Nagorno-Karabakh: Forgotten War & Refugees Left Behind
Nagorno-Karabakh, apart from being notoriously difficult to pronounce and also particularly problematic to place on a map, is somewhat unknown in the wider world. Located in-between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh was the scene for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the late 80s and early 90s.
When Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war the disintegration of Yugoslavia was in full swing and received the mainstream media coverage with images of atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo. Nagorno-Karabakh received scant coverage and the war was then as now, almost a hidden affair between the two rival countries.
It’s understandable in a sense that in Europe we were more concerned with the war on our door step rather than an escalating situation in the South Caucasus Region. The reality is that both the Balkans and the South Caucasus conflicts left thousands of refugees and internally displaced people (IDP). The South Caucasus Region is the land of refugees. Abkhazian and Ossetian refugees who fled to Georgia make up roughly 10% of the current Georgian population. Armenians who fled Turkey and Azerbaijan were resettled all across Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and have concentrations on the outskirts of the capital Yerevan. Azerbaijan had to accommodate an influx of more than 800,000 refugees and IDPs from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh into a country no larger than England. In Azerbaijan today 1 in 9 people is either a refugee/IDP or a descendant of one.
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh has been smouldering for centuries and was not created by the collapse of the Soviet Union but perhaps stimulated by it. This is a brief history for the perpetually curious:
In the late 1980s the Soviet Union was crumbling and the Southern Caucasus Region were beginning to gain autonomy and eventually by the 1990s, independence. In this climate of change a dispute gained prominence in the Southern Caucasus Region, and that concerned the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh has historical significance to Azerbaijanis and Armenians with both citing claims based on ethnic composition, various treaties and religious grounds. The historical claims from both sides are coupled with denial of the opposing sides with each seeking to nullify one another. The reality is that by the 80s-90s the ethnic composition of Nagorno-Karabakh was around 70% Armenian and 30% Azerbaijani. At the induction into the Soviet Union in 1920, Lenin had placed Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan. The Armenians claim this was part of the ‘divide and rule’ policy and the Azerbaijanis contend it is as recognition of its historical Azeri roots.
Tensions rose between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1988 when the regional soviet (local representatives of the communist party in the region) voted in favour of Nagorno-Karabakh joining with the Soviet Republic of Armenia. Gorbachev refused to change the status of Nagorno-Karabakh thus keeping it within Azerbaijan. What followed was a chain of events leading to the influx of refugees and internally displaced peoples (IDP) across the South Caucuses. On February 22nd 1988 violence broke out in Stepanakert, one of the two capitals of Nagorno-Karabakh. Stepanakert is the Armenian capital of Nagorno-Karabakh and Shusha the Azerbaijani capital. Two Azerbaijani civilians were killed by Nagorno-Karabakh police of Armenian origin and the announcement of these killings via radio across Azerbaijan brought tensions to boiling point. What happened next is, for the Armenians, an incident of Azerbaijani aggression and a systematic pogrom. In the coastal town of Sumgait, Azerbaijan, between February 26th and March 1st the Armenian population were attacked by angry mobs during riots and thousands fled to Armenia proper fleeing uncertainty. The controversy surrounding the events at Sumgait are that the Azerbaijani government claim it was a riot, organized and carried out by the KGB and Armenian nationalists seeking to demonise the appearance of Azerbaijan thus heightening the case for Nagorno-Karabakh separation from Azerbaijan. The Armenians claim it was no less than an organised pogrom. During the riots the names and addresses were called out via a loud speaker and the angry mobs directed to apartments of Armenians living in the Sumgait.
A survivor and a refugee of Sumgait told me her story. “My husband got a phone call on the Monday to say, come and collect your last pay packet. On the drive home he saw a friend Marina. She was naked on the street surrounded by a group of men beating her and burning her with cigarettes. We knew things were changing so we began to pack. Then around midday a group of Azeri teenagers turned up at our apartment and demanding valuables. Cash and gold jewellery. Once they left we realised the phone line had been cut and if they came back the outcome would be worse. Around 4pm another mob arrived, this time larger and more riled up than the previous. I was 7 months pregnant at the time and with my two children we escaped through the window into an Azeri neighbour’s apartment. Not all Azeri people did this. We had many Azeri friends like our neighbour and never really understood what changed in Sumgait. We had mixed marriages, socialised together and were friends. My husband held the door as long as he could but when the mob got in, they beat him to death with metal bars. We never saw him again. The neighbour sheltered us and arranged transport to a protected area by Soviet soldiers in the city centre. After that we flew to Moscow, watched the Soviet trial of the Sumgait criminals and then resettled in Yerevan.”
In September 1988 sporadic gun battles between Armenians and Azerbaijanis broke out near Stepanakert. The Azerbaijani population of Stepanakert were then expelled followed by the expulsion of the Armenian population from Shusha.
The next two years saw Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia, and Armenians from Azerbaijan, with the exception of a large number who resided in the capital, Baku. Next a ferocious war broke out between the newly independent states. On the 25th and 26th of February 1992 the most brutal phase of the conflict on a civilian population occurred in the town of Khojaly, Nagorno-Karabakh, an entirely Azerbaijani town.
Khojaly is to the Azerbaijanis what Srebrenica is to the Bosnians, and is commonly referred to as the ‘Khojaly genocide within Azerbaijan’. With the Armenian forces surrounding the town of Khojaly the civilian population fled in the only available direction, east. Both sides are in agreement that there was a ‘corridor’ to the east left for the civilians to pass through. This is where the story dramatically differs according to the narrator. The civilians with a scattering of military deserters were making their way to Agdam, an Azerbaijan majority town in Nagorno-Karabakh, under the impression of a safe passage for civilians. The Azerbaijanis claim, as the civilian population approached Agdam they were massacred by Armenian forces who were waiting on the high ground for a ‘turkey shoot’ and revenge for Sumgait. The Armenians claim that none of the civilian causalities were as a result of Armenian forces. They believe the Azerbaijani forces shot their own civilians and then the military staged photographs of the corpses to fabricate the myth of a massacre. At the time Azerbaijan was going through political turmoil and the Armenians claim the massacre of Azeri civilians was a deliberate act to encourage a change of power in Baku. By showing the failure of the Multilabov regime in the handling of the war it would usher in a new leader more loyal to Azeri nationalist aspirations.
The facts and numbers are disputed by both sides in regards to Sumgait and Khojaly, with both claiming the other is fabricating evidence and attempting to re-write history. It is beyond doubt that crimes were committed on both sides, but Khojaly is the most poignant example the Azeri’s say of military personnel specifically targeting a civilian population. Anar Usubov a Khojaly survivor told me, “It was terrible, we ran through the woods in knee high snow, those of us unable to escape were shot or captured. I was taken prisoner with my family. We spent months in a prison in Stepanakert being fed mouldy potatoes, eventually being sold in a ransom exchange for gasoline”.
Eventually, with both sides exhausted by years of bitter conflict and scores of deaths, a ceasefire was agreed in 1994. The ceasefire was only really a formality which has been broken on a regular basis ever since. The Armenian military positioned themselves within Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding territories of Azerbaijan, claiming this is to protect the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.
With over 800,000 refugees and IDPs scattered across Azerbaijan the task has been immense for the relatively new country. “These people had to be housed, provided with food and given the opportunity to live and work in safety,” Mr Elcin Qadimov from the State Committee for Refugees and IDPs explained as we drove through downtown Baku in an off-white Lada. “The tents and railway carriages are all gone now, it took some time but we have settled thousands in new homes and created infrastructure to support them.”
In an old Baku University student housing block which has been used for the last twenty years by the IDPs I met Mr Aliyev. Sitting on a rickety chair in a dimly lit room which he shares with seven, his parting words summed up the Azerbaijani perspective and ambitions. “I only have one desire and that’s to return to my motherland”.
Up in the forested mountain tops of Nagorno-Karabakh Mrs Hakobyan an Armenia refugee stated an Armenian perspective as simply “We don’t want anything, only peace and to live in our homeland”.
The situation in Azerbaijan is that the majority of the displaced population want to return to their original homes and in Armenia it’s that no Azerbaijani can ever return to Nagorno-Karabakh. The fate of Nagorno-Karabakh must be decided by the self determination of the people who live there say the Armenians while the Azeri’s say under international law, it is the land of Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijanis want control back of the seven surrounding territories and Nagorno-Karabakh and then Nagorno-Karabakh will be granted the highest level of autonomy. An Armenian refugee living in Nagorno-Karabakh told me, “it’s ridiculous to think we could live with Azerbaijanis or under Azerbaijani control after everything that happened between us”.
Both the Azerbaijanis and the Armenians wish for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, however it seems grimly impossible for either side to be satisfied with an outcome that isn’t heavily advantageous to their side. The Nagorno-Karabakh war is a forgotten war with forgotten implications but perhaps that is the way life goes. A festering conflict in the mountains in a far flung land may not tweak the average Briton’s interest but the geopolitical ramifications should cause concern.
