FRIDAY PHOTO: WEDDING DAY FOR 1,400 IN THE CAUCASUS

Foreign Policy
Fri, 10/24/2008 – 5:01pm

In Azerbaijan’s breakaway majority-Armenian province of
Nagorno-Karabakh, 700 ethnic-Armenian couples were wed in a mass
ceremony on Oct. 16. Anahit Hayrapetyan reports for Eurasianet:

Russian-Armenian businessman Levon Hairapetian, a native of the
Karabakh village of Vank, financed the ceremonies. Each couple received
a payment of $2,000; newlyweds living in villages received a cow. That
financial support will continue with each child born: couples will
receive $2,000 for their first child, $3,000 for a second child,
and increasing sums up to $100,000 for a seventh child.

The ultimate aim of the event was to stimulate a baby boom in the
territory. A 2005 census put Karabakh’s predominantly ethnic Armenian
population at just over 145,000.

It’s certainly a novel nation-building strategy, though I’m not sure
a few thousand more babies is really going to turn Nagorno-Karabakh
into the next Kosovo. Then again, it is one of the former Soviet
Union’s more obscure frozen conflicts, so I guess anything that gets
a bit of press is at least a small victory.