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Angelo Calianno talks to a few of the 65 thousand forgotten and abandoned refugees who fled Nagorno-Karabakh
More than six months have passed since the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But there are people for whom the war is never over – the refugees; thousands of people who have had to leave their homes, now in the territory of Azerbaijan; hundreds of families who, in addition to losing husbands, children and brothers in the last war, have lost their homes and jobs.
Unlike many other ‘refugees’ in the world, there are no reception centres for those fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh. Some were given a small amount of initial money, others a promise – never kept – of new housing. In fact, thousands of people have had to sort out their problems on their own: a new home, a new life, the luckiest have some relatives in Armenia who are able to put them up.
Some families took refuge here, on the outskirts of Hrazdan, about an hour from Yerevan, where they rented an apartment or occupied abandoned houses, in many cases old and run-down.
‘I Live in Hell’
Arleta now lives with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. She lost her husband in the first war in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s and, in September 2020, her youngest son Hawk, 30. In tears she tells me:
“Hawk had returned home the day the bombing began. After a shower he was immediately called back to base, it was the last time I saw him. Days later I learned that, before he died, he had phoned a friend of his telling him that they were surrounded by Azerbaijani troops and therefore, they would surrender. A few minutes later, his friend called back. An Azerbaijani soldier answered the phone saying it was useless to keep calling because they had killed him.”
When I ask Arleta what her life is like today and what sense she finds in it, her answer is dry and direct:
“I live in hell. I keep on going for my grandchildren, but I’m in a house that’s not mine, with no chance of going back home. I go on because I have to, but I’ve lost almost everything.”
‘Azerbaijani Soldiers Posted Videos on YouTube’
A few blocks from Arleta lives Valery, 27. Valery worked in the Army Hospital during the last conflict.