March 24 2021
This Is What It's Like to Live in a Country ‘That Doesn't Exist’
6.5 million people across Europe are trying to live normal lives in countries mostly unrecognised by the rest of the world.
By Robert O'Connor
24 March 2021, 3:23pm
Today in Europe there are 6.5 million people living in countries that, according to the rest of the world anyway, do not exist.
These would-be republics’ borders, born out of the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union, are unrecognised by the international family of nations, as is their legal right to dictate the shape of their futures.
In a historical context where sovereignty and national borders are immutable and fixed, to a Western eye the unrecognised country is a surreal concept.
Following the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, 21 new independent states were created. But there were more than a dozen national and ethnic groups whose claims to sovereignty went unfulfilled.
Some found ways to live in peace within Eastern Europe’s new borders. Others fought bloody ethnic wars to drive “occupying” armies out of their homeland. Some appealed to Russia directly to help carry them into the fog of a post-Soviet future.
Each of Eastern Europe’s six disputed regions has a unique story, and within each there are diverse voices, attempting to live normal lives in spite of the chaos they were born into.
Nagorno-Karabakh / Artsakh
High in the Caucasus mountain chain at Eurasia’s crossroads, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been trapped in a long war over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh for more than 30 years. Though sitting inside the borders of Turkic Azerbaijan, Karabakh is populated and controlled by Armenians, the world’s oldest Christian nation whose modern history is defined by a genocide perpetrated by the Turkish Ottoman government during the First World War.
After a long and uneasy ceasefire, hostilities over the status of Karabakh – or Artsakh as it is known locally – resumed in late 2020, as Azerbaijan’s Turkish-backed military advanced deep into the territory of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and retook land it lost in 1993. It took a devastating humanitarian toll.
“Psychologically, it’s like being permanently operated on by a surgeon and you become used to the pain. You are no longer afraid. It’s masochistic.”
“My family became refugees last year after we were forced to leave our house and property in Shushi. We’ve been refugees before, from Baku when there was anti-Armenian violence in 1988,” said Saro Saryan, speaking from Yerevan. Saro formerly ran a geological museum in Shushi before being forced to flee. “Psychologically, it’s like being permanently operated on by a surgeon and you become used to the pain. You are no longer afraid. It’s masochistic.
“My son lost a leg in the fighting. He’s been recovering at a clinic in Switzerland. But we’re lucky. Thousands of people will never see their families again.
“Before the war, we felt the Sword of Damocles over us. But we raised our children not in hatred of our Azerbaijani neighbour. We built cities that reflected our Armenian culture; museums, churches, the army. In our hearts, we believed in a higher power. Now it’s hard to have faith.
“International recognition would have been a stronger guarantee of our safety. Why has it not happened?”