The television set in the café of the town of Shusha is regularly open on the local music channel, which instead of MTV hits or Turkish pop songs broadcasts songs of victory and love for the homeland. You don't have to understand the Azeri language to absorb the content. The word "Azerbaijan" that is repeated again and again in all the songs, the national flags that fly proudly and the mountainous landscapes that are visible from the screen, leave no room for doubt - the channel, like all of Azerbaijan, celebrates the subjugation of the rebel Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the return of the region to its hands.
The sense of victory and elation in Azerbaijan surrounds every corner these days. It is completely real, authentic and not placed from above. Shusha's café, usually a rather sleepy place, also has a holiday atmosphere. Its few inhabitants, all men of different ages, are happy to share with me the feelings they have been experiencing for the past two weeks, since the victory over the Armenian separatists. These feelings are easy to summarize in one word - euphoria.
Armenian refugees fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh // Photo: Reuters
The bustle of victory is interrupted only for a few moments, when between songs another list of the names of the "martyrs", Azeri soldiers who fell in defense of the homeland, is broadcast, after which the festive atmosphere returns. In a well-kept garden above Baku, the capital, the "Avenue of Martyrs" was installed, a large part of the graves of Azeri soldiers, and also includes the grave of the "Jewish martyr", the Jewish soldier Albert Agronov, who fell right here, in the battles for Shusha, in 1992.
Seymour Ismailov, the most educated of the café-goers (a doctor of exact sciences, he humbly introduces himself), decides to give me his version of a brief history of the conflict between the Azeris and the Armenians. In his view, "Armenian murderousness" is the root of all evil, and it did not begin now, nor thirty years ago, when the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, backed by the Armenian army, won the First Karabakh War and expelled all the Azeris from Hexagon.
"They then committed the worst crimes against humanity," Seymour argues passionately, "The result was ethnic cleansing in the full sense of the word – the Armenian gangs expelled by force the old Azeri population of Nagorno-Karabakh, including all my family members, and declared the region that had belonged to the Azeris since time immemorial as an independent republic. At the same time, the Azeris were forced to leave Armenia, which thus became a uninational state on the purity of Armenians."
Victory in 24 hours,
Seymour explains that the Armenians used a similar method about a century ago: "Even then they tried to forcibly Armenize entire areas whose population had always been Muslim Azeri. It worked for them as long as they were stronger than us. But thanks to the assistance of Turkey and Israel, and most recently the United States, we have been able to strengthen and restore justice."
Israeli aid, Turkish fraternity
The mention of Israel is not only meant to please the Israeli visitor of the café. All my interlocutors in Azerbaijan, from high-ranking officials in Baku to commoners in villages near Nagorno-Karabakh, spoke of the Jewish state with affection and appreciation and used superlatives to express their gratitude for it. Seymour was the most decisive of them all.
"Without Israel's help, it would have been very difficult to face the dangers," he declared loudly, and immediately switched to a whisper, as if trying to sweeten a secret, "thanks to all the things you have provided us, we have been able to liberate Nagorno-Karabakh and we will be able to defend ourselves against Iran's threats and subversion."
But with all due respect to cooperation with Israel, most of the shares in Azerbaijan's military victory belong to Turkey's support for it. Turkish flags fly alongside Azerbaijani flags throughout the country, and it is no wonder that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rushed to Azerbaijan in person to congratulate Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on the victory.
Armenian hero. Verdanian, Photo by GettyImages
To express the brotherhood, the two presidents often utter the formula "two states, one people," which implies that Turks and Azeris are one and the same. The Armenians took this statement one step further, claiming that entire Turkish units fought against them under the guise of the Azeri army. Psychologically they can be understood. It is far more bearable for Armenians to accept a loss to a regional power like Turkey than to Azerbaijan, which they defeated three decades ago.
With or without Turkish units, Azerbaijan's military operation to seize the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh lasted less than 24 hours. The army of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (or your country, as Armenians call it), whose existence no country – not even Armenia – officially recognized, preferred to surrender, because the balance of power was so clear that continued armed resistance was out of the question. In a day of fighting and shelling, some 200 Armenians were killed before the separatist leaders fell for the token.
"Opening a new chapter"
It took the Armenian population another day or two to understand what had happened, and then the exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh began. Tens of thousands loaded what they could onto private cars, buses and trucks and began their journey to the Armenian border. They preferred to leave everything and become refugees, just not to remain under Azeri rule. Human suffering is visible along the roads to the border, regardless of who is to blame and who is right in the bloody conflict.
At this stage, the phenomenon should only be defined as voluntary emissions. Armenians are not expelled from their homes by the army that defeated them. They are abandoning the region they considered their historic homeland without coercion. Perhaps out of frustration, perhaps out of fear, but not as a result of a deliberate action by Azerbaijan.
Armenians leaving the region, Photo: AP
"Look at the nice attitude of our soldiers towards the departing Armenians," Seymour insists. "They calm them down, hand out toys and cookies to the children. I see this and recall a situation of reverse escape, how the Armenians expelled all the Azeris from Nagorno-Karabakh with uninhibited cruelty, crime and violence, and how they slaughtered the Azeri minority in their country. I am proud to see and prove to the world that we are completely different from them."
Seymour is precise, at least as far as the restrained manner in which the Azeris handle the fleeing caravan of Armenians. No one takes care of them, does not harass them, and does not seek to add humiliation or bad attitude to their already bad feelings. In fact, it can be described this way: the Azeris stand on the sidelines. They are not urging the Armenians to leave, but of course they are not trying to stop them and are not at all sorry for the departure of those who hate them.
I asked the Azeri soldiers at the last checkpoint, which separated the Armenians from their new future across the border, how they saw the endless stream of people passing before their eyes, especially the men, many of whom apparently had until recently taken up arms against them. "Inshallah, it's over," a young lieutenant replied without hesitation, smiling in a show of triumphant generosity. "I assume that some of them did fight us and maybe even did terrible things, but restoring Azerbaijan's sovereignty over the entire territory of the country, including Nagorno-Karabakh, makes it possible to end an old chapter and open a new one, better for everyone."
Explosive silence
Can I take the opposite route, contrary to the direction of Armenian traffic, from the checkpoint in the Chin corridor to Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh? In the near future, of course, the officer replies, but first you have to make sure there is no danger there. Meanwhile, traffic to Nagorno-Karabakh is blocked because he says many areas of the region are mined. Some of the places have long since been mined as part of the Armenian effort to make possible entry by the Azeri army, and to them, according to the Azeri soldiers, have been added fresh mine traps deliberately left by the departing Armenians.
In the meantime, the Azeris choose not to take any chances, prefer to exaggerate suspicion rather than downplay it, and threaten to open fire on anyone who does not obey orders. The warning should be taken seriously. In at least two cases, Azeri soldiers fired at vehicles that did not stop, and later it turned out that the passengers in them were Russian soldiers from the peacekeeping force. The Russians counted six dead and remained silent.
The deputy's remarks echoed the official position of Azerbaijan. Baku spokesmen emphasize that members of the Armenian minority living in Nagorno-Karabakh are welcome to remain and integrate as equals. If any of them wants to leave, it is their personal decision, and they are free to implement it, the speakers add correctly, when it is clear to them that if more than a hundred thousand people leave at once, it is much more than a personal decision. One way or another, one cannot demand more from the Azeri. They refrain from conveying joy to those who leave, which is already a remarkable achievement in terms of the Armenian-Azeri conflict.
National exaltation. Balconies in Baku, the capital, photo: Ariel Bolstein
Although the vast majority of Armenians leave undisturbed, Azerbaijan's security services manage to pull out of the human river that flows into the checkpoint to Armenia those who really interest them – the heads of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and the commanders of its armed forces. The generosity of the victors ends when it comes to those who for years were behind the brutal struggle of the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. In total, about 300 senior members of the region are considered wanted by the Azeris. Azerbaijan's chief prosecutor called on them to turn themselves in and warned that anyone who did not do so would be arrested.
The most notable arrest of all took place on 27 September, when the Azeris managed to get their hands on Ruben Vardanyan, until recently the charismatic prime minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Unlike the other leaders of the region, who belong to the region's large Armenian clans, Vardanyan, 55, is not a native at all, but an Armenian who settled in Moscow during the Soviet period and made a huge fortune after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
בשונה מאוליגרכים אחרים, ורדניאן לא התעסק בגז, נפט, פלדה או מחצבים אחרים. בשנת 1991 הוא השתלב בחברת ההשקעות "דיאלוג טרויקה", והתקדם בה במהירות עד שעמד בראשה. בשנת 2021 המגזין "פורבס" העריך את הונו במיליארד דולר. ב־2022 החליט שעשה מספיק לביתו, מסר את ניהול החברה לשותפיו, ויתר על האזרחות הרוסית שלו ופרש אל נגורנו קרבאך כדי להקדיש את עצמו לבני עמו.
בתור הארוך של הפליטים הארמנים לפני מעבר הגבול, ורדניאן הוא ללא ספק הדמות הפופולרית מכולם, בפער עצום מכל פוליטיקאי או מנהיג אחר. לא שזה קשה כל כך. הפליטים מוכי הצער על ההפסד הצבאי ואובדן הבית, מאוכזבים מכל האחרים - מן המנהיגות המקומית שהבטיחה והכזיבה, מראש ממשלת ארמניה ניקול פשיניאן ומנשיאי המעצמות הגדולות בעולם. את פשיניאן מתעבים כאן במיוחד, בתור המכוניות הבלתי נגמר. במקום להילחם באזרבייג'ן ולהגן על נגורנו קרבאך הוא דן עם אלייב בהסכם שלום, חוזרים הפליטים על ההאשמה שמבחינתם אין חמורה ממנה.
מנהיג, נדבן - וקורבן
למעשה, זולת ורדניאן, רק שמו של נשיא צרפת עמנואל מקרון מעורר אצל הארמנים יחס חיובי. בשל המיעוט הארמני הגדול בצרפת והשפעתו הכלכלית והפוליטית, מנהיגי צרפת נוטים באופן מסורתי להעלות את העניין הארמני בזירה הבינלאומית. זה קרה גם הפעם: מקרון דרש מבאקו לעצור את ההשתלטות הצבאית על נגורנו קרבאך ודיבר גבוהה־גבוהה על שמירת הזכויות של המובלעת הארמנית, אך הדיבורים - כמה מפתיע - לא עזרו.
The high-profile arrest only increased the sympathy of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh towards Vardanyan. From now on, in their eyes, he is not only the mistress and philanthropist, who regularly pays for the needs of his people, but a victim. A man who is willing to put his life in his hands and risk his freedom in an Azeri prison. The image of the hero may help Verdanian if he intends to remain in public activism – if not in Nagorno-Karabakh, then at least in Armenia.
Naturally, the Azeri authorities see Vardanyan's role in a different light. He was brought to Baku and is expected to stand trial on charges of financing terrorism and establishing illegal armed units. Immediately after the arrest, the Azerbaijanis distributed a photograph of Vardanyan with his hands tied, held on both sides in a position of helplessness and embarrassment. Another victory picture, one of many.
It is not only on the attitude towards leaders that there is overwhelming unanimity among the departing Armenians. Nor do they disagree with the understanding that the Nagorno-Karabakh story is over. For an entire day spent among Armenian families about to cross the border into Armenia, I searched for revenge and another round of conflict that would restore Armenians control of the region, and found only bitter acceptance that they had the upper hand.
"For three years since our defeat in the Second Karabakh War, we have lived on borrowed time," admits A., who says he served in the army of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
This war was fought in the autumn of 2020 for 44 days and ended in a significant victory for Azerbaijan. The Azeris then regained about half of Nagorno-Karabakh (including the town of Shusha) and severed the territorial contiguity between the remaining half of the separatists and Armenia. The rebel region was cut off from the outside world, and its connection to the Armenian hinterland was reduced to a narrow corridor 6 km long, the Lachin corridor, control of which was transferred to a Russian peacekeeping force. Ironically, the remaining 120,<> Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh are now leaving the region precisely through this mountain pass, which was supposed to be their oxygen conduit for life.
Azeri guards, photo: E.. P
Equally ironically, the Armenians' blind reliance on the Russians turned out to be a strategic error. A. doesn't mince words until his newfound hostility toward Russia seems to be on par with his old hatred of Azerbaijan: "The Russians deceived us with snake cunning," he asserts decisively. "Who knew that they would sit idly by, contrary to all peacekeeping obligations, when Azerbaijan would mobilize the troops?"
He has many explanations for the upheaval of the Russians, who were considered guarantors of the peace of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, all taken from the world of conspiracy: "It is quite clear that the Azeris, full of oil money, finance and bribe most of the Russian leadership. We had nothing to confront the weapons of bribery and treachery."
For years, A. and his fellow Nagorno-Karabakh soldiers enjoyed a lot of weapons, acquired through the wrong route or obtained from the Armenian army. What will be done with it now? A way of honor offered to the separatists allows them to hand over arms to Russian forces as an alternative to the humiliation of handing over arms to the victorious Azerbaijani army. A. longingly tells of dozens of armored vehicles and armored personnel carriers that were in his hands and had already been transferred to the Russian army. In addition, the Nagorno-Karabakh army had anti-aircraft systems, artillery batteries and more. A long debate revolved around whether Nagorno-Karabakh also benefited from the presence of regular units of the Armenian army, but the Azeri victory made it irrelevant.
If you ask A., for him giving up the weapon is just as humiliating, regardless of who gets it. "In the Caucasus, a man who has no weapons is not a man," he quotes the well-known saying, and I begin to suspect that even if he did not hide a few reeds in the depths of his tattered lada, he would soon obtain them after safely passing the last checkpoint.
Post-war boom
A has no idea what he will do now that he crosses the border into Armenia. His fellow escapees leave belongings, a home and memories behind, and he loses his source of livelihood. His security service provided the family with a very decent salary on the scale of Nagorno-Karabakh, even though he has no profession. He adds that in Armenia he has no chance of a similar role: since Pashinyan came to power in Yerevan, there has been little unity between the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and those in Armenia proper, and there is a lot of tension and suspicion. No one will recruit A to serve in Armenia's security apparatus.
A.'s wife, who holds a baby in one hand and a few bundles in the other, radiates wonderful optimism and tries to share it with her husband. After a loud conversation between them in Armenian, A. explains to me that the woman is convinced that they should leave not only Nagorno-Karabakh but the Caucasus region in general.
"I have distant relatives in France and Los Angeles," he says reluctantly, as if he is still sincerely debating and has not yet made a decision. "Maybe it's really time for us to go to them as part of family reunification. The superpowers did not save our republic, so at least they should take us in." It sounds a bit naïve, but who knows? Western countries have already proven that their doors open easily.
President of Azerbaijan, photo: AP
At this point, A.'s car crawls right into the Azeri checkpoint, and we separate. I know that despite the politeness of the Azeri soldiers manning the checkpoint, the situation will be difficult for him. It will be even more difficult when he sees a huge sign near the checkpoint that proclaims "Karabakh is Azerbaijan" and realizes that this time it is no longer just a slogan, but reality incarnate.
Such signs are the most common design item on the streets of Azerbaijani cities and villages. They are posted on top of stores and gas stations, staring at passersby from fences and pasted on car windshields. They are everywhere, more numerous than the portraits of Heydar Aliyev, the first leader of independent Azerbaijan and father of the current president, and the oil pumps, the source of Azerbaijan's wealth. Their total presence reflects what millions of Azeris have felt over the past thirty years since they lost control of the region to Armenian separatists.
Azerbaijani MP Ramin Mamedov, appointed by President Aliyev to deal with the reintegration of the liberated region in Azerbaijan, is optimistic about the future. Although his task is heavy, his plan talks about turning Nagorno-Karabakh from a poor and backward place into a flourishing province.
"We will apply to it the labor and welfare laws of Azerbaijan and the assistance programs that are in effect in nearby areas," Mamedov explains. "We will exempt the peasants from all taxes except the tax on land. We will operate designated assistance mechanisms for business owners. At the same time, we will ensure freedom of worship and linguistic rights of Karabakh's Armenians: they will be able to use the Armenian language, and their historical and religious heritage sites will be preserved and nurtured."
These days, Mamedov is in talks with representatives of Armenians who remain in Nagorno-Karabakh. He speculates that even some of those who leave will eventually choose to return, especially in light of the significant improvement in the standard of living expected under the Azeri regime. The planned investments in outdated infrastructure will pay off, Mamedov explains, predicting that in a short time the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh will be similar to the average in Azerbaijan, and certainly better than in the makeshift refugee camps in Armenia.
If the mood among the café-goers in Shusha is a reliable measure, then the citizens of Azerbaijan are not opposed to the flow of government investment into the Armenian regions of Nagorno-Karabakh. "On the contrary," Seymour declares passionately, and others nod in agreement, "whoever wants to live in peace in our Azerbaijan should enjoy what we know and want to give." Generosity of winners, have we already said?
A place for optimism
As I leave Shusha, another huge sign reminds me that "Karabakh is Azerbaijan." The radio news reports that the "president" of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Samwal Shaghramnan, signed a decree announcing the dissolution of the entity under his leadership and the abolition of all its institutions as of January 1, 2024. Thus the Armenian story of Nagorno-Karabakh officially came to an end.
Is this also the end of history? Past experience in Shusha shows that the answer is no, at least as long as the place is populated by different and hostile ethnic and religious groups. The first wave of clashes between Armenians and Azeris swept through the town in 1905, and since then killings and slaughters have been repeated whenever control of the area has loosened. Each side has its own narrative and its own answer to the question of who is to blame, but the dry numbers of slaughtered civilians on both sides suggest that there were probably no righteous people in these clashes.
Armenian children leaving Nagorno-Karabakh,
However, in recent events there is something different. The defeat of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic carries with it a chance for a permanent settlement that will emerge from Azerbaijan's military victory. It seems that this time even the vanquished will live with the outcome, whether voluntarily or out of necessity.
Azerbaijan has never come to terms with Nagorno-Karabakh becoming an independent stronghold. There was no movement here that sought to give up the rebel rope for the sake of peace, real or imagined. The next time you are told that conflicts between peoples are not resolved by force, remember this mountainous region, which both sides demanded for themselves. Whether you side with the Azeris or the Armenians, like it or not, the Karabakh question has been resolved and removed from the agenda forever by military force.
Actual population exchanges (Armenians to Armenia and Azeris to Azerbaijan) reduce the likelihood of another conflagration in the Caucasus, though not eliminate it entirely. The question now is what other conflicts will follow the path of the Karabakh precedent and be resolved in a similar way.
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