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MUFFLED CALL FOR PEACE RISES IN THE CAUCASUS
Independent European Daily Express
April 12 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013 - 09:06Inter Press Service
STEPANAKERT (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Caucasus), Apr 12 (IPS)
- Sixty-year-old Irina Grigoryan's voice is drowned out by the
merry noise of 230 children waiting for their lunch. Director of
kindergarten N3, located in Stepanakert, capital of the self-proclaimed
Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR) deep in the Caucasus, Grigoryan smiles
tolerantly at the din.
But the poster hanging on the wall behind her desk - picturing a
single dove flying above the words "Give peace a chance" - suggests
that all is not well in this misty, mountainous city of 50,000 people,
2,400 kilometres south of Moscow.
In fact, NKR, nestled between Azerbaijan and Armenia, is in the middle
of a long-forgotten war.
[pullquote]3[/pullquote]When the USSR was still alive, Nagorno-Karabakh
was an autonomous region, but in 1936 the Russian dictator Joseph
Stalin handed it over to Azerbaijan, sparking calls for autonomy by
the primarily Armenian population.
At the end of the 1980s, amidst the rubble of the crumbling Soviet
Union, opposition to Azeri rule grew more vocal, and Stepanakert saw
mass demonstrations of citizens demanding that they be allowed to
join the Soviet republic of Armenia.
At the end of 1991, the population of 191,000, 75 percent of which
was Armenian, proclaimed an independent Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR)
- a month later, in January 1992, Baku sent in its troops to quell
the secessionist movement.
Between 1992 and 1993, Azeri forces captured 70 percent of the NKR,
prompting Armenia to enter the fray. A 1994 ceasefire "froze" the
conflict and established an Armenian-controlled buffer zone stretching
a few kilometres east of the administrative border of the Soviet-era
Nagorno-Kharabakh -- but not before 30,000 lives had been lost and
over a million people transformed into refugees.
Today, the two countries remain officially at war, with 150,000 NKR
citizens living in a political limbo.
For those who survived the conflict, the precarious situation is a
source of daily stress and anxiety, and though nearly 20 years have
passed since the declaration of a ceasefire, citizens continue to
live under the shadow of war.
"During the war I was teaching at a local gymnasium, and I saw 80
percent of my male students die in the fighting," Grigoryan tells IPS.
"I do not want this to happen again --that's why here, in our
kindergarten, we do not speak about the war and we do not teach hatred
to our pupils," she says.
But though she does not speak of her memories, they are still fresh
in her mind.
With vivid clarity she recalls the 1992 siege of Stepanakert, when
Azeri Grad rocket launchers positioned in the hills in the nearby
town of Shushi rained missiles down on NKR's capital every day.
Civilians, quick to learn the rhythms of war, soon discovered that it
took soldiers 18 minutes to reload a Grad battery and would use those
intervals to move around the city, or steal brief moments of normalcy.
"I remember the mothers and fathers of the children you hear in the
next room playing 18-minute-long football matches (during the siege),"
Grigoryan says.
She is also active with the Public Diplomacy Institute, a local
organisation that works to build bridges between Armenian NGOs and
former Azeri inhabitants of NKR who were forced to flee to Azerbaijan
in their tens of thousands during the war.
Lamenting that "two communities, Armenians and Azeris, who lived side
by side for many years" are now wrenched apart, she hopes to build
ties between them, through direct dialogue among people and peace
activists on both sides.
Part of Grigoryan's work entails "explaining" to her fellow countrymen
that if they want peace, they must be prepared to make sacrifices,
including territorial and political concessions to Azeris, like giving
up the buffer zone beyond the NKR border and allowing Azeri refugees
to return.
"We do not want to lose another generation to war," she added,
referring to the skirmishes that constantly erupt along the ceasefire
line, and threats issued periodically from the government in Baku,
which suggest that conflict is not far off.
Until 2009, Grigoryan's cross-border diplomacy between NGOs and peace
activists received some support form the international community,
including a series of meetings in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi,
and in Moscow, facilitated by the UK-based NGO International Alert.
But then everything slowed down, and the negotiations taking place
under the auspices of the Minsk Group, a diplomatic initiative
co-chaired by the U.S., Russia and France to mediate between the
governments on either side of the Line of Contact, or ceasefire line,
reached a stalemate.
Geopolitics hinder chances for peace
Though it boasts everything from a parliament to a ministry of foreign
affairs, located just a few paces away from Grigoryan's kindergarten,
NKR has not been recognised at the international level.
Azerbaijan does not have any direct contact with NKR, leaving all
negotiations to Armenia, which it has labeled the "occupying force"
in the region.
NKR Foreign Minister Karen Mirzoyan says he is "ready to sit at the
table with my Azeri colleagues, but the problem is that they are not
ready to sit with a member of the NKR government."
Mirzoyan was appointed several months ago, when the July 2012 elections
gave the incumbent president Bako Saghosyan a second term, with 64
percent of the vote.
"We received a clear mandate from our citizens," Mirzoyan tells IPS:
"They want to be free and independent and I am ready to make any
concession that is consequent with this goal."
But what this means on a practical level is far from clear.
NKR authorities blame the Azeri government, led by President Ilham
Aliyev, of running an anti-Armenian campaign at the international
level and of silencing dissenting voices in its own country.
Experts point to numerous incidents that support this claim, including
the case of journalist Eynulla Fatullayev, sentenced to eight and
a half years in prison in Azerbaijan for his investigations on the
Khojaly massacre, which cast doubt on the official Azeri version of
the events. Faullayev was eventually pardoned in May 2011.
Experts like Richard Giragosian, head of the Regional Studies Centre,
an independent think-tank for the southern Caucasus, believe there is a
"desperate need for bold and creative political confidence building
measures", such as a universal withdrawal of Armenian troops from
some stretches of the buffer zone.
"Armenia and Azerbaijan are stuck in a political stalemate that is
hurting both countries," he told IPS. "This could fuel instability in
a region that is essential for the energy security of other countries,
like Turkey, but also of Western Europe."
Two major pipelines, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyahn and the
Baku-Tiblisi-Supsa, plus the Baku-Tiblisi-Erzurum gas line, pass a
few miles away from the NKR border.
Experts fear there could be severe ripple effects if the international
community allows the issue to rot.
"Over the years, NKR's independence has become an issue of national
pride and national identity for Armenians and Azeris, thus making
it all the more difficult to make concessions to the other side,"
Giragosian says.
He believes strong players like Russia - which has sturdy relations
with, and military bases in, both countries - ought to play a more
prominent mediator role.
http://www.iede.co.uk/news/2013_1566/muffled-call-peace-rises-caucasus
Independent European Daily Express
April 12 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013 - 09:06Inter Press Service
STEPANAKERT (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Caucasus), Apr 12 (IPS)
- Sixty-year-old Irina Grigoryan's voice is drowned out by the
merry noise of 230 children waiting for their lunch. Director of
kindergarten N3, located in Stepanakert, capital of the self-proclaimed
Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR) deep in the Caucasus, Grigoryan smiles
tolerantly at the din.
But the poster hanging on the wall behind her desk - picturing a
single dove flying above the words "Give peace a chance" - suggests
that all is not well in this misty, mountainous city of 50,000 people,
2,400 kilometres south of Moscow.
In fact, NKR, nestled between Azerbaijan and Armenia, is in the middle
of a long-forgotten war.
[pullquote]3[/pullquote]When the USSR was still alive, Nagorno-Karabakh
was an autonomous region, but in 1936 the Russian dictator Joseph
Stalin handed it over to Azerbaijan, sparking calls for autonomy by
the primarily Armenian population.
At the end of the 1980s, amidst the rubble of the crumbling Soviet
Union, opposition to Azeri rule grew more vocal, and Stepanakert saw
mass demonstrations of citizens demanding that they be allowed to
join the Soviet republic of Armenia.
At the end of 1991, the population of 191,000, 75 percent of which
was Armenian, proclaimed an independent Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR)
- a month later, in January 1992, Baku sent in its troops to quell
the secessionist movement.
Between 1992 and 1993, Azeri forces captured 70 percent of the NKR,
prompting Armenia to enter the fray. A 1994 ceasefire "froze" the
conflict and established an Armenian-controlled buffer zone stretching
a few kilometres east of the administrative border of the Soviet-era
Nagorno-Kharabakh -- but not before 30,000 lives had been lost and
over a million people transformed into refugees.
Today, the two countries remain officially at war, with 150,000 NKR
citizens living in a political limbo.
For those who survived the conflict, the precarious situation is a
source of daily stress and anxiety, and though nearly 20 years have
passed since the declaration of a ceasefire, citizens continue to
live under the shadow of war.
"During the war I was teaching at a local gymnasium, and I saw 80
percent of my male students die in the fighting," Grigoryan tells IPS.
"I do not want this to happen again --that's why here, in our
kindergarten, we do not speak about the war and we do not teach hatred
to our pupils," she says.
But though she does not speak of her memories, they are still fresh
in her mind.
With vivid clarity she recalls the 1992 siege of Stepanakert, when
Azeri Grad rocket launchers positioned in the hills in the nearby
town of Shushi rained missiles down on NKR's capital every day.
Civilians, quick to learn the rhythms of war, soon discovered that it
took soldiers 18 minutes to reload a Grad battery and would use those
intervals to move around the city, or steal brief moments of normalcy.
"I remember the mothers and fathers of the children you hear in the
next room playing 18-minute-long football matches (during the siege),"
Grigoryan says.
She is also active with the Public Diplomacy Institute, a local
organisation that works to build bridges between Armenian NGOs and
former Azeri inhabitants of NKR who were forced to flee to Azerbaijan
in their tens of thousands during the war.
Lamenting that "two communities, Armenians and Azeris, who lived side
by side for many years" are now wrenched apart, she hopes to build
ties between them, through direct dialogue among people and peace
activists on both sides.
Part of Grigoryan's work entails "explaining" to her fellow countrymen
that if they want peace, they must be prepared to make sacrifices,
including territorial and political concessions to Azeris, like giving
up the buffer zone beyond the NKR border and allowing Azeri refugees
to return.
"We do not want to lose another generation to war," she added,
referring to the skirmishes that constantly erupt along the ceasefire
line, and threats issued periodically from the government in Baku,
which suggest that conflict is not far off.
Until 2009, Grigoryan's cross-border diplomacy between NGOs and peace
activists received some support form the international community,
including a series of meetings in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi,
and in Moscow, facilitated by the UK-based NGO International Alert.
But then everything slowed down, and the negotiations taking place
under the auspices of the Minsk Group, a diplomatic initiative
co-chaired by the U.S., Russia and France to mediate between the
governments on either side of the Line of Contact, or ceasefire line,
reached a stalemate.
Geopolitics hinder chances for peace
Though it boasts everything from a parliament to a ministry of foreign
affairs, located just a few paces away from Grigoryan's kindergarten,
NKR has not been recognised at the international level.
Azerbaijan does not have any direct contact with NKR, leaving all
negotiations to Armenia, which it has labeled the "occupying force"
in the region.
NKR Foreign Minister Karen Mirzoyan says he is "ready to sit at the
table with my Azeri colleagues, but the problem is that they are not
ready to sit with a member of the NKR government."
Mirzoyan was appointed several months ago, when the July 2012 elections
gave the incumbent president Bako Saghosyan a second term, with 64
percent of the vote.
"We received a clear mandate from our citizens," Mirzoyan tells IPS:
"They want to be free and independent and I am ready to make any
concession that is consequent with this goal."
But what this means on a practical level is far from clear.
NKR authorities blame the Azeri government, led by President Ilham
Aliyev, of running an anti-Armenian campaign at the international
level and of silencing dissenting voices in its own country.
Experts point to numerous incidents that support this claim, including
the case of journalist Eynulla Fatullayev, sentenced to eight and
a half years in prison in Azerbaijan for his investigations on the
Khojaly massacre, which cast doubt on the official Azeri version of
the events. Faullayev was eventually pardoned in May 2011.
Experts like Richard Giragosian, head of the Regional Studies Centre,
an independent think-tank for the southern Caucasus, believe there is a
"desperate need for bold and creative political confidence building
measures", such as a universal withdrawal of Armenian troops from
some stretches of the buffer zone.
"Armenia and Azerbaijan are stuck in a political stalemate that is
hurting both countries," he told IPS. "This could fuel instability in
a region that is essential for the energy security of other countries,
like Turkey, but also of Western Europe."
Two major pipelines, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyahn and the
Baku-Tiblisi-Supsa, plus the Baku-Tiblisi-Erzurum gas line, pass a
few miles away from the NKR border.
Experts fear there could be severe ripple effects if the international
community allows the issue to rot.
"Over the years, NKR's independence has become an issue of national
pride and national identity for Armenians and Azeris, thus making
it all the more difficult to make concessions to the other side,"
Giragosian says.
He believes strong players like Russia - which has sturdy relations
with, and military bases in, both countries - ought to play a more
prominent mediator role.
http://www.iede.co.uk/news/2013_1566/muffled-call-peace-rises-caucasus