Kashatagh/Lachin, in Nagorno Karabakh, is a land haunted by the shadows of a brutal conflict — ghost towns falling ever deeper into ruin, anti-helicopter devices still strung across valleys, mangled military vehicles gathering rust in ditches, signs that warn against ventures into the still heavily mined fields. But it is to this scarred landscape that some Syrian Armenians, driven from the place of their birth by brutal civil conflict, have fled, putting down fresh roots in this region’s disputed soil.

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, over 15,000 Syrian Armenians have fled to Armenia. Many are descendants of families forced out of Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire) during the Armenian genocide 100 years ago. So they are not viewed as refugees, but rather as displaced Syrians or even returnees. Most have settled in Yerevan, with many establishing their own businesses, but a handful have found new homes in the war-scarred southernmost district of contested Nagorno Karabakh.

The de facto independent Nagorno Karabakh Republic — comprising seven areas of Azerbaijani territory taken during the 1992-4 war and based around the majority, ethnically Armenian, Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) — is not recognised by a single UN member state — not even Armenia. For over two decades, a shaky ceasefire has held between Azerbaijan and pro-Karabakh forces, creating a situation of no war, no peace. Though the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE)’s Minsk Group, chaired by Russia, France and the US, has spearheaded attempts to solve the conflict since 1992, there has been only limited progress. With no official peace agreement, this ‘frozen conflict’ has been growing increasingly volatile, and escalating confrontations along the 1994 ceasefire line have led to an increasing number of fatalities.

A process of resettlement has long been underway in the Azerbaijani territories now under Armenian control: Karabakh authorities have attempted to re-populate areas left empty since the flight of ethnic Azeri and Kurdish residents during the war. According to a 2010 report by the OSCE, 14,000 Armenians were living here at the time of writing — the majority ethnic Armenians forced out of Azerbaijan. Since 2011, a slow trickle of Syrian Armenians has added to this re-population: most have moved to Kashatagh (formerly Lachin Province), a predominantly agricultural area in the southwest corner of the self-declared republic.

With the support of several NGOs and private donors, the government in Stepanakert (or Khankendi in its Azerbaijani name) has been working to incentivise relocation to these lands. It has built irrigation channels, leased agricultural equipment, distributed land and seeds free of charge, and provided free accommodation in refurbished apartment blocs. It has also supplied land and building materials to those keen to rebuild and restore former Azeri houses, subsiding water and electricity.

For Syrian Armenians (particularly those with agricultural backgrounds), who left their homes in Syria with only the most essential possessions, such incentives are almost impossible to refuse. “I have a huge piece of land!” said Garo, a Syrian Armenian from Qamishli, now living in a former Azerbaijani house in the village of Kovsakan. “It would take me two days to drive around it! It’s so much easier to get land here than in Syria.”

“Syrians can actually start new lives here,” explained George Tabakyan, the Nagorno Karabakh programme director for the New York-based Tufenkian Foundation, an NGO working to “stabilise embattled borderlands of Nagorno-Karabakh”. “It’s one of the few places they can do this. In Europe, they wouldn’t get a free house or free land, they would just live indefinitely as ‘refugees’. But here, they can restart their lives properly, as humans.”

For some, the picture is not so rosy. Despite the considerable support provided, living in an area with an under-developed infrastructure, low economic activity and limited access to services is placing a strain on some. “We are waiting until we can return to Syria. It’s so lonely and empty here,” said a man whose family had found the transition from Qamishli to the harsh isolation of rural Kashatagh particularly disorientating.

Tensions are high

Resettlement projects in this contested territory, where ghost towns seem to stand as memorials to communities in exile, are controversial. With land such as Kashatagh/Lachin still fiercely claimed by Azerbaijan, and deemed occupied Azerbaijani territory by the international community, tensions are high.

With an estimated 600,000 Azerbaijanis forced from their homes by the war and still living as IDPs in Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani government sees reclaiming the territory as a top priority. Many in Azerbaijan have condemned the resettlement process as a direct attempt to undermine chances of a negotiated peace. In the words of Mehmet Fatih Öztarsu, co-president of the Strategic Outlook Institution, “this is an illegal settlement. It is an attempt to change the demographics of Nagorno Karabakh, so that if there’s a referendum in the future, the Armenian majority will prevent Azerbaijanis from returning.”

The re-settlement of Syrian Armenians in Kashatagh has not gone unnoticed in Azerbaijan’s capital. The Azerbaijani foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, said in a July 2013 letter to the UN that Armenia is using “the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria for consolidation of its occupation of Azerbaijani territories.” This March, at the third International Humanitarian Pledging Conference for Syria in Kuwait, Azerbaijan’s deputy prime minister, Ali Hasanov, stressed the need for Armenia to stop resettling Syrian Armenians in areas taken during the war.

But for those on the other side of ceasefire line, maintaining control of areas such as Kashatagh is essential. There has been no hiding of the re-settlement process, and the incentives have not been kept secret. “Years ago the resettlement process was much quieter,” explained Tabakyan. “Today it’s happening openly. It’s not something we are hiding. It’s part of our message that ‘these lands are not going back.’”

Kashatagh’s strategic significance in connecting Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia proper is not the only pull the land has for Armenians and Karabakhtis. For many, it is an area of cultural significance, containing centuries-old Armenian history. Indeed, for pro-Karabakhtis, Kashatagh is seen not as occupied but as ‘liberated’ territory, with various sites attesting to a longstanding Armenian heritage. “Historically, Kashatagh was Armenian land”, commented Tabakyan. “It was part of the Syunik province in ancient Armenia, and you can find evidence of later Armenian churches and burial grounds.”

Such opposing, and rigid, claims are worrying those working to build peace. “Both sides have to compromise,” said Avaz Hasanov, director of the Society for Humanitarian Research, a peace-building initiative operating with Armenian and international counterparts from Baku. “There is no talk of negotiations, there is no realistic thinking. Armenia needs to acknowledge that the re-settlement cannot be permanent, and Azerbaijan needs to engage in negotiations rather than simply declaring there can be no peace.”

Moving from the battlefields of northern Syria to Nagorno Karabakh’s southern plains, Syrian Armenians have not entirely escaped war. In an atmosphere of rising military tensions along the 1994 ceasefire line (2014 was the bloodiest year to date since the ceasefire was declared), their re-settlement in these disputed lands has placed them firmly at the centre of another (if very different) conflict. With their new beginnings playing out on a map of unresolved tension, they are now in a region where war and peace collide.

Source: http://mondediplo.com/blogs/where-war-and-peace-collide