NAGORNO-KARABAKH TENSIONS FESTER
By Matthew Collin in Nagorno-Karabakh
Al-Jazeera.net
jazeera.net/focus/2010/02/20102412115655290.html
F eb 5 2010
Qatar
In the frontline trenches of Nagorno-Karabakh, the long-running
conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis over the disputed mountain
enclave continues.
In the village of Khramort, children make their way home from school
for lunch, some laughing and joking with each other, others holding
on tightly to their mothers’ hands.
But further along the rocky track which winds its way upwards towards
the snow-covered mountain overshadowing the village, there is no more
laughter to be heard, and no human life to be seen either.
Here, rows of houses stand derelict; burnt out during the war in the
1990s, when Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, backed by Armenia itself,
seized control over the region from Azerbaijan.
Khramort is not far from the frontline, where the Karabakh Armenians
and the Azerbaijanis have been dug in to their fortified positions
amidst an uneasy standoff since the ceasefire in 1994.
Ghost town
Armen Grigorian, a local labourer who was chopping wood in his front
yard, watched by his four young children, said he wasn’t worried that
two armies were facing each other just a couple of kilometres away.
"After going through a war, there’s no fear in us anymore, and even
if fighting did start again, where could we escape to?" he asked.
No final peace deal has yet been signed, and although Nagorno-Karabakh
is now under ethnic Armenian control and claims to be independent,
it is still internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan.
Armen Grigorian’s garden offered a grim view of the nearby "ghost
town" of Aghdam, which was utterly demolished after its Azerbaijani
population fled when it fell to the Armenians during the war.
It’s a bleak symbol of a conflict which is estimated to have driven
more than a million Azerbaijanis and Armenians from their homes,
as well as leaving up to 30,000 people dead.
Grigorian insisted that Azerbaijanis should never be allowed to
return to Nagorno-Karabakh, and that the two peoples should never
live alongside each other again.
"Remember the history – when we lived together, there was war,"
he said.
"If we live together again, sooner or later, there will be war again,
so of course it’s better this way."
Rising tensions
A short drive from Khramort, Nagorno-Karabakh’s frontline troops
were running through one of their daily weapons drills in the muddy
trenches.
Many of them are teenage conscripts who are too young to remember
the war.
But 18-year-old Rafik Melkonian insisted that he and his fellow
soldiers were "ready to destroy" the Azerbaijanis.
"Our mission is to defend the borders of our homeland, protect
families, and stop our enemies moving forward," he said.
There are often exchanges of gunfire across the ceasefire line,
and soldiers are occasionally killed.
Tensions have risen in recent months after a series of tough statements
from Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, who has warned that if
peace talks don’t deliver results, he could order a new offensive to
retake Nagorno-Karabakh and areas around it which were also seized
by the Armenians during the war.
Energy-rich Azerbaijan has been using some of its income from oil
and gas sales to fund huge increases in defence expenditure.
"We are spending billions on buying new weapons and hardware, and
strengthening our army’s position," Aliyev said in November.
"We have the full right to liberate our land by military means."
Georgi Petrosian, the foreign minister in the unrecognised
Nagorno-Karabakh government, said he was "concerned but not afraid"
about Azerbaijan’s military build-up.
"We managed to stand up and find the strength in ourselves to declare
our independence and defend our freedom in much more difficult
situations than the one we’re in today," Petrosian said, promising
fierce defence of the self-proclaimed republic.
If fighting did resume, the Nagorno-Karabakh military would again be
backed up by Armenian troops.
Serzh Sarkisian, the president of Armenia, is a former Nagorno-Karabakh
military commander, as is Armenia’s defence minister, Seyran Ohanian,
who recently promised that his forces would get involved "in all hot
spots which might, God forbid, emerge".
The dramatic landscape of Nagorno-Karabakh – its name means
"mountainous black garden" – continues to inspire intense passions
on both sides.
Rehabilitation
But away from the frontline, in the region’s quiet little capital,
Stepanakert, there is a greater feeling of security.
Stepanakert has been rebuilt, with financial support from Armenia and
the huge Armenian diaspora, and now resembles an ordinary, provincial
post-Soviet town.
Its first western-style shopping mall opened recently, enabling
affluent locals to buy imported Italian sportswear, upmarket beauty
products and replica football shirts from Europe’s top clubs.
"This town might be quiet, but that’s better than when we were being
shelled during the war and we had to hide in basements with rats
running around," said one young woman who was visiting the mall.
Petrosian said it was time to "move forward from survival to
development", but admitted that it would take much longer to rebuild
the rest of this isolated and impoverished region.
"There is not a single place which has not suffered, and not a single
family which doesn’t need social and psychological rehabilitation,"
he explained.
Despite the hostile rhetoric, both Armenia and Azerbaijan insist
that they are committed to the peaceful resolution of the conflict,
and negotiations have intensified over the past year-and-a-half.
But even if progress is made, they completely disagree about the
final status of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan maintaining that
the region must not be allowed to secede.
"We will not give our land away to anyone," Ramiz Mehdiyev, the head
of Azerbaijan’s presidential administration, said recently.
The ethnic Armenians who now control the region, however, say they
will never return to Azerbaijani rule.
"Time is irreversible," Petrosian declared. "You can’t turn back
the clock."