After the first war, before the next

Once more border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan are occurring. Lika Zakaryan reflects on what happened since the last war ended.

Lika Zakaryan

Lika Zakaryan is a writer and photographer based in the Republic of Artsakh (Karabakh).

A child protestor holds a placard at a demonstration

Artsakh citizens protest against the blockade and its effects.

VoA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

More than two years ago the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan for Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh ended, but many fundamental issues remain. Who will provide security and services for the region’s residents - Armenians? How is humanitarian aid managed and by whom?. And, nobody knows if the so-called “ceasefire” will hold. 

Azerbaijan won the war, with the Armenian side losing significant territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Over one-third of the population became refugees, losing their homes and everything they managed to create during all their lives. Now Azerbaijan controls those territories, but they mainly remain not inhabited. Those territories that remained under the control of Armenians, are still populated only with Armenians, and Azerbaijanis have to approached them. In order to prevent any armed conflict in the region (in fact, to protect Armenians from Azerbaijanis) 4,000 Russian soldiers-peacekeepers and emergency services staff keep an uneasy peace. 

They were already in Artsakh within hours of the peace agreement’s signing. Artsakh is part of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan. Since then, peacekeepers have done a lot: escorting villagers to visit graves, mediating disputes, tending crops, and fixing water pipes. They set up checkpoints along the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia, to ensure a safe corridor for Armenians living in Artsakh.  

Before the war, there were 150 000 Armenians living in Artsakh. After the war, the numbers decreased to 120 000. Some people didn’t come back from Armenia, where they found a shelter, after losing their homes. Some moved to Armenia or Russia because they didn’t want to live in uncertainty. And, unfortunately, wars take lives, and some people lost their lives during that period. But mostly the people of Artsakh remained resilient and wanted to live in their homes or create new ones, even not knowing for how long they will last. 

It is said in Artsakh and Armenia, that every human being now living in Artsakh is a hero. They say that because it’s not easy to sleep every night not knowing if you are going to wake up in the morning tothe sounds of bombs, or if you are going to wake up at all. Because since the end of the war Azerbaijan has done so much to traumatize people physically and mentally.

According to the peace agreement Armenians and Azerbaijanis should remain in the positions they were in at that moment. In other words, after the signing and the cease-fire, they have no right to move forward and occupy new territory. However, after just one month, Azerbaijan entered and captured two Armenian villages, taking more than 60 Armenians as prisoners of war. After that, during those two years, similar military operations were repeated numerous times by Azerbaijan. Again, people were afraid of the sounds of war, they heard and saw military drones, and felts those feelings again.

It was also a manifestation of psychological violence that the Facebook page of the Artsakh National Assembly was hacked, with a flag of Azerbaijan posted as the main picture. The accompanying text read:

“We call on the Armenians living in Karabakh to leave the occupied territories of Azerbaijan within 168 hours, otherwise all Armenian citizens will be killed.”

People had no idea if they should believe that threat or not. Maybe this was just another provocation, but could it really happen? Did they need to evacuate everyone. Or not believe it and stay in their houses? No matter how hard people try to stay strong, no one closed their eyes that night, thinking that it was possible that Azerbaijanis will enter the cities and villages and commit a genocide against the peaceful residents. 

Many violations happened during these last two years. And then since December 12, 2022, Azerbaijan has blockaded the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia depriving residents of a basic right - a right of freedom of movement. It’s the only road people can travel in and out on, the only road through which the 120 000 people get food, medical and other supplies. It's the only road that connects Artsakh with the outside world. Blockading this road caused a humanitarian disaster. Lack of food, medicine, work, and cash. Nobody can pass along that road.

The blockade was not enough, and Azerbaijan decided to shut off gas and electricity supplies to Artsakh again during the coldest months of winter. People simply do not have the opportunity to warm up. In a sub-zero temperature, people were deprived of the opportunity to turn on a small heater for hours. The little children, unable to stand the cold, fell ill and ended up in the hospital.

The healthcare system in Artsakh is still a little weak. There are hospitals, but people who are in critical condition, between life and death, are mostly transferred to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, in order to receive proper treatment there. However, due to the blockade, some people could not be evacuated, and died.

Also, a food rationing system was introduced in Artsakh, where people can get food only with a coupon. According to the system, every person gets one kilogram of rice, one kilogram of pasta, one kilogram of sugar and one kilogram of buckwheat in a month. With those coupons, people come to the stores and buy their share.

Food is so scarce that locals have begun to notice that street animals are starving to death because they can't find food in the dumps. The reason is that people have nothing to throw away.

Many families have been divided because one or another family member mistakenly stayed on the other side of the blockade. Many people went to Yerevan to see a doctor and due to the road’s blockade cannot return home. The same impact was felt for those going in the opposite direction. In total, 1,100 people remained in Armenia and did not manage to return to Artsakh.

Artsakh children are deprived of the right to education. Schools and kindergartens are closed for months because there is no way to heat them. Also, they cannot feed children in kindergartens due to the lack of food, and children in schools cannot take food to school, because there is almost no food at home. And sitting for six or seven hours without food is very difficult for children.

Azerbaijanis also regularly cut telephone and Internet wires, and people are deprived of the only opportunity to even connect with the world virtually.

People are trying to overcome all these difficulties, but no one knows when these provocations and torments will end. When they will finally be able to live decently. And the world hasn't even heard of that small area in the far South Caucasus and the resilient people of Artsakh, who are so loyal to their roots and homeland.

Article

Community

Creed

Sin

13 November 2024

3 min read

In the city of broken windows

Our fractures become fractal, breaking bigger and bigger windows.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

a multi-paned window mural shows people while amid it are broken window panes.

A broken window mural, Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital.

Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

We weren't expecting a knock on the door from our next-door neighbour on New Year's Day. It was pouring with rain, and said rain was pouring into the boot of our car, with the window smashed. Thanks for letting us know. Annoying, inconvenient and expensive. But just how expensive is a smashed window?

The 'broken windows theory', that visible signs of crime, antisocial behaviour and civil disorder begets more serious crimes, was introduced American sociologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling:

'Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one un-repaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)'

This is not an academic theory. Where I live in London, i took the local council 1,315 days to replace a local resident's broken window. The sense of decay extends beyond borders, with fewer than half the residents thinking they live on clean streets, with rubbish and weeds gone unchecked. It is also one of the worst boroughs in London for varying types of crime, and over the past few years often being the worst. It's hard not to think the little things and the big things are linked. In other news, the now-resigned CEO of the council has pleaded guilty to drink-driving, failing to stop after a car crash and driving without insurance, and not guilty to possession of cocaine.

Our problems in society all found their greenhouses somewhere inside of us.

Crime is on the move. As homes have become more difficult to burgle, crime has been pushed out onto the streets with shoplifting and bike theft. The Economist recently reported that 'stolen bikes and e-bikes have also become the getaway vehicle of choice for thieves, according to the Merseyside police. In one way or another, some 80 per cent of acquisitive crime in Liverpool involves a nicked bike.' It's going to be fascinating to see the wider impact, but simply by stopping suspicious riders and marking thousands of bikes across Liverpool, reported thefts have fallen by 46 per cent between July 2023 and July 2024 compared with the previous year.

These problems can't be solved by overstretched police or the council. Everyone's responsible so no one's to blame. Practical implementations of the broken windows theory have not been without controversy. But for those of us who live in urban environments, to look out from our homes is to see a city of broken windows. The impact is more than weeds 'uprooting' pavements: it's an uprooted society. Correlation and causation might be blurred, but that's the point. In Christianity, sin is understood as having a polluting effect. Just as fossil fuels in China will pollute the atmosphere for someone in Scotland, sin is not hermetically sealed. Our problems in society all found their greenhouses somewhere inside of us.

Jesus said 'what comes out of you is what makes you 'unclean'. For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and they make you 'unclean'.' They pollute our lives. And they pollute the world around us.

The Christian church, much like many institutions, is reckoning with prioritising competency at the expense of character. Little sins are not so little when they permeate and promote a culture where certain sins are permissible. Our fractures become fractal, breaking bigger and bigger windows.

All this sounds pretty bleak and Dickensian when of course there's always another city to see: full of life, vibrancy and joy. But we'd be wilfully ignorant to ignore the disorder of broken windows and broken lives all around us. It might overwhelm us, or our eyes might glaze over as we see those broken windows. But we'd do well not to ignore the broken windows within us too. For our sake, and the sake of our streets.