The Karabakh conflict has displaced thousands of Azeris, like these from the Jebrail district (Photograph: Hugh Pope)
Azeri refugees pray for peace and head home
PERCHED on top of trucks loaded with everything from bedsteads to the family chickens, a trickle of Azeris has begun to head back to their homes in the foothills of the Nagorny Karabakh mountains. The tough farm people are hoping against hope that the five-year conflict over the Armenian-populated Azeri territory has passed its high-tide mark. A ceasefire extended to 5 October is mostly bolding as the three-month-old pro-Russian government in Baku releases Russian and Armenian hostages, mends fences with Armenia’s allies in Moscow, pursues talks with the Nagorny Karabakh Armenians and prepares Azerbaijan for the reality of its military defeat.
The brave few returning to villages pray that the Armenians are also ready for peace after five years of war in which perhaps 15,000 people have died. To judge by the lamentable state of front-line Azeri forces, only Armenian self-restraint blocks further advances that have already captured nearly 20 per cent of Azerbaijan.
“The world is not aware of the dramatic situation here,” said Andre Picot, representing the International Committee of Red Cross. There is evidence, he said, of expelled populations, taken hostages and looted homes.
The United Nations believes that between 800,000 and 1 million Azeris have been driven from their homes in this former Soviet republic, one in 10 of the population. Armenian offensives displaced Azeris at the rate of 100,000 a month in June, July and August, according to Kaiser Zaman, the senior UN relief official in Azerbaijan. Thousands are camped along roads in the Iranian border district of Baylagan. Some sleep in the collective farm tractors and trucks in which they fled. Nearby, babies and grandparents live together in makeshift corrugated structures surrounded by belongings and their farm animals. Aid is a logistical nightmare. Iran has started to build camps just inside Azerbaijan to house 100,000 people. But refugee officials warn that none of the 29,000 tents pledged by the UN, Iran and the European Community is good enough for the freezing winter.
“All schools and buildings are now chock-full, paralysing education and the administration,” Mr. Zaman said. “But there is nobody starving. I have never seen any country respond with such compassion. They have tried their best to cope. If this government was bloody minded they could have forced the refugees into dirty refugee camps. They are a gentle people, not used to such cruel decisions. That’s why they can’t even fight.”
The Azeri military spokesman, Captain Azad Isazade, has the task of admitting that the army failed to fight. But he also had one of the more potent arguments for Armenia to make a deal now, which diplomats say would give all but independence to Armenian-occupied Nagorny Karabakh. “We don’t have an army, but tomorrow there will be one,” he said. “We have hit bottom. We hope that now we will start to come up again,” Captain Isazade said.
Publication date 09/22/1993
Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform
