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  • 'Frozen Conflict' Between Azerbaijan And Armenia Begins To Boil

    'FROZEN CONFLICT' BETWEEN AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA BEGINS TO BOIL

    New York Times
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/asia/01azerbaijan.html
    June 1 2011

    BAKU, Azerbaijan - In a mostly empty Soviet-era building here on a
    recent morning, a 29-year-old woman pressed her eye against the scope
    of a sniper rifle, brown hair spilling over her shoulder, and took
    aim at virtual commandos darting between virtual trees.

    Gathered around her were fellow students - a decommissioned soldier,
    teenage boys with whispery mustaches, a 34-year-old communications
    worker in Islamic hijab. When sniper training was offered here
    in April, by an organization that provides courses on military
    preparation, the classes were a sensation, attracting three times as
    many students as the instructors could handle.

    The logic behind this can be traced to a grievance that festers below
    the surface of everyday life, permeating virtually every conversation
    about this country's future.

    Since the early 1990s, Azerbaijan has been trying to regain control of
    Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave within its
    borders, and secure the return of ethnic Azeris who were forced from
    their homes by war. A cease-fire has held since 1994, and officials
    remain engaged in internationally mediated negotiations with Armenia,
    a process that will receive a burst of attention this month when the
    two sides meet in Kazan, Russia.

    But the window for a breakthrough is narrow, and people here say
    their patience is gone.

    "I'd rather go to war than wait another 20 years," said Shafag
    Ismailova, 34, a student in the sniper course, who fled the Zangelan
    region outside Nagorno-Karabakh, one of seven adjacent territories
    that are under Armenian control. Asked about war, her friend Shafag
    Amrahova, a recent law school graduate, did not hesitate.

    "War is bad for everyone," she said evenly. "But sometimes the
    situation demands it."

    It is tempting to forget about the "frozen conflicts." The enclaves
    of Nagorno-Karabakh, Transdniester in Moldova, and Abkhazia and South
    Ossetia in Georgia are among the most headache-inducing legacies of
    the Soviet Union. The Soviets granted them a sort of semi-statehood,
    a status that ceased to exist just as nationalism flared in the
    ideological void. But the 2008 war in Georgia serves as a reminder
    of how quickly and terribly they can come unfrozen.

    One of the reasons Nagorno-Karabakh has not is that neither party
    has an incentive to fight. Armenia controls the territories, so it
    is interested in maintaining the status quo. Azerbaijan sees little
    way forward: though it could easily drive out Armenian forces, Russia
    could send its army to help Armenia, its ally in a regional defense
    alliance, just as it did in South Ossetia.

    But conditions have been shifting, slowly but surely, in a dangerous
    direction. Negotiations mediated by the Organization for Security and
    Cooperation in Europe faltered last year, leaving a "basic principles
    agreement" that was five years in the making unsigned by either side.

    Both countries are engaged in a steep military buildup; Azerbaijan,
    by far the richer of the two, has increased defense spending twentyfold
    since 2003, according to the International Crisis Group.

    With frustration building, threats of war have become so entwined
    with negotiations that it is difficult to say where one begins and
    the other ends.

    "There is no guarantee that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow a
    war between Azerbaijan and Armenia won't start," Ali M. Hasanov, a
    senior presidential aide here, said in an interview. "It's peaceful
    coexistence that we need, not a war. We need peaceful development. But
    nothing will replace territorial integrity and the sovereignty
    of Azerbaijan. If necessary we are ready to give our lives for
    territorial integrity."

    He said Baku had been bitterly disappointed by international mediation
    efforts. "The United States, France and Russia do not do what they
    promised," he said. "America now thinks Afghanistan and Iraq are more
    important - and North Africa, and the missile defense shield in Europe
    - than such regional conflicts as Nagorno-Karabakh."

    Among the forces driving Baku are refugees who have spent nearly
    two decades in limbo. The United Nations says there are 586,013 -
    7 percent of Azerbaijan's population, which is one of the highest per
    capita displacement rates in the world, according to the International
    Displacement Monitoring Centre.

    Though conditions vary widely and some resettlement is now taking
    place, a visit to a dormitory in Baku found children growing up
    in squalor. Roughly 100 refugees were living along a dank, fetid
    hallway, on one floor of a former office building. Three rough,
    foul-smelling holes in the concrete floor served as toilets for 21
    families, residents said. The hallway was open to the elements,
    exposing residents to bitter cold in the winter. In the summer,
    mosquitoes breed in stagnant water in the building's basement, rising
    in a cloud to the floors above them, they said.

    "They cannot stand it anymore, they want war," said Jamila, 41,
    of her neighbors. "They don't believe the promises anymore."

    Just then, a man took her aside, rebuking her for speaking to Western
    journalists who could, he warned, be pro-Armenian. "Our children look
    at other houses, they see that other people live well, and they are
    ashamed," she said when she returned, refusing to give her last name.

    "Write that the cursed Armenians are guilty of this."

    In this charged atmosphere, Nagorno-Karabakh has become "the one
    issue on which there is total social consensus," said Tabib Huseynov,
    a political analyst based in Baku. A visitor here a few years ago
    would have heard "Karabakh or Death," a rap anthem that accuses
    the United States, Russia, Turkey and Iran of turning a blind eye,
    exhorting the world to "either put an end to this, or stand aside."

    Cease-fire violations - every year, snipers kill roughly 30 people
    on either side of the so-called line of contact - can take on huge
    proportions. In March, Azerbaijan announced that an Armenian sniper
    had killed a 9-year-old Azeri boy, Fariz Badalov. Though Armenia's
    president denied that his forces were responsible, Azeri television
    featured the boy's pitiful life story. One broadcast noted that the
    single bullet that crossed the line of contact that day was the one
    that lodged in the boy's head.

    The story inspired Valid Gardashly, a publicist for the Voluntary
    Military Patriotic Sports-Technical Association, which offers military
    training from a headquarters in Baku that is reminiscent of a V.F.W.

    post. The organization sketched out a plan for a 45-day course
    that would include sniper training, free of charge for about half
    the students.

    "We thought we had to do something," he said. "We are not preparing
    for war. But this was a poor boy - what did he do wrong? He was not
    a soldier. He was just watching cows."

    The course touched a nerve - both in Armenia, where some expressed
    outrage at the idea, and in Azerbaijan, where an overflow crowd was
    winnowed down to the 32 most promising marksmen. One who made the
    cut, a 15-year-old boy, offered his own reason for taking the class:
    "I am getting ready to fight in Karabakh." Ms. Ismailova, one of the
    students, looked anxious as she listened to him. She, too, grew up
    among Karabakh refugees. But the younger ones are much more ardent,
    she said.

    "These young guys, they have been waiting their whole lives,"
    she said. "We had a genocide, and no one helps us. Not America,
    not Russia."

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