Vignette from a Forgotten Country
Photos and text by Sofia Bergmann | July 26, 2019 — updated March, 2022
“I knew they were killing the children” — Galia describes sending her children on buses to safety during the war over her home of Artsakh (aka Nagorno-Karabakh) in 1994. She makes jokes, dances, sings while she cooks, and gave me a home. Artsakh is an autonomous, unrecognized country that identifies ethnically as Armenian but is claimed by Azerbaijan. Every person you meet in the region has been deeply affected in this conflict, most stories will never be heard.
Ethnic disputes between Turks and Azeris, and Armenians are at the core of this conflict. Turkey never having acknowledged its genocide on the Armenians in 1915 during Ottoman rule, in which it wiped out most of Armenia’s population and territory at the time, its strong diplomatic and military ties to Azerbaijan and the two nations’ shared Turkik cultures has surrounded Armenia, and created long lasting tensions in the region. Embargoes, closed borders, hate-speech and propaganda, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as the cherry on top. Artsakh was declared its own ethnically-Armenian but politically autonomous enclave within Azerbaijan when the region was under Soviet rule. Although not internationally recognized as an official nation, Artsakh has had its own democratically elected government and stands independently, using Armenian currency, and sharing a religion, history and culture with Armenia.
As the Soviet Union started to collapse and Armenia and Azerbaijan gained independence, they entered a brutal war over the autonomous region of Artsakh. Armenia was able to defend the disputed region from Azeri rule, which some consider Armenian occupation, while others considered it a way to defend Artsakh from the neighboring enemies. No agreement was met but a ceasefire signed in 1994 allowed the people of Artsakh to develope their small nation, and continue to be an ethnically-Armenian autonomous region. There were regular casualties and shootings at the borders, but Artsakh widely remained peaceful and many aspects began to flourish in the absence of bombs. The dispute drove out ethnic minorities on both sides of the borders during the war, and Artsakh has been 80 percent ethnically-Armenian. While Azerbaijan was fighting to gain back the territory, the threat of war also threatened the existence of Artsakh’s Armenian people and heritage. In fact, what we have seen since the war escalated again in November of 2020, is that the regions taken back by Azerbaijan have been taken over and its people have fled. The notion that Azeris and Artsakhis will live under one nation in peace essentially does not exist in this conflict.
Armenia is Artsakh’s main ally and, suffers from embargo’s from Turkey and oppression which has lingered since the genocide. Armenia and Turkey’s attitudes towards each other arguably exist vicariously in the Karabakh conflict: Azerbaijan being a Turkik country, Turkey and Azerbaijan have been considered “one nation with two states” (by Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev.) Although Russia helped Armenia gain back the region of Artsakh during the first war, Russia also maintains close relations with Azerbaijan and has now sent peacekeeping troops in the region playing a key role in the conflict.
During the first and second Artsakh wars, Azeri forces captured Shushi, Galia’s village and it is not known where she is today. The one thing tying the people of Artsakh together is the war and its threat on their indigenous lands and ethnic herritage, much of which has been erased in the last year. During the first war in the ‘90’s, Galia sent her children on buses and told us she had to walk through the mountains to reach safety, not knowing if her children had survived. “I had a very hard life,” is her only answer when asked about her husband. When Armenian forces liberated Shushi in 1992, Galia was allowed to return to her village where she recently had to flea again. While she had lost many of her family members, Galia’s grandchildren would visit almost daily for a cup of tea.
At the time of my reporting in 2019, the people of Artsakh lived in constant fear and preparation for the fighting to start again. Men in Artsakh and Armenia ages 16–60 geared up, even diasporans travelled to the region to enlist and fight as the war broke out again in 2020. Thousands died including civilians, and many fled to Armenia where they remain to be refugees. Heavy artillery and support from Turkey left Armenia and Artsakh largely outnumbered and essentially forced to surrender Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, only leaving the capital city Stepanakert tied to Armenia through the Lachin Corridor mountain pass. While the sentiment in Azerbaijan is that the land belongs rightfully to them, it could not be more different than the sentiment among those in Artsakh. For the next five years, Russian peacekeeping troops are meant to protect the region, but the violence has not completely stopped.
There is a strong notion in Armenia and Artsakh that Azerbaijan and Turkey are determined to obliterate the Armenian ethnicity, as Turkey had during the genocide, to geographically connect Turkey and Azerbaijan. Since Artstakh was declared autonomous, many Azeri families who have fled amidst the conflict have suffered tremendously as well, and continue to live in what have been considered to be slum-like conditions. President Aliyev has been criticized internationally for not taking action over the decades to help those families, in a way using them as a symbol for Armenian aggression. But the lack of independent free media or democratic elections in Azerbaijan, along with an information war on social media, has fueled the narrative in Azerbaijan that Armenia is occupying Azeri lands as terrorists. Rallies chanting ‘death to the Armenian’ have been seen in the streets of Baku, for example, and many Armenians see Azeris and Turks as the aggressors. While extremely layered and complex, the conflict’s impact on those living on both sides of the border, has caused them to live in fear and hatred.
Despite all the clamor from its neighboring countries, Artsakh made strides during the ceasefire. Although now largely gone, the restoring of cultural sites, the sweeping mountainous landscapes, the emerging tourism and subcultures, and the people like Galia represented a thread of hope for Artsakh.
Taken in 2019 one year before the war broke out again, these photos show a side to a small forgotten nation branded with war, celebrating its people and its landscapes.
Photos taken in and around Galia’s village of Shushi which has since been destroyed and occupied in the war, as well as the capital city Stepanakert which still stands today and remains tied to Armenia.
