Karabakh Conflict: Armenia Gives Azerbaijan Back Its Herder

EurasiaNet.org, NY
Dec 1 2012

Karabakh Conflict: Armenia Gives Azerbaijan Back Its Herder

December 1, 2012 – 8:27am, by Giorgi Lomsadze

What does a national border mean for a man and his cows on the quest
for better grazing land? That’s the question that, in the run-up to
next week’s OSCE meeting in Dublin, illustrates both the absurdities
and the dangers of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for both Azerbaijan
and Armenia.

On November 30, Armenia handed over to Azerbaijan its lost herder,
Telman Aliyev (no relation to President Ilham Aliyev), a 41-year-old
father of two, who, earlier this month, had led his cow companions
across one of the world’s tensest front lines, and into the hostile
meadows of Armenia. The sound of the enemy hooves sent an alarm signal
to Armenian border forces, and Aliyev the herder was promptly
captured. Local officials did not specify if he or his charges put up
any resistance.

Baku, insisting that Aliyev the herder has hearing and speech
impairments, subsequently asked the Red Cross for help.

Yet though Aliyev is now returned to the safe green grass of home, the
Azerbaijani side did not come off as particularly appreciative of the
swift resolution of the cowherd crisis.

Azerbaijani officials said that Armenia had violated international
standards for prisoner exchange by showing up at the handover site
with an armed force. The fate and the whereabouts of Aliyev’s herd are
not known.

That said, village folk in the South Caucasus often tend simply to
ignore or to be ignorant of the region’s many de-jure and de-facto
borders.

Scavenging for cross-border herbage has caused trouble before. Last
year, in neighboring Georgia, South Ossetian and/or Russian soldiers
arrested four Georgians, and shot and wounded two others, who had
wandered into breakaway, Russian-guarded South Ossetia to pick
greenery for a pickling project.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress