Category: 2020

It’s been a month now since the Azerbaijani attack on the population of Nagorno Karabakh on September 27.

Azerbaijan has been shelling civilians for 30 days non stop. In total, 7800 homes and 1310 public buildings have been damaged or destroyed. More than 900 Armenian soldiers aged 18 and over, are dead, more than 40 civilians lost their lives and more than a hundred have been wounded. In four weeks, approximately 60% of the Artsakh population, which represents 90,000 people, have left their homes.

This is an overview of a month of war in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

✓Azerbaijani forces are firing in the direction of the southern border of the Republic of Armenia.

✓Artsakh’s Defense Minister is wounded in action and relieved of his position.

✓Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has stated that Nagorno-Karabakh will not capitulate.

✓Armenia’s military casualty count has risen above 1,000.

By Michael Krikorian

The good Scotch flowed smoothly in a spacious Glendale backyard on Saturday night a month ago. It was September 26 and Dr. Alexander Gevorgyan, a surgeon who specializes in facial reconstruction, was enjoying his friends’ tales of hunting in the mountains near Bishop, California as they indulged on a Macallan 18 year-old scotch whiskey and the even more rarefied Macallan 25.

Then someone’s phone rang. It was Sunday morning in Karabakh and war had erupted. Azerbaijani forces were bombing the eastern towns of the mountainous region populated almost solely by Armenians. 

By Monday, Gevorgyan was organizing efforts with his co-workers to send relief supplies to Armenia and on to the frontline. Blankets, bandages and coats were among the essential items they gathered to send. But, considered the most urgent supplies to send were tourniquets, that dreaded battlefield dressing vital to stopping extreme blood loss.

For the next several days, Gevorgyan, who was born in Gyumri in 1979 and moved to Yerevan following the devastating earthquake in nearby Spitak in 1988, anguished over what he could do to help. But, deep down he knew he had to go help the wounded. He told his wife, Anet.

Anet was silent for several seconds. Then she swallowed and said, “You know you have kids.”

“I know,” he said. “I have a country, too.”

The couple hugged and he rationalized his case. “You and the children will be safe in Los Angeles. But there are a lot of children fighting and they will need my skills. There are 18, 19-year-old boys fighting. They are our kids, too.”

Anet knew she couldn’t stop him. The only thing she could do was make him promise to come home safely.

Gevorgyan, who has lived in Glendale since arriving in America in 2010, landed in Yerevan Oct. 9 and arrived by car to Karabakh the next night.

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Tuesday afternoon, a man wearing a black outfit that matches his beard and hair is walking up a narrow dirt path away from the hospital towards a narrow, partially paved street. A dirty van turned into a makeshift ambulance races by the man walking. It is taking two soldiers whose bloody wounds have been staunched at this site to a more sophisticated hospital in Stepanakert or maybe even Yerevan.  As the van drives off, two explosions are heard in the distance. Soldiers and workers implore a journalist not to give the location of the hospital. They don’t think the enemy would bomb here if they were aware of the hospital location. They know it.  

The man in black is Dr. Gevorgyan and, as he is about to sit down on a concrete block, a soldier hurries over and respectfully puts down a red blanket.

The doctor stares at a reporter for couple of seconds. “I heard there was a journalist here who wanted to interview me, but I didn’t want to leave the hospital to talk to anyone. I am not a star. But the commander told me the journalist came from Los Angeles, so here I am.”

He looks around the dusty corner where three soldiers stand guard.    

“This is where I arrived that first night. It was absolutely pitch black and there were probably a million stars in the sky above, but I only looked up for drones,” he says. “You can hear them. Then came vans with the wounded, speeding up and making this turn,  down this hill to the hospital. It was chaos. In my training and at work of course I have seen bleeding patients after car accidents, but the quantity of bloody people I saw that night is something you only see in a war zone.”

Morphine and its relatives are used liberally.

In the nearly three weeks he has been here, Dr. Gevorgyan says relatively few of the soldiers who’ve been brought to the hospital have died. However, he says heartbreakingly, some of the soldiers “do arrive with wounds that are not compatible with life.” He stops talking and looks at the blue sky above. In the distance several more explosions are heard.  “Sometimes doctors can’t do god’s work. We are only doctors.”

The teams of doctors and nurses perform their duties with resolute efficiency, he says. “Everyone knows what they need to do and they just do it. Stopping bleeding and extreme pain is the first steps. Number one thing is to stabilize them. I don’t even know their names. We don’t have time to chit chat.”

He gives utmost credit to the special group of people whose job is to go to the actual battlefields – be it a city street or a field – and pick up the wounded. They often have a red cross painted on their car, but lately that doesn’t protect them from being attacked.

The thought that a car with a red cross painted on it is targeted, the thought that he has to tell a journalist not to say their location because the hospital will be bombed, starts to enrage Dr. Gevorgyan.

He stands up. “Tell the story. I have to get back to work.” And Dr. Alexander Gevorgyan walks back down a dusty dirt lane toward a hospital somewhere in Karabakh.

Michael Krikorian is a writer from Los Angeles. He was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and for the Fresno Bee. He writes under the pseudonym “Jimmy Dolan” for the Mozza Tribune. His website is www.KrikorianWrites.com and his first novel is called “Southside”.

By Lika Zakaryan, Stepanakert

The third humanitarian ceasefire was as useless as the previous two. The only difference is that this time no one was surprised. Since there is no truce and the war continues, I asked my dad to bring me backgammon. Now, in my bomb shelter, you can hear not only the sounds of bombs, but also the sounds of the backgammon pieces, which sometimes drown out everything else. I remember spending a whole winter in Roots cafe playing this game, just like grandparents.

People in Artsakh love backgammon. When the weather is good, you can see elderly war veterans playing board games in the yard. I even have photos of them, I wanted to make a series about this. Usually, two sit in front of each other – the main characters, and three or four men stand side by side and watch the game. Everyone comments, “Oh, why did you make this move? Eh! You will lose!”

Today, I had to walk from point A to point B. The road was 15 to 20 minutes, but it seemed like a whole day. I think I have a phobia of walking around the city. It felt like something would fall on my head any minute. Every three meters I had a plan B in my head. If the bombing starts right now – where would I hide? I looked for basements, all sorts of open doors, anything, just not to hide from cluster bombs or a drone. I think I got 15-20 more gray hairs on my head in those minutes. To be honest, I was no longer afraid of death, but of my boyfriend, who, in case I stay alive, would settle scores with me because I didn’t heed his warnings and went out into the city, without a car, without a bulletproof vest, without a helmet. 

Today I found little kittens in our yard. They were born recently, I couldn’t find their mother. I took them to our yard, introduced them to our dog Bima. Bima is very kind, he will not offend them. We fed them, and came up with a small place for them. In the evening I called my dad so that he would not forget to feed them. Now I am calm, because dad and Bima are looking after them.

And today, I also found an open store… I just can’t believe it! And in the store I found sour cream. In peacetime, I did not eat very much, and did not want to gain weight. Now, it’s like a New Year’s tangerine. I bought two. Although a few days ago a friend had sent me some from Yerevan. Today’s brand is “Mu-Mu”; this is produced in Artsakh. 

Then I came to the shelter. I am sitting, thinking about writing something. Received a message. Again. One of the workers I worked with in Martuni was killed. He was killed while working. He was not a military man, just a civilian. And there was a family, children… Any loss is hard, but the loss of friends makes you feel everything on your skin. How many people do we lose every day…

Summing up today’s results, I want to say, to be honest, all this is very scary. But we cannot afford such luxuries as crying, being afraid… We ourselves decide what to do with this fear. Once in the film “Divergent” I heard the phrase that the main character says to the heroine: “Fear does not paralyze you, it wakes you up!” Now I dream to be the same.

The war continues, and it has changed its nature to some extent, noted Artsrun Hovhannisyan, representative of Armenia’s Defense Ministry, during a press conference on October 27.

“After achieving success in the lowlands, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces are trying to establish their presence in the forests and in the mountains, which is not easy to achieve. In terms of tactics, battles are becoming more difficult and intense,” Hovhannisyan said. 

The defense ministry representative mentioned that the opponent has lost its huge quantitative and technological advantage, and that this is due to various circumstances, including the location of current battles and the improvement of Armenian soldiers’ skills and experience.

“Today, the enemy attempted to carry out attacks in the direction of Berdzor. It also attempted to approach the border of the Republic of Armenia from the southern direction. All of the attempts were thwarted,” continued Hovhannisyan. “The fight against the subversive groups attempting to enter villages continues. They generally approach in small groups and bring with them light weapons. After encountering Armenian units, they retreat through the forests and mountains. These light operations continue 24 hours a day.”

Villages and towns in Karabakh’s Martuni and Askeran regions have seen the heaviest Azerbaijani missile attacks in recent days. Civilian deaths and injuries have been reported by the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman.