Nagorno-Karabakh war wounds still open a year after ceasefire

YERASKH, Armenia — It has been a year since the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan was brokered by Russia after a 44-day war took place over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory in the south Caucasus.

While Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, it has been populated and controlled by ethnic Armenians. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, inter-ethnic clashes sprung up between the two sides in the 1990s, when secessionist ethnic Armenians — historically the majority in Stepanekert, the heartland of the disputed region — backed by Armenia took up arms and seized seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan.

Peace talks brokered by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe did not yield results for nearly 30 years, until simmering tensions came to a head last year in the second Karabakh war. Azerbaijan — which has vast oil and gas revenues — had reinforced its military with sophisticated weaponry, including Turkish and Israeli armed drones, and in 2020 took back the seven occupied districts. The conflict came to a tentative conclusion partly by the winning of territory by Azerbaijan and partly through a ceasefire brokered by Russia on Nov. 10 2020.

The fighting that broke out in late September last year was the worst in over 25 years, with thousands of lives lost on both sides.

A year on, our reporter traveled to the Armenian town of Yeraskh, a village on the country’s sealed southern border with Azerbaijan, just 56 km from the capital Yerevan. Locals here say that everyday shootings are still the norm.

“Be careful publishing photos and videos of strategic positions from here… We are under the constant watch of Azerbaijani snipers… They are monitoring us right now,” an elderly Armenian man, who gave his name as Nver, told Nikkei Asia.

Only a few hundred meters away, elevated Armenian and Azerbaijani military bunkers are visible on either side of the mountainous border — a chilling reminder of how close the front line of the conflict was to the village.

“Drive fast, drive faster!” said Sevak Hovhannisyan, a young Armenian man chaperoning us around the village, as our car sped through an exposed area below Azerbaijani military vantage points.

Further down the road, hidden from Azerbaijani trenches and protected by man-made grass hills, another man, Hovhannisyan, shared with us horrific stories from the previous Nagorno-Karabakh war during which he was enlisted.

In the eyes of the Armenian people, the conflict is still unresolved, with last year’s war catching the country off guard.

Human rights groups have condemned the use of banned weapons during the war, and both countries have accused the other of continually breaking the ceasefire.

Armenians say unprovoked and sporadic small arms fire by Azerbaijani soldiers near border towns occur daily, while there are uncertainties over the status of their soldiers who are prisoners of war or missing in action.

Azerbaijan meanwhile is seeking full maps of landmines laid by Armenians in the regained territories, where many have lost their lives in explosions since the ceasefire. In June, Azerbaijan exchanged 15 ethnic Armenian prisoners of war in return for a map locating landmines laid in Agdam, a district relinquished by ethnic Armenian forces as part of the Russia-brokered deal.

On top of the heavy losses of territory, Armenia’s economy also took a hit after the war.

“In 2020 the Armenian economy decreased by 7.4 per cent due to the COVID-19 crisis and because of the war, for example, we have a [Sotk] goldmine on the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and as a result of the conflict between the two countries, the production of gold this year was a lot lower than last year,” said Haykaz Fanyan, director of socio-economic studies at ACSES, an Armenian think tank.

Fanyan told Nikkei Asia that other sectors of the economy such as agriculture have also been affected as a consequence of farmers losing arable territory where they used to raise their livestock.

“The effects of the war on the economy of Armenia will be seen over the next couple of years. I fear uncertainty over agricultural developments will make the Armenian economy less attractive for direct foreign and local investments but as for 2021, the growth of the economy could still be about 5%,” said Fanyan.

The conflict reached something of an inflection point, when, on Nov. 9, 2020, a Russian attack helicopter was shot down by Azerbaijan forces near Yeraskh. Two crew members were killed and another was injured. Azerbaijani authorities released a statement of apology to Russia and offered to pay compensation.

It remains unclear whether the incident spurred the signing of the Russia-brokered ceasefire the next day, but Moscow has since sent nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to the region, with plans to keep them there until 2025.

According to official figures, about 3,800 Armenian soldiers were killed in the war and more than 240 are still missing. Azerbaijan says it has lost more than 2,900 soldiers, while six are still missing.

In the Armenian capital Yerevan, the Yerablur Military Memorial Cemetery sits on high ground looking over the city, with the snow-capped Mount Ararat — located in Turkey — in the near distance. As the sun begins to set, visiting families pay their respects to fallen loved ones as a fog of burning incense permeates the air.

The piercing sound of concrete being cut to build new graves ripples through the cemetery — a reminder of how recent this war was, with many bodies still being laid to rest.

The headstones show that many of the soldiers killed were born between 2000 and 2003. Nearly every grave has a photo of the soldier in their uniform alongside an Armenian flag.

Back in Yeraskh, an elderly female Armenian shopkeeper who declines to give her name says there is still cross-border gunfire, day and night.

She says that even though the war is over, people still live in fear, and soldiers in nearby border villages are being killed.

The Azerbaijani army is still trying to take a strategic position and that is why there are shootings all the time, she says. A friend of her son, a 32-year-old Armenian soldier and father of three who was defending a nearby border post, was killed just a few days earlier.

“When the Azerbaijani soldiers use heavy artillery, the noise scares the children. They are also using drones and we have to live with this constant stress and threat,” she says.

The woman says that although she has relatives in Europe and the U.S. and options to leave Armenia, she is “too attached to her land.” Ultimately, she worries about what might happen to her village if everyone leaves Yeraskh.

But despite the ongoing uncertainties near the border, there are some signs of hope.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, bolstered by an election win in June which came in spite of the humiliating war defeat, has been sending warm messages to both Azerbaijan and its main backer, Turkey, in an attempt to normalize relations.

Turkish and Azerbaijani leaders are reciprocating, underlining hopes that a permanent peace agreement could pave the way to lifting Armenia out of the deep isolation from its immediate neighbors — and, for the people of Yeraskh, that the sniping along the border will cease.