UNRECOGNISED, DISPUTED TERRITORY BECOMES TOURIST HIT. AFP
[ Part 2.2: “Attached Text” ]
12:18, 31 July, 2013
YEREVAN, JULY 31, ARMENPRESS: Sniper fire, minefields, ghost
towns: perched perilously on the verge of conflict, the disputed
Armenian-controlled Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh may not
sound the ideal holiday destination. Now, though, a growing number
of foreign tourists are heading to the breakaway territory – which
is not recognised by any state – and say they are seeing a different
side to its war-scarred image,- as reports Armenpress, reads AFP
global news agency’s article about Nagorno-Karabakh.
Wandering around the region’s largest town Stepanakert as part of a
tour group whose members come from places ranging from Turin to Taiwan,
French pharmacist Jordan Nahoum said that while he knew all about
Nagorno-Karabakh’s bloody past, he was surprised by what he found.
“People are very nice and open,” Nahoum, 23, said as he stood next to
a row of hawkers selling tourist trinkets. “It is very safe here and
I see many tourists from different countries – I don’t feel myself
in danger.”
Seized from Azerbaijan by Armenian-backed separatists in a brutal
war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives as the Soviet Union
disintegrated in the early 1990s, Nagorno-Karabakh remains frozen
between war and peace.
Despite a fragile 1994 ceasefire that ended major hostilities,
repeated attempts to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to sign a final
peace deal over the past two decades have failed, and both sides –
especially oil-rich Azerbaijan – are rearming heavily.
Nagorno-Karabakh is still recognised as part of Azerbaijan by the
United Nations, but its population is almost completely ethnic Armenian
after the Azerbaijani community fled in the wake of the war.
Soldiers along the heavily fortified frontline exchange gunfire almost
daily, with both sides blaming each other for violating the ceasefire.
So far this year some 20 soldiers from both sides have been killed.
– ‘A pleasant place for tourism’ – Despite this, the local authorities
have pumped money into promoting the region at tourist fairs overseas,
and they say the drive is paying off.
Over the past few years, local authorities say, visitor numbers
have grown by 40 percent annually and in 2012 the number of foreign
tourists – not counting visitors from Armenia’s huge diaspora –
topped 15,500 people.
“This unprecedented growth shows that despite the heated confrontation
with Azerbaijan we’ve created an image of Karabakh as a pleasant
place for tourism, safe and interesting,” says Sergey Shahverdyan,
head of the separatist authority’s department for tourism.
Once ravaged by fighting, the serene boulevards of Stapanakert –
some 50 kilometres from the frontline – do not feel like they are
in a conflict zone and the town is now studded with new hotels and
restaurants following a building boom in recent years.
“If we can maintain this sort of growth in visitors then in five years
tourism will be one of the most profitable sectors for our budget,”
Shahverdyan said, pointing out that no tourist had ever been injured
in Karabakh.7/31/13 Unrecognised, disputedterritorybecomes tourist
hit. AFP | ARMENPRESS Arme – Rugged mountains and thickly forested
hills –
Azerbaijan though is fiercely opposed to the nascent tourist industry
in a region it considers under illegal occupation.
Anyone visiting Nagorno-Karabakh – which is only accessible by road
from Armenia – risks being blacklisted by Baku, and moves to open a
new airport that would boost Stepanakert’s links to the outside world
have brought threats of a return to war.
But for those willing to risk the journey, tour operators argue that
there is plenty to attract tourists to Nagorno-Karabakh – a spectacular
highland area of rugged mountains and thickly forested hills.
Despite the destruction of cultural heritage in the war, the region
remains studded with testaments to its rich and diverse history –
from ancient ruins to medieval monasteries and 18th-century mosques.
For some visitors though, that is not enough.
“There are those who prefer extreme tourism, who want to go to the
frontline, but we have to explain to them that it can be dangerous
as there are minefields,” said Gohar Hovannisyan, a manager at tour
firm Sati.
In fact, it is impossible to escape the grim reminders of the region’s
brutal conflict, which often saw neighbour turn on neighbour and the
entire 600,000-strong Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh and
seven surrounding districts forced to flee.
“We don’t hide anything about the conflict,” says tour guide Ani
Hovhannisyan.
But both sides have radically different versions of what happened
and inevitably it is the Armenian side of the story tourists hear
when they visit.
Such is the case with the town of Agdam – a former Azerbaijani city of
around 50,000 inhabitants outside Karabakh, which was one of several
areas Karabakh Armenian forces overran in 1993.
It is now a bombed-out ghost town, its Azerbaijani population among
the hundreds of thousands forced to flee the region. Hovhannisyan
says she tells her tourists that Agdam had to be cleared because
Azerbaijanis there used to fire on Armenian civilians.
Despite the region’s uncertain future, tourists like Andrey Hoynowski
from Poland say they will be recommending a visit to their friends back
home and that the added attention might even help Karabakh move on.
“They need to resolve this conflict peacefully, but in the meantime
they shouldn’t stop tourists from travelling here,” Hoynowski, 59,
said, smiling for a photograph in front of the medieval Gandzasar
monastery.