The Armenians began fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh one year ago. While their fate received little attention in the face of other conflicts such as the war in Gaza, they are looking for a new life.
For Azerbaijan's leadership, it was an “anti-terrorist operation” against “Armenian separatists” to restore Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. For more than 100,000 Armenians, it was the end of their republic and the loss of their homeland: the invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijani forces and the exodus of Armenians in September a year ago.
Susanna Basardyan and her children were among hundreds of Armenians who, fearing for their lives, sought refuge at the airport in the capital, Stepanakert. They were housed there by the Russian “peacekeepers” stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh to protect the Armenians.
“We didn't get any bread or water for two days. On the last day they even gave us Turkish bread to eat. When we arrived at the Armenian border and they gave us food there, it meant everything to us,” the 46-year-old mother of four told journalists from Germany in Vardenis, a town in Armenia within sight of the border with Azerbaijan.
Settlement program in Nagorno-Karabakh
For Basardjan, it was already the second escape. Originally from Armenia, she and her husband went to the Hadrut region deep in the south of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2016 in search of work. They were given work and accommodation as part of a settlement program.
Since the wages were higher and life was better than in barren Armenia, many people followed the call over the years and revitalized the villages of Nagorno-Karabakh. During the first war over the region in the early 1990s, the Azerbaijani residents fled. Until then, they had made up about 25 percent of the population.
What remained were their dilapidated houses and memories of their Armenian neighbors of how their coexistence had become increasingly conflict-ridden and violent. A return of the Azerbaijanis seemed inconceivable to them, as residents of Hadrut said in 2008. In the years that followed, the Armenians' claim to Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas of Azerbaijan, which had been taken over as a buffer zone, became even more entrenched.
Exposed to the enemy
But for the Azerbaijanis, the loss of these territories remained a deep wound and humiliation. Their leadership made reconquest their most important goal. Billions of dollars in revenue from oil and gas exports went into military preparations.
Four years ago, in September 2020, President Ilham Aliyev gave the order to attack. When the Azerbaijani forces advanced from the southeast up the plain to Hadrut, Susanna Basardjan initially thought the sounds of artillery came from the usual exercises on the military site near her village.
The Armenian soldiers were not prepared for the enemy, who had state-of-the-art equipment. The residents fled north to the remaining core area of Nagorno-Karabakh. Many older people did not make it. Videos from Hadrut later appeared on the Internet. They showed the most cruel abuse, the desecration of the cemetery, and the destruction of houses.
Starving soldiers
Basardjan and her family stayed in Nagorno-Karabakh, whose Armenian residents were to be protected by Russian “peacekeepers” according to the ceasefire agreement. But the Azerbaijani leadership tightened the rope ever more. From December 2022, the Armenians lived in a de facto blockade. Fewer and fewer vital products reached the region from Armenia. Medical transports have recently only taken place sporadically.
Due to a lack of gasoline, the starving soldiers had to walk to their positions, says Basardjan. When the Azerbaijanis began their military operation on September 19, 2023, the Armenian soldiers were given the choice by the Russian “peacekeepers” of taking their families away via the only access road or exposing their families to the enemy. That was the only reason the soldiers gave up, Basardjan claims.
Sadness and bitterness
She is glad that her family survived. However, when they fled to Armenia they were unable to take anything other than their documents with them.
They eventually found shelter with other families in Vardenis, just across the border from Azerbaijan. A local NGO offers them help, but there is no work. The days are long and the view towards Nagorno-Karabakh is marked by sadness and bitterness. For Basardjan, Nagorno-Karabakh is the “backbone of Armenia” and has now been broken. She feels like an orphan.
Since Nagorno-Karabakh has become inaccessible, many Armenians idealize it even more than before. They speak of a “paradise”, of the “land of bread”, where everything thrives better thanks to fertile soil and rich nature. The desire to return is alive, but life under Azerbaijani rule is unthinkable. There is great concern about the graves of deceased relatives. There are indications that churches and other symbols of Armenian culture in Nagorno-Karabakh are being deliberately destroyed.
Thousands of casualties
In Armenia's capital Yerevan, there was no official government commemoration of the first anniversary of the flight from Nagorno-Karabakh. Many people made private pilgrimages to the Yerablur military cemetery on the outskirts of the capital. It bears witness to the enormous sacrifices Armenia has made for Nagorno-Karabakh in the more than 30 years since the violent outbreak of the conflict in 1988. There are hundreds of graves of generations of men.
Graves of hundreds more fallen soldiers can be found in cemeteries across the country, marked with Armenian flags. In villages and towns, the soldiers are honored as heroes in murals and graffiti.
Armenia's existence threatened
But the end of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic has broken a taboo in Armenia: the question of how much sacrifice Nagorno-Karabakh is worth and whether Armenia's existence can be risked.
Since the devastating defeat by the Azerbaijani armed forces at the end of 2020, Armenia's survival has also been at stake. In the spring of the following year and in 2022, Azerbaijani troops attacked Armenia itself and occupied strategic heights in the border area. Contrary to what was contractually agreed, the protecting power Russia did not come to its aid.
Warning 20 years ago
In order not to give Azerbaijan a pretext for further attacks on Armenia, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan decided a year ago to allow the Azerbaijanis to capture Nagorno-Karabakh. Sending troops from the still weak and barely reformed armed forces would have led to another serious defeat.
Behind this is also the realization that the warning of the first president of independent Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosian, has come true: that Armenia would not be able to hold on to Nagorno-Karabakh in the long term and that a republic independent of Azerbaijan would not be accepted internationally. Because he advocated a compromise, an autonomy for Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan, Ter-Petrosian had to resign in 1998.
Corruption weakened army
His two successors came from Nagorno-Karabakh and stuck to the hard line while failing to respond to Azerbaijan's military buildup and even allowing the armed forces to be weakened by corruption. It was one reason why Nikol Pashinyan was able to bring about a change of power with peaceful protests in 2018.
But under pressure from the population, he too used harsh rhetoric and showed little willingness to compromise, while Azerbaijan increasingly openly threatened a military solution to the conflict.
Political tensions
Today, Pashinyan is trying to protect Armenia from all dangers by renouncing historically based territorial claims. The fact that he keeps accommodating Azerbaijan without President Ilham Aliyev making any corresponding concessions is causing more and more protests, especially among the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.
Pashinyan is denying them a government in exile in Armenia. Their political representatives could, together with the opposition around the two predecessors and the church, form a strong counterforce. But their unsuccessful protests show that the majority of the population is tired and wants to lead a peaceful life.
Armenia as Stopover
The more than 100,000 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh are already a challenge for the weak state with its barely three million inhabitants. The demands for continued financial support for the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, who are used to subsidies, are leading to tensions with the predominantly poor population of Armenia.
There is land and housing, but rents are expensive and work is scarce. So many see Armenia as a stopover; according to official statistics, more than 11,000 Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians had left the country by July. Since many have Russian passports, they are drawn there. The son of Yelena, a fellow sufferer of Susanna Basardjan in Vardenis, also followed friends to Russia. It is not clear whether he can and wants to evade military service there as an experienced artillery soldier.
Parts of this article are based on a research trip through Armenia organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation; travel expenses are borne by NDR.
