Nagorno-Karabagh: The world’s forgotten genocide?

A young Azerbaijan victim from the Nagorno-Karabagh war, 1991.

As the Soviet Union weakened and fell, old historic animosities resurfaced in some of the Union’s republics. Beginning in 1988, Armenia encouraged the ethnic Armenian majority in the Azerbaijan autonomous district of Nagorno-Karabagh to seek independence and then join with Armenia.

In 1992, Armenian troops invaded Nagorno-Karabagh with the help of Russian army units. They expelled all Azeri residents and destroyed towns, villages and infrastructure. They then took over the surrounding provinces, and expelled all Azeri residents.

The Armenian occupation of nearly 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory created about a million refugees, over half of whom still live in unbelievably primitive conditions. The occupation and the refugees are Azerbaijan’s continuing national pain and recovering the occupied lands is the national aim.

In an interview, Deputy Prime Minister Ali Hasanov, the most senior government official responsible for refugees, shared his recollections on the war with Armenia, the refugees’ situation, and his worries about declining international aid.

The Deputy Prime Minister:

"The Armenians claim that the conflict is an ethnic conflict. It is not - it is historical.

"At the end of the Russian-Persian war in 1828, the political status of Armenians in Persia (present day Iran) was not good. Because of certain pressures, the Czar invited the Persian Armenians to live in two areas of Azerbaijan, Erivan (now Yerivan, the capital of Armenia) and the mountainous, picturesque area of Karabagh.

WWII veteran longs for ancestral lands.

Refugee child ponders future.

Laundry day in the polluted river.

Shepard’s dugout houses refugee family for nine years.

"And from that time onward, the huge Armenian Diaspora has been trying its best to link this Armenian-populated area to Armenia.

Armenians seize lands, expel Azeris with Soviet complicity
"Altogether, the Armenian hunger for ever more land led them to deport Azerbaijanis from certain areas during four different times in the 20th Century - in 1905, 1918-20, 1948-50, and in 1988.

"In the 1988 deportation, more than 200,000 Azeris living in Armenia were uprooted from their homes, almost overnight. This last deportation was tantamount to ethnic cleansing - because afterwards there were no ethnic Azeris left anywhere in Armenia. To our great regret, this deportation took place under the Soviet regime, with the full armed support of the Soviet Red Army.

Armenians stage Sumgayit killings with KGB help
"Ethnic Armenians were deeply involved in arranging the events that happened in Sumgayit. And the involvement of the Soviet KGB cannot be denied. We Azeris later came to understand that these events were directly linked to Gorbachev and his policies.

"Unfortunately, there were 26 Armenians killed in the events. We traced the backgrounds of those 26 victims. What we found later in KGB archives was that several years earlier those 26 people had refused to assist a clandestine Armenian group calling for the unification of Karabagh with Armenia. Armenians living in Azerbaijan sponsored that organization.

"So the Armenians killed during the Sumgayit events were people who refused to cooperate with that clandestine organization. In this way, the people who stood behind the Sumgayit events were able to kill their fellow Armenians.

Genocide in Khodjali
"Immediately after the events in Sumgayit, pogroms began in the 126 Azeri settlements in Nagorno-Karabagh, and this form of ethnic cleansing continued until 1992. The culmination of this crisis in Nagorno-Karabagh was the tragedy in Khodjali – an overt form of genocide. This settlement of 6,000 people was destroyed overnight and 600 people were murdered overnight as well.

"The Armenians took a number of people hostage, the overwhelming majority of whom were civilians, including old people, women and children. Nine years later, some are still kept hostage. The number of bizarre medical experiments that were undertaken on these hostages indicates horrible treatment that is only comparable to that of the Nazis.

"Finally in May 1992, the last Azeri settlement, the town of Shusha, was captured. That completed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabagh.

"Taking advantage of this political chaos following our independence, the Armenians started further expansion outside the mountains of Karabagh. This led to the occupation of seven more districts surrounding Karabagh by the Armenian military forces, which were provided with very substantial support by Russian troops garrisoned in Armenia.

"The overall population of these seven captured districts was about 700,000. Those areas did not have a single permanent Armenian resident. They were exclusively Azeri districts.

Toddlers playing with artillery shell.

"The four resolutions passed later by the United Nations requiring the withdrawal of Armenian troops to withdraw from captured Azeri lands referred to these seven districts. Unfortunately, no government is paying attention to these resolutions.

One million refugees still languish in desperate conditions
"Thus, today in total we have about a million refugees and internally displaced people. There were over 200,000 people expelled from Armenia, about 40,000 ethnic Azeris displaced from Nagorno-Karabagh, and 700,000 people uprooted from the adjoining districts. Besides that, we also had an influx of 50,000 Iskan Turks expelled from Central Asia.

"All these people are dispersed over 58 districts of Azerbaijan in some 1600 camps and areas:
• 53,000 are living in tents.
• 12,000 of them were placed in railway boxcars.
• 30,000 are placed in
various farms and other types of rural construction, some in dugouts used previously used for winter animal shelter.
• 30,000 of them were placed in various educational facilities, such as schools, kindergartens.
• 100,000 of the refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) are staying in unfinished, incomplete residential premises.
• Another 100,000 are placed in dormitories, and the remainder are dispersed in very poor living
conditions.

"Certainly, there was international assistance rendered to Azerbaijan as these events took place. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was one of the first such organizations to arrive here, and then came the World Food Program. There was a very serious involvement of a number of non-governmental organizations from the US, Europe, Arab countries and Turkey.

RESULTS OF ARMENIAN AGGRESSION

Humanitarian aid decreasing
"Currently, there are 81 humanitarian organizations operating in Azerbaijan. Eleven of these are national, and 70 international. But from 1993 to 1995, the number of these organizations was 105.

"In 1994, these organizations provided $160 million; by contrast, the amount of assistance they provided last year was a mere $40 million.

"There is only one reason for this - a political solution to this conflict has been prolonged. Of course, the above organizations cannot function here forever, so there is nothing to blame them for. But, frankly speaking, the government of Azerbaijan is not able to replace this assistance.

“The assistance to refugees and IDPs from the government budget this year is around $45 million. A part of this $45 million provides a stipend of about $5 per refugee per month for bread.

“Apart from this, we also enacted a law called "Social Protection of the Refugees and IDPs. " According to that decree, these people are not charged for electricity, power, water supply, gas, communications, transportation, education, or health care; and they are exempt from all forms of taxation. The cost to government to cover these expenses amounts to approximately $200 million annually. Thus, our government’s direct and indirect assistance totals approximately $245 million a year. This is in addition to the $40 million provided by the outside humanitarian organizations.

"Returning to the issue of 907, since 1993 the US government has been providing financial assistance to Armenia at the rate of about $100 million a year. On the one hand we are dealing with aggression here – why is the aggressor entitled to humanitarian assistance from the US State Department?

"On the other hand, Azerbaijan is the victim here: we are the nation which has had its lands occupied. We are the country that has about a million refugees and IDPs. And we are the party that has been totally deprived of any kind of direct assistance. Isn’t that paradoxical?

"We have tried to show members of the Congress who support Armenia the reality of the Azeri refugees. I understand that in the US there are certain political dependencies when you get elected, and once you’re elected you can’t forget those who helped you win office.

"But I say to these members of Congress: ‘You can represent someone, that’s up to you. But you can also see some real truths in our refugee camps. By denying the realities, you are really not serving the Congress, and you undermine the image of America, the most democratic country in the world.

‘The United States plays a leading role in all the issues that are concerned with the protection of human rights. Aren’t these one million refugees and IDPs human beings? Don’t they have human rights too?’

Negotiated solution sought
"Since 1993 there have been efforts made to solve the problem in a political way, within the framework of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Basically, these involve Russia, the US and France - the so-called ‘Minsk Group.’ We can only note with regret that after many years of efforts, there have been no tangible results. The Minsk Group is the only body charged with the search to find a political solution to this problem. No one else is involved.

“The worldwide Armenian Diaspora which actually created this situation consists of people who have carved out entire political careers from this tragic issue. Naturally, they will continue their best efforts to preserve the status quo, and to impede the development of any solution, no matter how tragic for the people of Azerbaijan.”