STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Karabakh – Thousands marched the streets of Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital of Stepanakert on May 9, congratulating each other on Victory Day, still one of the most important holidays throughout the post-Soviet world.
However, the veterans walking in the crowd were not grandfathers in their 90s, but vigorous men in their 40s, veterans of a far more recent conflict – the bitter war that started with ethnic conflict in 1988 during the dying days of the Soviet Union. It grew into a war that has claimed at least 20,000 lives and that casts its shadow to this day.
As officials placed flowers at a typical Soviet eternal flame monument, women cried at a nearby military graveyard, mourning lost husbands and sons.
This is Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-controlled breakaway territory recognized as part of Azerbaijan by the international community. This is the location of one of the oldest of a half-dozen “frozen conflicts,” or unresolved territorial disputes that have plagued former Soviet republics since the fall of communism.
And it offers a glimpse of a possible future for Ukraine, now suffering its own Russian-instigated frozen conflict.
An open wound
For many of its 146,000 residents, Victory Day on May 9 coincides with the first big victory of the Armenian side over the Azeri army in the Karabakh War of 1991-1994.
But while World War II is history, the Karabakh conflict is an open wound, festering for the 22 years of the existence of the self-proclaimed South Caucasus republic.
The traditional fireworks were cancelled this year in Stepanakert due to the 40 days of Christian mourning for some 100 Armenians killed in hostilities on the border with Azerbaijan in early April, the worst outbreak of fighting since a ceasefire was agreed in 1994.
The crowd talked of renewed war.
“Our parents fought 24 years ago to make our life better so that we didn’t live under the Azeri iron heel,” said lawyer Vachagan Grigoryan, 24, marching with his wife and daughter. “If we have to, we will also fight, and our children will fight too.”
Grigoryan was born during the war for the mountainous enclave, which belonged to Azerbaijan but was predominantly populated by Armenians. His father fought in that war, his uncle was killed, and his mother had to flee from Azerbaijan in the late 1980s due to ethnic violence.
The Karabakh war claimed at least 20,000 lives and created over one million displaced people. The ethnic Armenian side, backed by neighboring Armenia, prevailed, also seizing seven other districts of Azerbaijan to create a buffer zone.
Grigoryan has always lived in the territory, which now has no ethnic Azeris. Even Armenia itself does not recognize the statelet.
Still, Grigoryan sees Nagorno-Karabakh as a de facto independent state, with a government, economy and military forces — the most valued part of society.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in Nagorno-Karabakh since the truce signed in 1994 and until the “four-day war” on April 2-5, when an estimated 200 people from both sides were killed.
Threat to shaky peace
As fighting erupted early on April 2, Nora Gasparyan, a 69-year-old pensioner, had to grab her grandchildren and run from shelling of her village on the outskirts of Martakert. “This is the second time I’ve seen war,” she said. The first time was in the early 1990s. Now Gasparyan stays with dozens of other refugees at a hotel in Stepanakert, afraid to return home.
Armenia and Azerbaijan traded accusations of blame.
The hostilities ended in an Azeri-initiated truce agreed in Moscow on April 5. Azerbaijan, with a militarily more developed than that of Armenia, managed to take several new positions, changing the frontline for the first time since 1994.
“The escalation was totally predictable,” said Amanda Paul, an analyst at the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based think tank. Noting previous military incidents in November 2014 and December 2015, she said renewed hostilities are probable, given the stalemate in peace talks led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group, co-chaired by Russia, France and the United States.
Azerbaijan, with international backing, insists Nagorno-Karabakh is part of its territory. “This mountainous region of Azerbaijan is not in any way disputed; it is occupied,” Kamal Makili-Aliyev, an expert at the Center for Strategic Studies in Azerbaijan, wrote.
In contrast, Nagorno-Karabakh’s government insists on the principle of the self-determination of nations, speaking of the region as native Armenian land. “We want to live on this land because our ancestors lived on this land for centuries,” said Arayik Haruyunyan, the prime minister of the unrecognized republic.
Many analysts blame the recent fighting on worsened relations between Turkey and Russia, the two major regional powers. Ethnically close to the Azeris, Turkey backs Azerbaijan while Russia’s role is more ambiguous.
Russia brokered the recent peace deal. But while posing as Armenia’s ally, Russia has supplied arms to both sides. “Despite Russia’s role in the Minsk Group and its diplomatic efforts, Moscow cannot be labeled a peace maker,” Paul said. “Moscow plays Azerbaijan and Armenia off each other.”
War and Soviet legacy
In the ancient caravan town of Shusha, about 10 miles from Stepanakert, 50-year-old Zoya Karabikyan knits and watches Russian and local TV channels, which tell of atrocities by the Azeri army. Here, the Soviet legacy and current Russian influence is strongly felt. Many people still live in Soviet-era apartment buildings damaged by shells, heating themselves with homemade iron heaters. In 1988, Karabikyan had to flee her flat in Baku, the Azeri capital, with her 6-month-old son, after her father-in-law was savagely beaten and died. Her husband died of wounds he received fighting in the war.
Karabikyan’s family settled in Shusha in 1993, after the Azeri population was expelled, in a big empty house. She can’t explain how the two nations lived together in Soviet times, but ended up in conflict.
Now she worries about her son, who is serving on the front line, and prays for victory rather than peace. “The oil in Azerbaijan will end one day, and they will not be able to hire mercenaries for the war,” she said.
Fragile situation
Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh mostly get their news from Russian TV, wear the pro-Russian St. George’s ribbon, and dress their children in miniature Soviet military uniforms.
But officials from the unrecognized state try to avoid being lumped in with other breakaway regions, and take offense to comparisons with the self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Ukraine.
“Please don’t see all frozen conflicts the same way,” Karen Mirzoyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s foreign affairs minister, said to the Kyiv Post.
The breakaway republic has elected four presidents, and has a 33-seat parliament, a government, a constitution, budget, courts, police and army. Its officials wear suits, not military uniforms, but the army and law enforcement bodies are the most respected and well-paid part of society. The families of veterans of the Karabakh war receive monthly payments of up to $400.
Hovhannes Nikoghosyan, a political scientist at the Yerevan-based American University of Armenia, believes that the democracy in Nagorno-Karabakh is incomparable with the “quasi-government structures” in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Nagorno-Karabakh has its own banking sector, which services Visa and MasterCard. The republic’s only mobile network, Karabakh Telecom, owned by a Lebanese resident, recently launched 3G mobile internet services.
Along with newly built houses, offices and restaurants, there are placards depicting soldiers, with patriotic slogans, in Stepanakert — a sign of a country still at war. The military is on high alert and there is shelling almost every day.
Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh say they are prepared for more war.
“We’ve survived in this uncertain, fragile situation for 22 years since 1994. And we’re completely ready to continue surviving,” Harutyunyan said.
And this, unfortunately, could be the situation Ukraine faces 22 years hence in the Russian-occupied areas of the eastern Donbas.
Editor’s Note: The Kyiv Post’s May 6-10 trip to Nagorno-Karabakh was sponsored by the European Friends of Armenia, a non-governmental organization headquartered in Brussels. Content is independent of the donor.
See photos for the story here
Nagorno-Karabakh facts
The forested 1,700 square miles in the South Caucasus is mountainous. “Nagorno” means highland and “Karabakh” means “black garden.”
Population: 146,573 people; 95 percent Armenian.
For centuries, Christian Armenian and Turkic Azeris lived in the region, which became part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century.
Early 1920s: It became part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan as an autonomous republic.
1988: Rallies in Yerevan for transferring the region to Armenia prompt violence against Armenians in Sumqayit, north of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku. The Soviet government refuses to change the status.
January 1990: The Soviets declare a state of emergency in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Soviet troops enter Baku, killing 130 civilians.
January 1992: Nagorno-Karabakh’s parliament declares the region’s independence from Azerbaijan. The conflict escalates into war.
Summer 1992: The forerunner of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe creates a Minsk Group to resolve the conflict.
May 1994: A Russian-brokered cease-fire is signed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The Bishkek Protocol ended the war but froze the conflict.
April 2016: Fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia kills about 200 people in the worst outbreak of hostilities since 1994. Nagorno-Karabakh, while in Azerbaijan, remains under the control of local Armenian forces and the Armenian military.
