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In a bitter farewell to his 21-year-old home, Garo Dadevusyan tore off its metal roof and prepared to set the stone house on fire. Thick smoke billowed from houses that their neighbors had already burned down before fleeing this ethnic Armenian village that was about to come under Azerbaijani control.
The village will be handed over to Azerbaijan on Sunday (local time) as part of territorial concessions in an agreement to end six weeks of heavy fighting with Armenian forces. The move gripped its 600 people in fear and anger so deep that they destroyed the homes they once loved.
The settlement, called Karvachar in Armenian, is legally part of Azerbaijan, but has been under the control of ethnic Armenians since the end of the war in 1994 for the Nagorno-Karabakh region. That war left not only Nagorno-Karabakh itself, but also a substantial surrounding territory in Armenian hands.
Dmitry Lovetsky / AP
A man loads his belongings into his truck after setting his house on fire, in an area that was once occupied by Armenian forces but will soon be handed over to Azerbaijan, in Karvachar, the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
After years of sporadic clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces, large-scale fighting began in late September this year. Azerbaijan made relentless military advances, culminating in the capture of the city of Shusha, a strategically key city of great emotional importance as a center of Azeri culture for a long time.
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Two days after Azerbaijan announced that it had taken Shusha, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a Russian-negotiated ceasefire under which the territory occupied by Armenia outside the formal Nagorno-Karabakh borders will be gradually ceded.
Muslim Azeris and Christian Armenians once lived together in these regions, albeit uneasily. Although the ceasefire ends the fighting, it exacerbates ethnic animosity.
Dmitry Lovetsky / AP
Smoke comes from a burning house in an area once occupied by Armenian forces.
“In the end, we will blow it up or set it on fire, so as not to leave anything to the Muslims,” Dadevusyan said of his home.
He spoke as he rested from salvaging what he could from the house, including the metal roof panels, and stacked it on an old flatbed truck.
The final destination of the truck is unclear.
“Now we are homeless, we don’t know where to go or where to live. I don’t know where to live. It’s very hard, ”said his wife Lusine, choking with tears, as they took one last look inside the house.
Dmitry Lovetsky / AP
Under an agreement that ended weeks of heavy fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, some Armenian-controlled territories adjacent to the region are passing to Azerbaijan.
Dadevusyan’s dismay spread to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Armenia and Russia maintain close relations and Russia has a considerable military base in Armenia, so many Armenians expected Moscow’s support. Instead, Russia facilitated the ceasefire and territorial concessions and is dispatching nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to enforce.
“Why has Putin abandoned us?” Dadevusyan said.
Hundreds of thousands of Azeris were displaced by the war that ended in 1994. It is unclear when any civilians might try to settle in Karvachar, which will now be known by its Azeri name Kalbajar, or elsewhere.
Sergei Grits / AP
A church worker pulls gonfalons from the 12th-13th century Dadivank Orthodox monastery on the outskirts of Kalbajar, in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Any return could be heartbreaking. The settlers will face the shells of the burned and empty houses, or worse. Agdam, due to be delivered next week, was once a city of around 40,000, but is now an empty expanse of buildings that were destroyed in the first war or later ruined by looters who seized building materials.
For the Dadevusyans, their sudden relocation is overwhelming beyond words.
“When you spent 21 years here and now you need to quit …” Garo Dadevusyan said, trailing off, as smoke from nearby burning houses choked the air. Soon, he knew, his home would be one of them.
