet.org, NY
    Dec 1 2012


    Karabakh Conflict: Armenia Gives Azerbaijan Back Its Herder

    December 1, 2012 - 8:27am, by Giorgi Lomsadze

    What does a national border mean for a man and his cows on the quest
    for better grazing land? That's the question that, in the run-up to
    next week's OSCE meeting in Dublin, illustrates both the absurdities
    and the dangers of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for both Azerbaijan
    and Armenia.

    On November 30, Armenia handed over to Azerbaijan its lost herder,
    Telman Aliyev (no relation to President Ilham Aliyev), a 41-year-old
    father of two, who, earlier this month, had led his cow companions
    across one of the world's tensest front lines, and into the hostile
    meadows of Armenia. The sound of the enemy hooves sent an alarm signal
    to Armenian border forces, and Aliyev the herder was promptly
    captured. Local officials did not specify if he or his charges put up
    any resistance.

    Baku, insisting that Aliyev the herder has hearing and speech
    impairments, subsequently asked the Red Cross for help.

    Yet though Aliyev is now returned to the safe green grass of home, the
    Azerbaijani side did not come off as particularly appreciative of the
    swift resolution of the cowherd crisis.

    Azerbaijani officials said that Armenia had violated international
    standards for prisoner exchange by showing up at the handover site
    with an armed force. The fate and the whereabouts of Aliyev's herd are
    not known.

    That said, village folk in the South Caucasus often tend simply to
    ignore or to be ignorant of the region's many de-jure and de-facto
    borders.

    Scavenging for cross-border herbage has caused trouble before. Last
    year, in neighboring Georgia, South Ossetian and/or Russian soldiers
    arrested four Georgians, and shot and wounded two others, who had
    wandered into breakaway, Russian-guarded South Ossetia to pick
    greenery for a pickling project.



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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