Shusha (Shushi), once a co-inhabited town in Nagorno Karabakh until its Azerbaijani majority
fled when Armenian forces took it on 9 May 1992 © Onnik Krikorian for The National

Thursday 12 May 2011 will mark the 17th anniversary of the ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan coming into effect. Effectively putting the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh on hold, attempts to mediate a final peace deal as the 1994 agreement envisaged have still yet to come to fruition. Interestingly, save for the absence of any large scale hostilities, pretty much none of the details of the armistice, have been implemented at all. Drafted as the basis for the ceasefire agreement in Kyrgyzstan, the Bishkek protocol laid out a clear road map for ending the war which left 20-25,000 people dead and forced a million on both sides to flee their homes.

Participants of the meeting held in May 4-5 in Bishkek on the initiative of the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, Parliament of Kyrgyz Republic, Federal Congress and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation:

express determination to assist in all possible ways to the cessation of armed conflict in and around Nagorno Karabakh, [...]

[...]

advocate a naturally active role of the Commonwealth and Inter-Parliamentary Assembly in cessation of the conflict, in realization of thereupon principles, goals and the UN and OSCE certain decisions (first of all the UN Security Council resolutions 822, 853, 874, 884);

call upon the conflicting sides to come to common senses: cease to fire at the midnight of May 8 to 9, guided by the February 18, 1994 Protocol (including the part on allocating observers), and work intensively to confirm this as soon as possible by signing a reliable, legally binding agreement envisaging a mechanism, ensuring the non-resumption of military and hostile activities, withdrawal of troops from occupied territories and restoration of communication, return of refugees;

agree to suggest Parliaments of the CIS member-states to discuss the initiative by Chairman of Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly V. Shumeyko and Head of the Assembly’s Peacemaking Group on Nagorno Karabakh M. Sherimkulov on creating a CIS peacemaking force;

[...]

Seventeen years on not only is there no real progress on any of these details, but some international observers fear that the danger now is that war between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno Karabakh, backed by Armenia proper, might resume. In February, for example, the International Crisis Group warned that increasing tensions on the line of contact might result in an 'accidental war' breaking out. Indeed, with skirmishes leaving dozens dead ast year, including the death in Azerbaijani custody, likely after being tortured or beaten, of an Armenian shephard who inadvertently wandered into enemy territory as well as the killing of an Azerbaijani child by an Armenian sniper, the omens do not bode well.

It being pre-parliamentary election year in Armenia, with both countries preparing for a presidential vote in 2013, it seems unlikely that either side will make the necessary compromises considered necessary for peace given the way the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is often manipulated by domestic political forces to either come to power or retain it. In 1998, for example, then Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian was forced by hardliners in his own administration to resign after favoring a final peace settlement largely in line with the terms of the 1994 ceasefire. In an interview aired by the BBC last month the former president now turned opposition leader stood by his assertion that the 1997 peace plan was the correct one.

Meanwhile, as in Armenia under Ter-Petrossian's successor Robert Kocharian, the authorities in Azerbaijan regularly play the 'Karabakh card' against their domestic political opponents.

Moreover, hostility towards the enemy even on the level of personal relations is alarmingly high in both societies. A 2009 household survey by the Caucasus Resource Research Centers, for example, found that 70 percent of Armenians disapproved of friendship with Azerbaijanis while a staggering 97 percent of Azerbaijanis disapproved of friendship with Armenians. Even by regional standards the numbers are high. Despite its own breakaway regions and the 2008 war with Russia, the same levels of intolerance are not to be fond in neighboring Georgia. There, only 16 percent of Georgians disapproved of friendship with Abkhazians, 17 percent with South Ossetians, and 18 percent with Russians.

Ethnic Armenian market trader, Stepanakert, Nagorno Karabakh
© Onnik Krikorian for The National

In fact, the situation is dramatically different from even during the war itself when both Armenians and Azerbaijanis could remember a time when both lived side by side together in peace as an article published in early 1994 by Azerbaijan International highlighted.

Azerbaijanis and Armenians marked many of life's passages together. They shared everything - both sorrow and joy. If there were an Azerbaijan wedding or funeral, Armenians were invited. Armenians held the sons of their Azerbaijan friends during circumcision ceremonies and both groups invited the other to farewell parties when their sons were drafted into the Soviet army.

Perhaps, the greatest evidence of friendship that existed between these two cultures can be seen in the prevalence of mixed marriages. Today, these are the families that most deeply feel the impact of the war; its sharp, cruel blade severing husband from wife, and children from parents.

[...]

During the bloody upheavals of January 1990, Azerbaijanis hid Armenian families in their houses and drove them to the airport or to the border at the risk of their own lives.

Many Azerbaijanis recall the agonizing scenes of saying good-bye to Armenian friends, teachers, co-workers who left for Russia or Armenia. They'll tell you that those good-byes were so difficult, "We didn't know if we would ever see each other again. Parting forever was like death for us."

[...]

[...] a very famous Azerbaijan journalist who had been deported from Armenia once told me that, while living in Yerevan, a group of youngsters attacked him when they discovered that he was Azerbaijani. It was Armenians who rescued him from inevitable death by hiding him in their homes.

Just last month, one of the Azerbaijan refugees told me that he knew of an Azerbaijan woman who had been kidnapped by Armenians in that hideous practice of hostage taking that is now going on in this war. It was her former Armenian neighbor that recognized her, and, who managed to arrange her release.

And nobody right now wants to remember those friendships. But Azerbaijan and Armenia are two planets in the same universe. Armenia is not geographically located in Australia; nor Azerbaijan, in Africa. We are two countries which exist side by side and I don't know how many years it will take for this mutual hatred which is consuming nearly everyone to be stamped out and transformed into a willingness to build friendships that once were so prevalent among us.

Yet, even if a new generation of Armenians and Azerbaijanis no longer have such memories to reflect on, some hope does exist outside of the conflict zone. Despite the mistaken belief perpetuated on an almost daily basis by the local media that Armenians and Azerbaijanis are 'ethnically incompatible' they do largely coexist peacefully in third countries such as Russia and Georgia. “Without more accurate and unbiased information […] free of negative rhetoric and stereotypes, Armenians and Azerbaijanis will continue to see themselves as enemies without any common ground,” read a recent report on the local media also from the Caucasus Resource Research Centers.

Indeed, it is this continued shared existence that forms much of the basis for my own personal project on the conflict. Although also examining the role social media and online tools can play in facilitating communication, it also takes a look at examples of Armenian-Azeri friendship. For example, one Armenian from Armenia now living in Moscow writes passionately about one of her best friends, an Azerbaijani, while work on Armenian and Azeri coexistence in Georgia has become a regular feature. In a guest post last week, a contributor from Azerbaijan wrote about two villages and a regional center co-inhabited by ethnic Armenians and Azeris.

In Tsopi ethnic Armenians are the minority while in Khourdjorni, ethnic Azeris are. It is a reality rarely if ever mentioned by the local Armenian and Azerbaijani press.

Arriving in Marneuli, it felt like Azerbaijan. The faces, colors, sounds and smells from the local market were all so similar albeit with some significant differences not to be found back home. An Azeri man was playing Azeri music from a stall which also sold Armenian CDs while an Armenian woman spoke to a customer in Azerbaijani albeit with a slight, pleasant accent. Ruzanna, a 60-year-old ethnic Armenian had been working in this market for 30 years, selling spices and dry fruits used in Azerbaijani cuisine. Having lived through so many days of Armenian-Azeri coexistence, questions about this situation were met with puzzlement and confusion.

For her, the fact that Armenians and Azeris lived and worked together was not extraordinary. “There are a handful of villages here where this harmony exists,” she said smiling.

 

[...]

 

[...] on a nearby street another ethnic Azeri woman invites us in. Nazkhanim, 66 years old, has fond memories of her teenage years spent at the house of an Armenian family who worked with her parents.

In later life, an Armenian doctor was the only one trusted enough to circumcise her son while this year Armenian friends joined her for the Novruz celebrations while they in turn brought special holiday bread to her for Easter. “Why should we be enemies at the whim of some politician?” she asked. “You cannot separate a nail from your finger without bleeding and causing yourself severe pain. We cannot do without the other. This is how we were and how we will always be.”

 

Nazkhanim, an ethnic Azeri resident of the co-inhabited village of Khodjourni in Georgia 
© Onnik Krikorian for Caucasus Conflict Voices

 

Ruzanna, an ethnic Armenian market trader, Marneuli, an Armenian-Azeri co-inhabited regional center in Georgia  © Onnik Krikorian for Caucasus Conflict Voices

 

Ethnic Azeri market traders, Marneuli, an Armenian-Azeri co-inhabited regional center in Georgia  © Onnik Krikorian for Caucasus Conflict Voices

A recent paper, Positive Examples of Coexistence from the History of Peoples and States of the South Caucasus, included a contribution from Sevil Huseynova which also touches upon the issue of Armenian-Azeri coexistence in villages such as Tsopi.

“Even though today the relations of Azerbaijan and Armenia are bad, we live well, we are friendly, we visit each other. We all gave each other our word: let Azerbaijan and Armenia do whatever they want we shall live here as brothers!”. A woman living in the village says about her Armenian neighbors “We live as one family, we celebrate our festivities together. They come to us, we go to them” (female, Azerbaijani, 38 years old). The same attitude was demonstrated in the “Armenian part” of the village: “Here life is very difficult (from the point of view of material well-being, S.G.), but we live here quietly, calmly” (male, Armenian, about 50 years old).

As a conclusion, I would like to return to one of the stereotypes that are most common both on grassroots level and in the official discourse of Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to which states Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples cannot live side by side. I hope that many of those who are subject to the hypnotic influence of such myths will learn about the existence of villages like Tsopi, which is by far not the only existing remnant from the times when the lives of the two peoples were closely intertwined. In conclusion, returning to the context of nationalism [...] where Armenians and Georgians have lived side by side for many years, demonstrates that even in complicated social settings, under the mighty ideological influence of the media, conflicts are not inevitable. On the contrary, from a more general point of view representatives of different national communities, including Armenians and Azerbaijanis, are destined to a to co-existence as neighbors, as in the case of the villagers of Tsopi. It is necessary to pay attention to these spaces of coexistence and then probably there will be much more chances to make the perspective of peace closer to this region.

 

Ethnic Azeris, Tsopi, an Armenian-Azeri co-inhabited village in Georgia 
© Onnik Krikorian for Caucasus Conflict Voices
 

Ethnic Azeri, Khodjourni, an Armenian-Azeri co-inhabited village in Georgia 
© Onnik Krikorian for Caucasus Conflict Voices

Ethnic Armenians, Khodjourni, an Armenian-Azeri co-inhabited village in Georgia 
© Onnik Krikorian for Caucasus Conflict Voices

Ethnic Azeris, Tsopi, an Armenian-Azeri co-inhabited village in Georgia 
© Onnik Krikorian for Caucasus Conflict Voices

However, this side of the conflict is seldom touched upon by regional peace building initiatives. As much as governments and the media keeps the conflict alive by effectively convincing citizens that they must always adhere to the national line and support a solution which nearly always is unacceptable to the other side, so too does much of civil society. At a recent meeting for an Armenia-Azerbaijan cross-border project funded by an international donor, for example, some project consultants suggested that it should be used only to convince Azerbaijani participants that the Armenian position and perspective on history is the right one.

It is likely that the same is true for some Azerbaijani participants in regional peacebuilding initiatives too. Unfortunately, those that are usually involved in such projects are often politicized and while many might want peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan they want it only on their terms. Those activists and citizens who express a willingness to restore human level relations with the other side or cooperate in other areas regardless of the conflict are instead accused of betrayal and sometimes treason even if this might represent a greater contribution to peace than directly addressing the war itself. 

Yet existing approaches risk causing more conflict or at least reduces the chance for the sides to move closer together. Although concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a forum post on the Peace and Collaborative Network concluded that it is precisely a different approach which is arguably necessary to bring warring sides together. "Learn from Nepal the power of concrete, constructive, creative proposals," wrote Johan Galtung. "Spend 50% on compelling images of peace, 30% on the process and 20% critiquing the past. Not the other way round."

I totally agree. And 17 years after the 1994 ceasefire it is surely about time.