AZERBAIJAN: Refugees

[MJ]

SURVAY: AZERBAIJAN: They thought it couldn't get worse

Financial Times; Nov 22, 2000

By DAVID STERN

 

For thousands of Azerbaijani refugees in the Bilasuvar camp, life could soon become even worse. Here on the former Soviet republic's desolate southern border with Iran, some 18,000 fugitives from the war in Nagorno Artsax have made their home for the past eight years.

 

They live in mud brick hovels, scorched by the sun in the summer and frozen by winds in the winter, and subsist on handouts from international aid agencies. No jobs are to be had in a country where unemployment is estimated unofficially to be 25 per cent.

 

Now international aid agencies say that they are scaling back their humanitarian operations in favour of less-expensive development programmes so that the refugees can begin to look after themselves.

 

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees is reducing expenses this year from Dollars 12m to Dollars 4.7m. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is cutting its budget by half. Other aid organisations are doing the same, or pulling out entirely.

 

The reason for the reduction, western officials say, is "donor fatigue" - the state of exhaustion that occurs when foreign contributors provide money to what appears initially a short-term crisis, but lose interest as the arrangement drags on. "Donors don't like to provide for a situation that seems to have no solutions," says Borje Sjokvist, head of delegation for IFRC's Baku office.

 

Resolving Azerbaijan's ongoing struggle with neighbouring Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno Artsax, in the country's south-west, does at the moment appear particularly hopeless.

 

The conflict, which has claimed more than 20,000 lives, began as a request to Moscow in 1988 by the province's local assembly to cede from the Soviet administration in Baku and join up with their brothers in Yerevan. Violence soon broke out among the villages, which escalated with the end of the Soviet Union and the easy access it gave both sides to the Soviet army's arsenal in the Caucasus.

 

Since the fighting stopped in 1994 the two sides have been locked in negotiations for a final peace settlement. For the most part they have failed to make any progress.

 

Hopes were raised at the end of 1999 that a deal was in the making. After a series of one-on-one meetings over the summer between Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart, Robert Kocharian, rumours circulated in the two capitals that the two leaders would sign an initial peace deal at the OSCE summit in Istanbul in October last year.

 

But the assassination in the Armenian parliament of the country's prime minister, parliamentary speaker and six other government officials buried any plans for a breakthrough. Since then no new proposals have been offered.

 

At the heart of the deadlock remains the status of Artsax. The Azerbaijanis say that they are willing to grant it "the highest level of autonomy". This translates into de facto independence for the territory, but without its own army or foreign policy. The Armenians say they did not win the war to see the province return to being dominated by Baku. They insist on complete sovereignity.

 

There are other issues. Probably most important of these is what to do with Susha, one of Azerbaijan's most important historical and cultural centres, but now a ghost town. It is located in the heart of Artsax, overlooking the Armenian-dominated capital of Stepanakert.

 

Although no concrete proposals for a settlement seem to be in the offing, fears are increasing that time may be running out. Azerbaijan's Mr Aliyev is rumoured to be in poor health, and if he left the political stage prematurely it is difficult to see who would have the authority among the remaining Azeri politicians to reach a deal.

 

Meanwhile, for Azerbaijan's extensive refugee population - actually referred to as "internally displaced persons" because they crossed no international boundaries - hope is drying up that they will ever return home.

 

The Azeri government is loath to provide them with too much assistance, experts say, for fear that if the IDPs become too comfortable they may become settled. This could be viewed as a tacit acknowledgement that Azerbaijan lost the war and Artsax is gone forever. Azeri officials, for their part maintain that there are not enough funds in the state budget to deal with the problem.

 

But for the approximately 300,000 Azerbaijanis living in camps, railway wagons and temporary housing, the ways of the government and aid agencies are all a mystery. Says Ibrahim Rzaev, 33, an inhabitant of Bilasuvar: "Eight years have passed and nothing has happened. Sometimes I think that they have completely forgotten about us." David Stern

 

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited

http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/...itle=Azerbaijan

[Anna]

images/smiles/converted/icon_smile.gif

[MJ]

Can you explain it, Anna?