{"id":101382,"date":"2011-06-01T11:04:43","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T06:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=101382"},"modified":"2011-06-01T11:12:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T06:12:38","slug":"id-rather-go-to-war-than-wait-another-20-years-refugee-in-azerbaijan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/06\/01\/id-rather-go-to-war-than-wait-another-20-years-refugee-in-azerbaijan.html","title":{"rendered":"‘I’d Rather Go to War than Wait Another 20 Years’: Refugee in Azerbaijan"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a mostly empty Soviet-era building in Baku on a recent morning, a 29-year-old woman pressed her eye against the scope of a sniper rifle, brown hair spilling over her shoulder, and took aim at virtual commandos darting between virtual trees, writes Ellen Barry in The New York Times<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gathered around her were fellow students \u2014 a decommissioned soldier, teenage boys with whispery mustaches, a 34-year-old communications worker in Islamic hijab. When sniper training was offered here in April, by an organization that provides courses on military preparation, the classes were a sensation, attracting three times as many students as the instructors could handle.<\/p>\n

The logic behind this can be traced to a grievance that festers below the surface of everyday life, permeating virtually every conversation<\/a> about this country\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Since the early 1990s, Azerbaijan has been trying to regain control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave within its borders, and secure the return of ethnic Azeris who were forced from their homes by war. A cease-fire has held since 1994, and officials remain engaged in internationally mediated negotiations with Armenia, a process that will receive a burst of attention this month when the two sides meet in Kazan, Russia.<\/p>\n

But the window for a breakthrough is narrow, and people here say their patience is gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather go to war than wait another 20 years,\u201d said Shafag Ismailova, 34, a student in the sniper course, who fled the Zangelan region outside Nagorno-Karabakh, one of seven adjacent territories that are under Armenian control. Asked about war, her friend Shafag Amrahova, a recent law school graduate, did not hesitate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWar is bad for everyone,\u201d she said evenly. \u201cBut sometimes the situation demands it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is tempting to forget about the \u201cfrozen conflicts.\u201d The enclaves of Nagorno-Karabakh, Transdniester in Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia are among the most headache-inducing legacies of the Soviet Union. The Soviets granted them a sort of semi-statehood, a status that ceased to exist just as nationalism flared in the ideological void. But the 2008 war in Georgia serves as a reminder of how quickly and terribly they can come unfrozen.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons Nagorno-Karabakh has not is that neither party has an incentive to fight. Armenia controls the territories, so it is interested in maintaining the status quo. Azerbaijan sees little way forward: though it could easily drive out Armenian forces, Russia could send its army to help Armenia, its ally in a regional defense alliance, just as it did in South Ossetia.<\/p>\n

But conditions have been shifting, slowly but surely, in a dangerous direction. Negotiations mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) faltered last year, leaving a \u201cbasic principles agreement\u201d that was five years in the making unsigned by either side. Both countries are engaged in a steep military buildup; Azerbaijan, by far the richer of the two, has increased defense spending twentyfold since 2003, according to the International Crisis Group.<\/p>\n

With frustration building, threats of war have become so entwined with negotiations that it is difficult to say where one begins and the other ends.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no guarantee that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia won\u2019t start,\u201d Ali M. Hasanov, a senior presidential aide in Azerbaijan, said in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s peaceful coexistence that we need, not a war. We need peaceful development. But nothing will replace territorial integrity and the sovereignty of Azerbaijan. If necessary we are ready to give our lives for territorial integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Baku had been bitterly disappointed by international mediation efforts. \u201cThe United States, France and Russia do not do what they promised,\u201d he said. \u201cAmerica now thinks Afghanistan and Iraq are more important \u2014 and North Africa, and the missile defense shield in Europe \u2014 than such regional conflicts as Nagorno-Karabakh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the forces driving Baku are refugees who have spent nearly two decades in limbo. The United Nations says there are 586,013 \u2014 7 percent of Azerbaijan\u2019s population, which is one of the highest per capita displacement rates in the world, according to the International Displacement Monitoring Centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though conditions vary widely and some resettlement is now taking place, a visit to a dormitory in Baku found children growing up in squalor. Roughly 100 refugees were living along a dank, fetid hallway, on one floor of a former office building. Three rough, foul-smelling holes in the concrete floor served as toilets for 21 families, residents said. The hallway was open to the elements, exposing residents to bitter cold in the winter. In the summer, mosquitoes breed in stagnant water in the building\u2019s basement, rising in a cloud to the floors above them, they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey cannot stand it anymore, they want war,\u201d said Jamila, 41, of her neighbors. \u201cThey don\u2019t believe the promises anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just then, a man took her aside, rebuking her for speaking to Western journalists who could, he warned, be pro-Armenian. \u201cOur children look at other houses, they see that other people live well, and they are ashamed,\u201d she said when she returned, refusing to give her last name. \u201cWrite that the cursed Armenians are guilty of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this charged atmosphere, Nagorno-Karabakh has become \u201cthe one issue on which there is total social consensus,\u201d said Tabib Huseynov, a political analyst based in Baku. A visitor here a few years ago would have heard \u201cKarabakh or Death,\u201d a rap anthem that accuses the United States, Russia, Turkey and Iran of turning a blind eye, exhorting the world to \u201ceither put an end to this, or stand aside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cease-fire violations \u2014 every year, snipers kill roughly 30 people on either side of the so-called line of contact \u2014 can take on huge proportions. In March, Azerbaijan announced that an Armenian sniper had killed a 9-year-old Azeri boy, Fariz Badalov. Though Armenia\u2019s president denied that his forces were responsible, Azeri television featured the boy\u2019s pitiful life story. One broadcast noted that the single bullet that crossed the line of contact that day was the one that lodged in the boy\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

The story inspired Valid Gardashly, a publicist for the Voluntary Military Patriotic Sports-Technical Association, which offers military training from a headquarters in Baku that is reminiscent of a V.F.W. post. The organization sketched out a plan for a 45-day course that would include sniper training, free of charge for about half the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought we had to do something,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are not preparing for war. But this was a poor boy \u2014 what did he do wrong? He was not a soldier. He was just watching cows.\u201d<\/p>\n

The course touched a nerve \u2014 both in Armenia, where some expressed outrage at the idea, and in Azerbaijan, where an overflow crowd was winnowed down to the 32 most promising marksmen. One who made the cut, a 15-year-old boy, offered his own reason for taking the class: \u201cI am getting ready to fight in Karabakh.\u201d Ms. Ismailova, one of the students, looked anxious as she listened to him. She, too, grew up among Karabakh refugees. But the younger ones are much more ardent, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese young guys, they have been waiting their whole lives,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had a genocide, and no one helps us. Not America, not Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo: James Hill for The New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere is no guarantee that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia won\u2019t start,\u201d Ali…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[14270,10265,10665,13901,10443,27474,17290],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}