ABOUT 2,000 Azerbarbaijani refugees from the war in Nagorno-Karabakh are living in abandoned railway carriages at Saatli, near the Iranian border, writes Suzanne Goldenberg. Their plight is the most pitiful of the 1 million  Azeris who have lost their homes during six years of war between Azerbaijan and Armenian separatists.

About 60,000 people are living in tents, railway wagons and other shelters (above and left) in the flat lands near the Iranian border. They were pushed out of areas of Azerbaijan adjoining the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh during the last year, when the Armenians inflicted stunning defeats on the Azeri forces. This left Armenian forces in possession of 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory and a cordon sanitaire near the Iranian border.

Until the Iranian Red Crescent set up the refugee camps, many people were sheltering in bushes surrounded by the cattle which they managed to take with them into exile. Now, Western aid agencies say, Iran is seeking Western funds for the camps, on which it has spent £4 million since the summer. There has been little interest. Turkey and Saudi Arabia both promised to set up refugee camps, but they are still unfinished. The refugees on the border represent just a fraction of the dispossessed. Most are invisible, having been cast out from the main towns and dispersed among families, and in schools and other institutions in the hinterland.

Photographs: Nick Cornish

Publication date 03/22/1994

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform