The commander of the victorious military watched on in triumph as his troops goose-stepped in columns by means of the central sq. of the previous breakaway capital that they had captured in a brazen assault simply weeks earlier than.
The commander, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, was taking a victory lap final week across the Nagorno-Karabakh metropolis of Stepanakert, also called Khankendi, a ghost city after its ethnic Armenian residents fled in fear as Azerbaijani troops captured the realm.
“The enemy has knelt earlier than us,” Mr. Aliyev, wearing camouflage, stated as he hailed his troops from a small podium.
Azerbaijan seized full control over Nagorno-Karabakh, together with Stepanakert, in late September after defeating separatist forces, extending positive aspects made in 2020 when a Russia-brokered cease-fire allowed it to take over many of the territory that Armenia had seized in a yearslong struggle within the 1990s.
The territory has been remodeled. More than 100,000 of its residents have fled since September, and Azerbaijanis have streamed in since final yr to imagine management over the properties and communities from which their households have been expelled many years in the past.
Whereas the weapons have fallen silent, the triumphalism of the Azerbaijanis and provocative statements by Mr. Aliyev, who makes little secret of his irredentist claims in opposition to Armenia, will do little to calm long-running ethnic tensions, consultants say.
“He was a victor, and he might have used this place to fix the scenario, to cease the rhetoric of hatred and begin constructing actual peace,” Altay Goyushov, an Azerbaijani historian, stated of Mr. Aliyev’s parade and his public pronouncements about ethnic Armenians, whom he has accused of “savagery,” ethnic cleansing and genocide. (Armenia has lengthy made comparable accusations in opposition to Azerbaijan.)
Mr. Goyushov added: “Sadly, we haven’t seen that.”
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a strategic sliver of mountainous land within the Caucasus, had tormented diplomats and politicians from Russia and the West for many years. Tens of hundreds of troopers and civilians have been killed within the years of preventing.
Visits to each side of the border — in Azerbaijan in June, and Armenia in July and late September — by a workforce from The New York Instances and conversations with residents, adopted up with phone calls in October, counsel that the injuries of the battle are prone to fester, creating fertile floor for brand spanking new violence.
Azerbaijani households are constructing new properties, planting timber and arranging furnishings to have fun their return to their ancestral villages after greater than 30 years in exile. On the opposite facet of the border, the scene is strikingly completely different: Over 100,000 ethnic Armenians who fled the territory in a caravan of automobiles are struggling to begin anew in Armenia.
“My land feels so candy,” stated Gayane Milonyan, 36, an Armenian who fled Stepanakert, the city the place Mr. Aliyev held the parade, already nostalgic for the house she left in September with 29 members of her prolonged household, together with her two youngsters. However, she stated, “the identical land is so thirsty for blood.”
She and her household are actually residing in a lodge in Goris, throughout the mountains in Armenia.
Ramiz Gasanov, an Azerbaijani who’s now constructing a house for his household in Lachin, the Karabakh city they fled greater than three many years in the past, stated final month that he didn’t need the Armenians to depart however that he had “lived by means of the identical tragedy 30 years in the past.”
That sense of resentment simmers on each side.
“I’m glad that we returned, however we misplaced the whole lot that we had right here,” Gulbeniz Magerramova, 67, stated in June as she threaded by means of the overgrown ruins of her ancestral house in Shusha, a significant Karabakh city that each Armenians and Azerbaijanis regard as central to their nationwide identities.
She in contrast what occurred to her and her prolonged household with the plight of Ukrainians, hundreds of thousands of whom have been displaced throughout Europe after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Her recommendation: by no means lose hope.
However many on each side of the battle say it’s tough to not really feel disheartened — and deep bitterness — when years flip into many years.
Standing in entrance of the home his father had in-built Lachin and to which he has simply returned, Iman Ismailov stated he felt “nothing however hatred” towards Armenians for forcing him to flee his house three many years in the past.
“Thirty-one years of my life have been destroyed,” stated Mr. Ismailov, 64. “Once we left this home, we had 9 individuals in our household,” he stated, as staff mounted his entrance door. “Now, solely my sister and I got here again.”
Armenians who’ve fled Lachin expressed comparable emotions.
Aida Balikyan moved greater than a yr in the past, forsaking a retailer, a carwash and a tire store within the Karabakh city and touring throughout the border to the village of Kornidzor in Armenia. From her balcony, she will see Lachin.
Within the new retailer she rents, a teary-eyed Ms. Balikyan, 73, confirmed an image of Mr. Aliyev, the Azerbaijani president, standing in Lachin in entrance of what she stated was a tree her husband had planted.
“I’m ready,” Ms. Balikyan stated in June, when a workforce from The Instances visited her. “I don’t know when and the way, however we will likely be again.”
For now, Mr. Aliyev’s authoritarian authorities is making an attempt to show Lachin right into a affluent image of his rule. New properties and condo buildings have mushroomed round previous ruined ones. About 650 Azerbaijanis are anticipated to settle there by the top of the yr, stated Nasimi Asadov, who manages the Lachin mission.
The Azerbaijani authorities has a grasp plan for the city, developed by a Swiss firm, that envisions the development of an “occupation” museum specializing in the years that Armenians managed Nagorno-Karabakh, a theater and a cinema. General, it plans to spend greater than $17.5 billion on creating the Karabakh area by 2026, in response to Aydin Kerimov, one of many Azerbaijani officers overseeing the mission.
However none of that can erase the recollections of painful exile for Shafaq Abbasova. Strolling by means of Lachin, Ms. Abbasova was searching for the home she grew up in, solely managing to take action by recognizing acquainted ceramic tiles on its ruined partitions.
Aside from constructing infrastructure, Azerbaijan can also be demining the frontier that separated the 2 armies. Over the previous three many years, it became some of the fortified areas on this planet, leaving a everlasting scar on the land, stated Ruslan Muradov, one of many specialists main the trouble.
Mr. Muradov stated the demining course of was a reminder that conflicts final for much longer than their energetic phases. He stated it might take as much as 40 years and billions of {dollars} for the Azerbaijani authorities to finish the method.
In Nagorno-Karabakh — whose modest dimension belies its strategic significance for Russia, Turkey, Iran and the West — Armenians and Azerbaijanis as soon as lived collectively largely peacefully, even when with their very own, diametrically opposed visions of the area’s historical past.
Armenians and Azerbaijanis described how they used to coexist peacefully throughout the Soviet period, certain by intermarriage and commerce, with grievances saved in verify beneath the watchful eye of the central authorities in Moscow.
In Shusha, as an illustration, Ms. Magerramova stated that her youngsters performed and ate along with Armenian neighbors.
However, sitting on high of a picturesque cliff that overlooks the encircling space, Shusha has additionally been an emblem of decades-old interethnic strife over territory and historical past. Throughout the previous century, it was burned thrice: as soon as by each side, as soon as by the Azerbaijanis, and as soon as by the Armenians. Now, Armenians have left once more, and lots of already harbor hopes for an eventual return.
Ruben Arutyunyan, 63, fought to overcome Shusha (which he and different Armenians name Shushi) from Azerbaijan in 1992. As soon as it was captured, he walked by means of the city to search out his ancestral house. His father’s {photograph} was nonetheless hanging on a wall.
In 2020, hours earlier than Azerbaijanis captured it, he ran from Shusha for dozens of miles with solely a bag of paperwork. He nonetheless holds a grudge.
“Irrespective of how good an Azerbaijani is, he’ll at all times shoot you within the again,” he stated in June.
However, he added, greater forces had been at play within the battle.
“This isn’t our struggle,” Mr. Arutyunyan stated. “It’s a struggle between the pursuits of Russia, America and Britain.”
Nyree Abrahamian contributed reporting from Goris, Armenia, and Naila Balayeva from Lachin, Azerbaijan.
