NEW BOOK EXAMINES ROOTS OF THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT
A EurasiaNet book review by Afshin Molavi: 5/09/03

Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War By Thomas de Waal New York University Press New York and London 2003 $35.95

On February 20, 1988, the local assembly of Nagorno-Karabakh issued a stunning, plainly-worded resolution that called for the transfer of their autonomous region from the republic of Azerbaijan to the republic of Armenia. "The dreary language of the resolution," writes Thomas de Waal in his fine new book Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, "hid something truly revolutionary."

The resolution helped trigger a cycle of events that sparked the first inter-ethnic war of the Perestroika era, Mikhail Gorbachev’s ill-fated attempt to reanimate the Soviet Union. The "hot" phase of the Karabakh conflict lasted six years, claiming an estimated 15,000 lives and creating a wrenching population "transfer." The warfare displaced hundreds of thousands Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The two countries remain stalemated to this day on a political settlement. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Today, the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – located within the boundaries of Azerbaijan but populated largely by Armenians -- has become one of those "political flashpoints" that few beyond the region understand or pay much heed to. Journalist Thomas de Waal, a veteran observer of the Caucasus, helps fill the need for an authoritative, clear-eyed, balanced account of a conflict that only occasionally appears on the international media radar screen.

De Waal argues that the international policy makers ignore the conflict "at their peril." "The non-resolution of the dispute has tied up the whole region between the Black and Caspian Seas," he writes. If the current cold truce is reignited into a hot war, "it would send out disturbing ripples across Europe, Russia, and the Middle East" with a "nightmare scenario" drawing in Armenian ally Russia and Azerbaijani ally Turkey (and, therefore, NATO) into the conflict.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan and Armenia continue to peddle official "hate narratives" to a new generation who don’t remember the close personal ties of their parents’ generation. All the while, large numbers of Armenians and Azeris grow poorer, less secure, and more isolated from the global economy.

De Waal raises three key "misconceptions" about the conflict. He backs his arguments with reportage, documentation, and historical record. Firstly, he contends the conflict was not borne of "ancient hatreds," as some polemicists and activists on both sides propound. He points out that Azerbaijanis and Armenians "fought no more often than any other two nationalities in the region" and he displays through skillful reportage the cultural and personal links shared by the two peoples throughout the 20th century.

These personal links created "friend enemies." De Waal illustrates the concept by recalling an episode of the conflict around the Karabakh city of Shusha in 1992. In one interview, a young Azeri fighter, Kaur, expressed fear that, at some point during the ensuing battle, he may find himself shooting at an old Armenian friend, Vigen. Later, de Waal tracks down Vigen. When the author recounts Kaur’s tale, Vigen responded: "I had the same fear!"

De Waal goes on to debunk some of the conspiracy theories that helped drive the conflict, namely that the Kremlin orchestrated the conflict. Through presentation of papers from Soviet archives and interviews with key players, de Waal shows that Soviet leaders in Moscow were "running to keep pace with the dispute, rather than leading it."

Perhaps most interestingly, de Waal argues that the conflict "cannot usefully be reduced to its socioeconomic components." History and identity – or, rather misguided and dangerous ideas of history and identity – played a more important role. He writes: "The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict makes sense only if we acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijanis were driven to act by passionately held ideas about history, identity, and rights."

"That the vast mass of these ideas were dangerous and delusory does not make them any less sincerely felt," de Waal continues. "From 1990 and 1991, there were plenty of volunteers prepared to risk their lives for them… The darkest of these convictions, ’the hate narratives,’ have taken such deep root that unless they are addressed, nothing can change in Armenia and Azerbaijan."

The 20th century is littered with ethnic conflicts, wars, and acts of violence rooted in "passionately held ideas about history, identity, and rights." Nationalism, particularly the sort of blood and soil romantic nationalism that plays such a destructive role in creating the "hate narratives" of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, is a wholly modern phenomenon. In reading de Waal’s book, one is reminded of other 20th century conflicts – Palestine/Israel, Yugoslavia, India/Pakistan, to name just a few – and their own "hate narratives."

Some of the most illuminating – and alarming – reading in de Waal’s book includes the battle of historians and writers on both sides. They fire polemical missiles at each other through obscure history and literary journals, denigrating and, in some cases, obliterating the history and identity of the other side.

De Waal points out that the 1988 movement for Karabakh’s transfer to Armenia was organized chiefly by those who were, at the time, living outside of the enclave. As in many Diaspora communities, romantic nationalism has the power to erase historical memory: in this case, the confluence of cultural and personal ties between the two peoples on the ground.

The book features sketches of chest-thumping nationalists who never actually lived in Nagorno-Karabakh, but grew up in Baku or Yerevan. One such person, Igor Muradian -- a 30-year-old nationalist activist in 1988 who played a key role in Karabakh’s "liberation" -- told de Waal that he cared little for the lives of Azerbaijanis who were expelled from the enclave. Muradian characterized the displaced as obstacles to his nationalist goals.

Somewhere in today’s Azerbaijan, a displaced Azeri could emerge as tomorrow’s version of Igor Muradian – a person who sees Karabakh not as a collection of humans, but as an object of a nationalist "reclamation" project. Diaspora nationalists easily obliterate "the other" since they never really lived among them, never shared bread with them, and, as Muradian told de Waal, never really cared to do so. Romantic, blood-and soil nationalism matters in this conflict because -- before its emergence as a 20th century ideology embraced by a growing number of ethnic groups -- there was relative harmony between Azerbaijanis and Armenians.

De Waal does well to remind his readers of the eighteenth century Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova who wrote in Armenian, Georgian, and Azeri and "moved happily between the nations and regions of the Caucasus." Sayat Nova, a revered poet in the region, represents the best of cosmopolitan Caucasus culture, a culture that is being choked by a conflict that locks Armenians and Azerbaijanis in "their self-destructive states of fear and defiance."

Editor’s Note: Afshin Molavi, a Washington-based journalist, is the author of Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran. He was born in Tabriz, Iran and regularly reports on Iran for a variety of Western publications.

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Posted May 9, 2003 © Eurasianet
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