The Dominion - Armenia

Waiting For War?

hillarybain — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:05:49 +0000

Azerbaijan's refugees see little hope

Azerbaijan has been enjoying the sunshine these days. After several lean years, oil revenues have started flowing into the former Soviet Republic and a fresh breath of hope hovers in the air like the construction cranes that seem to dot every horizon.

Optimism isn’t prevalent everywhere, however, and the problem that has dogged the country since it was founded in 1991 remains. Armenian military forces continue to occupy about 20 per cent of the country, displacing about one million Azerbaijanis--fully one-eighth of the country’s entire population--who are now living in makeshift structures. For years, these internally displaced Azeris lived in villages in a bucolic land-of-plenty in Western Azerbaijan. Today, war has forced them into abandoned train cars--without plumbing or electricity.

Last summer, I strolled through one of these Azerbaijani train yards and stumbled in on a family of three: a man, wife and tiny undernourished-looking son, who has lived all of his nine years making like an immobile king of the road in a big metal tin. They showed me around their train-car home, debating whether the searing summer sun was worse than the punishing winter cold.

The Azerbaijan government is slowly building newer refugee settlements, but it’s a half-hearted effort, as most Azeris want the internally displaced people to be allowed to return home to the land that Armenia now occupies.

The troubles began in a region of Azerbaijan called Karabakh when the Soviet Union was splitting up. The Azerbaijani province had a majority Armenian population that Armenia had its eye on. Azerbaijani-Karabakh residents were forced to flee when Armenia invaded, as the country had the upper hand in the early skirmishes. As they left their homes, many were shot dead along the highway and what became known as the Khojaly massacre became a powerful rallying symbol for Azerbaijanis. In the ensuing battles, Armenia managed to take much extra territory around the Karabakh province as a sort of military buffer zone.

Karabakh has since become an independent republic but its attempts to become a legitimate country have stalled; not a single country recognizes it.

The adjoining areas taken by the Armenians have long been assumed to be a bargaining chip that Armenia will return only after Azerbaijan surrenders the Karabakh province to the Armenians.

An attempt to settle those areas by paying Armenians to move to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan has largely failed. Few have taken the government up on the offer, however, and the once-thriving Azeri towns are now empty and decaying without water or electricity.

A few years ago, Armenia’s president was rumoured to have agreed to withdraw from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and was quickly deposed for his efforts, to be replaced by the hard-line, former Karabakh resident Robert Kocharian.

Azerbaijan’s president Heydar Aliyev and his successor-- his son, Ilham -- have vowed not to give up an inch of Azerbaijani soil. They have managed to get several resolutions condemning Armenia passed at the United Nations Security Council, but that has had little effect.

Armenia has also suffered its disappointments. Its military victory has become an economic burden, as neighbouring Turkey and Azerbaijan have cut diplomatic ties with Armenia and imposed a trade embargo.

In spite of the mutually damaging status quo, the standoff appears destined to continue. A peaceful resolution is nowhere on any horizon.

After years of international pressure to come up with a negotiated settlement, many in Azerbaijan now feel that the only way for the occupation to end is if Azerbaijan restarts the war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives until hostitilies ended with the 1994 ceasefire. Bullets are no longer flying, but the war of words has never stopped and the animosity between the countries has continued. War would not be a hard sell to much of the general public.

University of Montana Professor Thomas Goltz was on the front lines of the Karabakh War, which he reported on in the influential Azerbaijan Diary. He has mixed feelings about Azerbaijan's possible attempts to recapture its occupied territories.

"I remain really ambivalent about that and it comes from hating this thing called war on a profound, visceral level. I’ve just seen way too much of it. At the same time, I can understand my Azerbaijani friends and their frustrations with the negotiating process. And whether that means they’ve got to include the threat of renewed violence in order to get back the occupied territories and maybe Karabakh, I’m not going to second-guess them. It’s just that if it does go bang, it’ll be really nasty, as both sides are determined and entrenched. If Azerbaijan were to go forward, they’d be going forward against an entrenched opposition that has been there for 10 years waiting for an attack and they’ll be attacking uphill, which isn’t ideal."

Last summer, Azerbaijan loudly announced that its new military budget is larger than the entire Armenian government budget.

Thomas de Waal, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the conflict, recently predicted that the conflict will remain in a deadlock. He cites three reasons: there is no dialogue or the slightest sign of goodwill between the two countries; neither government could withstand the public perception of giving in that compromise would require; and Azerbaijan will not likely go the military route now, as it would be costly and damaging at a time when the country is finally developing some infrastructure and creating a bit of wealth.

The Azerbaijani refugees now sit hoping for a day when they can finally return to their homes behind Armenian lines, but barring an unforeseen event, that day will not come soon.

Woman Living in a Azerbaijan Refugee Settlement

Internally Displaced Azerbaijan Children

Woman in a Camp for Displaced Karabagh Azeris

hillarybain — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:55:55 +0000

A woman living in a camp for displaced Karabagh Azeris. Many in Azerbaijan now feel that the only way for the occupation to end is if Azerbaijan restarts the war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives until the 1994 ceasefire.

Internally Displaced Azerbaijan Children

hillarybain — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:49:08 +0000

Internally displaced children living in an Azerbaijan refugee camp. The Azerbaijan government is slowly building newer refugee settlements, but it’s a half-hearted effort, as most Azeris want the internally displaced people to be allowed to return home to the land that Armenia now occupies.

Woman Living in a Azerbaijan Refugee Settlement

hillarybain — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 15:44:25 +0000

Armenian military forces continue to occupy about 20 per cent of Azerbaijan, displacing about one million Azerbaijanis--fully one eighth of the country’s entire population--who are now living in makeshift structures. This woman lives in a hut with a mud floor.

Extinguishing the Post Cold War Dream

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:02:50 +0000

World Bank-Mandated Energy Privatization Taxes Armenia's Poor

Late last month, an independent Armenia became a teenager. Food, fireworks and a festive atmosphere commemorated the 13th anniversary of its independence, declared on September 21, 1991. As the first Soviet republic to proclaim sovereignty during the collapse of the USSR, Armenians have reason to rejoice—after decades of cultural and political oppression they may finally flout their language, heritage and national identity without fear of reprisal.

A boy heading home from school in Karabagh, Armenia. photo: Rob Maguire

Many in this tiny republic, however, have little else to celebrate. While civil liberties were subject to Soviet-style constraints, the Armenia of the 1980s enjoyed a strong economy, a healthy and highly educated public, and one of the most egalitarian distributions of wealth in the USSR. Once the newly independent government began to adopt market reforms and neoliberal values, gross domestic product plummeted, prices for basic needs such as food and water increased dramatically, while public goods like health care and education began to crumble.

Over a decade later, GDP has finally returned to pre-reform levels. Who has benefited from renewed economic growth, however, is not so clear. Spending on education and health remains low. Real wages are less than one-eighth of what they were in 1990, and economic inequality in Armenia has become extreme. In Yerevan, Armenia's capital, the number of BMWs seen rolling along city streets has mushroomed; and so have the ranks of panhandlers roaming those very same urban boulevards.

Poverty has indeed become widespread in Armenia. Affecting roughly fifty percent of the population, it has quickly become an epidemic that shows little sign of subsiding.

An old man in Shushi, a village in Karabagh, a part of Armenia isolated from the rest of the country during long border disputes. photo: Rob Maguire

Living on less than two dollars a day, the poor are particularly vulnerable to increases in the price of basic commodities. Privatization within the energy sector, however, has preyed upon this very weakness. Imposed by the World Bank through loan conditions, reforms designed to make electric utilities more attractive to foreign takeover left people paying more than twice as much for electricity then they were in the mid-1990s.

Furthermore, inability to pay these inflated rates now results in disconnection. This strict marketplace logic is expressed by Andrei Rappaport, a senior official for Unified Energy System of Russia, and the new owner of several Armenian generating facilities: "If you want energy pay for it, and if there is not any money to pay, then goodbye."

Not unsurprisingly, these new conditions led to a serious decline in household energy consumption. The poor in particular were forced to cut electricity use considerably, by twenty percent on average. According to a World Bank report, the typical household barely has enough electricity to power a refrigerator and a handful of light bulbs.

Despite the decline in consumption, increased energy costs now account for approximately thirty percent of all household expenditures, with electricity making up the bulk of these payments. A related concern is the move towards greater wood consumption. While this reduces the reliance on costly electric power, it has also contributed to higher levels of indoor air pollution and accelerated deforestation.

Energy—widely recognized as a fundamental need for human development—has become increasingly inaccessible in Armenia. At the insistence of the World Bank, control over this precious commodity has been handed over to foreign interests, where social priorities are sacrificed in the name of corporate profit and capitalist ethos.

The picture is similar in much of the former Soviet Union: increases in cultural and, to a lesser degree, political freedoms have been overshadowed by a sharp decline in the freedom to meet basic human needs. This failure is directly related to the "shock therapy" imposition of market capitalism on countries with centralized economies—a prescription borne more of ideological zeal than sound economic principles.

Soviet leftovers, Yerevan. photo: Rob Maguire

Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, explains: "From this cold-war perspective, those who showed any sympathy to transitional forms that had evolved out of the communist past and still bore traces of that evolution must themselves be guilty of 'communist sympathies.' Only a blitzkrieg approach during the 'window of opportunity' provided by the 'fog of transition' would get the changes made before the population had a chance to organize to protect its previous vested interests."

Poverty and inequality remain Armenia's greatest challenges, and some question whether the political will exists to tackle these vital problems. This is true for the Armenian government, but perhaps more importantly, for the World Bank and related organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the United States Agency for International Development. The coercive pressure these institutions place upon governments to engage in fire sale privatisation tactics could be redirected to produce publicly owned utilities that are transparent, efficient, and designed to serve the public good.

Unfortunately, these institutions appear more concerned with ideological imperialism and creating profit opportunities for Western corporations than they are with promoting sustainable economics, accountable governance, and poverty reduction—all of which are necessary for human beings to truly prosper.

Rob Maguire is a Canadian activist and graduate student living in Yerevan, Armenia. He can be found online at www.projectcommunis.org.

Rob Maguire reports from Armenia, where civil liberties have not increased quite as fast as the cost of living.