Nagorno-Karabakh conflict creates a fresh generation of displaced Armenians

“It’s true, isn’t it. They’ve taken Hadrut.”

Five weeks in to the current war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Irina Safaryan, 28, knew that Azerbaijani forces had seized her hometown. “They’ve probably taken everything from our home already, then,” she said, fighting back tears. “Taken our very existence.”

Ms Safaryan is among thousands of folks forced from their homes by the latest round of fighting over the disputed region. More than a million were permanently displaced through the initial 1988-94 conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, so that it is just about the most brutal corners of the collapsing Soviet empire. Now a fresh war has generated another wave of displacement.

Based on the Artsakh Human Rights Ombudsman, 100,000 Karabakh civilians have been displaced because the fighting intensified on September 27, almost all of whom fled to Armenia, but including those displaced within Karabakh.

The National spoke to two Karabakh Armenians whose hometowns have already been taken by Azerbaijani forces since September, in addition to Azerbaijanis from the regions surrounding Karabakh captured by Armenian forces in 1993.

Ms Safaryan’s life story is one bookended by war. “I was created in the bunker, in 1992,” she said. “My parents are both from Hadrut. While my mother gave birth if you ask me, my dad was fighting on the frontline.”

After growing up in Hadrut, she visited Yerevan, the administrative centre of Armenia, to study on her behalf bachelor’s and master’s degrees. But she always felt the pull of Artsakh - the name used by Karabakh Armenians because of their breakaway state.

“I felt like I possibly could do more in Stepanakert [the capital of Karabakh],” she said.

That is where she was living when the most recent war broke out.

“Honestly, I was expecting something to occur,” she said. “Just the day before [September 26], I was telling my pal this. But I didn’t think I'd wake up the very next day from the bombing.”

Hadrut, with its population of 4,000 roughly, is the greatest town Azerbaijani forces have seized in the war nonetheless they have also gained control of several villages.

Anush Ghavalyan, 32, grew up in a village of Talish on the north-eastern edge of Karabakh, near to the frontlines. It had been attacked by Azerbaijani forces in the first days of the war, becoming the scene of fierce fighting before Armenian troops were forced out.

"Last week, I dreamed that I was still there, that I possibly could hear the children playing in the street. It’s a location of so many happy memories,” Ms Ghavalyan said.

Like Ms Safaryan, she was in Stepanakert when the war broke out. “I had some family there, but they got out,” she said. “In the end, we have experienced this before.”

Ms Ghavalyan was referring to fighting in Karabakh 2016, popularly known as the Four Day War. Azerbaijani forces briefly entered and controlled Talish, before being pushed out a day or two later.

Throughout their brief occupation, Azerbaijani soldiers executed an elderly Armenian couple who lived near Ms Ghavalyan’s family.

“The house was damaged then," she said, “but we rebuilt it. Thank God, we didn't experience what our neighbours did.”

On the other hand, too, there are those displaced by war.

Ulvi Sarkali, now 29, had not been yet 2 yrs old when his family was forced to flee Fuzuli, an Azerbaijani town that has lain abandoned since its capture by Armenian forces in 1993.

“I was too young to keep in mind anything, but my dad was on the front,” Mr Sarkarli said by email. “We don’t speak to our mother about the war; she's PTSD from her escape.”

The announcement that his hometown have been recaptured by Azerbaijani forces on October 17 sparked strong emotions.

“As a family group that suffered a lot from the [first] war… there is nothing good [about war], even though there can be an ember of hope that maybe this time it will be possible to return to [our] hometown.”

For Karabakh Armenians, that hope won't exist provided that their homes are managed by Azerbaijan.

Asked if she'd ever go back to Talish under Azerbaijani rule, Ms Ghavalyan could only laugh. “First, they would not let me return,” she said. “Second, easily even try, they will kill me. I would never return back.”

Ms Safaryan also offers no illusions about ethnic Armenians having the capacity to stay in Azerbaijan, despite Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev publicly calling for Azerbaijani and Armenian communities to “live side by side” in Karabakh.

“You should observe how many messages I receive [on Facebook],” she said. “Every day I am blocking 50, 60 [Azerbaijanis]. You'll not believe the horrific things they write.”

This kind of hatred extends even to those involved in the two decades of internationally sponsored "peacebuilding" dialogues between members of Armenian (including Karabakh Armenian) and Azerbaijani society.

“I participated in the peace dialogues for years,” Ms Ghavalyan said. “Since the war started, the vast majority of them have blocked me, however, many are a whole lot worse.”

In one Twitter exchange she showed The National, a former Azerbaijani colleague at these dialogues wrote that “Azerbaijan is arriving at liberate Khankendi” - the Azerbaijani name for Stepanakert. Then tells Ms Ghavalyan, “run away”.

“This was all just a show for the Europeans,” said Ms Ghavalyan. “[Azerbaijanis] now all cheer the war. These were never interested in peace.”

Mr Sarkarli want to proceed to Stepanakert and support peacebuilding efforts.

“It really is my dream to donate to Karabakh, [so] that the spot becomes a developed, peaceful, demilitarised area, a bright example of co-existence on the globe,” he said.

This possibility, however, is currently a distant prospect. The Azerbaijani advance towards Stepanakert forced a large number of remaining civilians to evacuate metropolis on November 7.

One of the most popular Azerbaijani Telegram channels shared a video of the civilian exodus with the words, “we chase them like dogs”, a phrase that is inscribed on the Azerbaijani drones which have played a decisive role in this conflict.

Ms Safaryan sees little hope for the "peaceful coexistence" of Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Karabakh that can often be touted by neighbouring Georgia.

“Whatever land we give them, it will never be adequate,” she said. “If we give them Stepanakert, they'll come to Goris [in southern Armenia], and from then on to Yerevan. It'll never be enough.”

For the newly displaced of Karabakh, war remains, seemingly, their only path home.

“We have seen the way the international community does nothing,” Ms Safaryan said. “The one thing we can depend on [for our safety] is our soldiers.”