Epress.am News from Armenia
Residents of of the village of Urtsadzor not far from the Khosrov Forest State Reserve in Armenia’s Ararat province were not surprised by a visit from Yerevan journalists; they had already managed to get used to guests from the capital, including from our colleagues, due to the recent fire in the reserve. They villagers, however, were not very keen on talking about the fire since they were convinced that it was not the region’s sole problem. After a series of conversations on social, political and economic issues, nearly everyone came to the conclusion that Armenia’s villages have lost their self-government, hence their continuously arising challenges.
The Khosrov Fire
An official investigation is still trying to establish the causes of the forest fire; the Urtsadzor villagers, meanwhile, already have their predictions about the findings (or lack thereof) of the investigation and they therefore refuse to take it seriously. The majority of the people are convinced that the fire was not naturally caused: they say “something was done in the forest,” refusing, however, to elaborate further on this claim.
According to one of our interlocutors, a man of about 35, “in they end, they will put the blame on someone innocent. But everybody knows that the leaders [of the country] are well aware of what is happening in the forest.”
One of the preliminary versions suggests that the fire was caused by a spark from an overheated grass mower. The villagers say the official justification for mowing the grass is “to feed the horses on the reserve.” Which they only have seven of, the interlocutors add and laugh. Why would they need so much grass for seven horses? “One haycock costs between a 1000 and 1400 drams,” one of the man tells us, suggesting that we should draw our own conclusions.
The villagers began trusting us as time went on, which resulted in a greater number of people being willing to complain about their pressing issues. According to the villagers, they are not allowed to “use the forest” anyhow: hunting, of course, is forbidden, and so is collecting greens on the forest territory.
“How much can a villager take? Why would they forbid this? They, on the other hand, do not hesitate to exploit the forest as much as they wish. We know there are people who do hunting here, and everyone knows who these people are,” a villager says, refusing to call names and saying only that “they are from the top.”
“If they gave the forest to us, we would protect it with our own lives. We helped to extinguish the fire this year, too, but not as much as, say, two years ago. The forest gives us nothing. If they gave the forest to us, we would take better care of it. We would extinguish the fires ourselves, and we would not allow any poachers there. We know every single one of them; we would tell them they could no longer hunt there. But they have taken away everything: the forest, the water – everything. Who would I look after the forest for,” another interlocutor says. Nevertheless, the villagers insist that this year too they did better job at extinguishing the fire than employees of the emergency situations ministry or police officers. “Eight villagers were doing the job of 20 firefighters. The latter did not know what to do; there were areas where the fire could have been extinguished more quickly, but they didn’t do this. In short, they were the most unprofessional firefighters.”
The Water Issue
The fire is troubling for the villagers particularly in terms of water shortage. The Vedi river flows through Urtsadzor, which is the villagers’ main source of irrigation water. The forest, our interlocutors fear, will not be restored in the near future, and since it was an important source of moisture, its loss will result in a greater water shortage. “In the arid summer, we never get enough water, and what we do get is not distributed evenly.”
Several times during our visit, we were stopped by random villagers who complained that their gardens were drying up and that they were not even able to water the plots of land outside their houses. People said they had invested in apple and other fruit orchards, but did not get harvest because of water shortage. People unanimously insisted that had the water been distributed evenly, everyone would be able to at least “make ends meet.” Villagers “declare wars” to each other because of water, they said. “In other words, the powerful ones will have water, as opposed to those who do not have any power,” one of the villagers summarized the issue for us.
Another one of our interlocutors was more specific in his words: “The water does not belong to the village, its distribution is controlled by those at the top. For example, a powerful official from the regional administration or some other government agency can call and order that his relative gets water. Therefore, there are people who are able to water their crops every three days, and there are others who can’t even do it every ten days.”
The villagers are convinced that all of these issues have arisen from their loss of self-government. They are convinced that the problems would get solved more easily were they given the right to make decisions. “That’s how it was in the past; in more arid years we were able to come to an agreement between ourselves and distribute water to all sites.”
“They are doing their best to make us want to leave the village. No matter how much you work, you never see a result. The majority of the village men have left for jobs abroad, and have even begun taking their families with them. I, too, want to leave; I don’t want my children to grow up here. Don’t think I’m not a patriot, but there is no other option,” one of the interlocutors concludes.