Battle-hardened firefighters prepare for a siege
As a senior fireman in Stepanakert, the capital city of Nagorno-karabakh, Armen Naremanian knew he’d be busy when war erupted with Azerbaijan last weekend. Yesterday, though, rather than putting out fires or rescuing people from bombed buildings, he was running for cover.
While he was eating lunch, a rocket landed in the compound of Stepanakert’s main fire station. The blast was heard across the city. Eleven of his colleagues were injured and part of the building was wrecked.
“We saw some Azerbaijan drones in the sky looking for targets, but we didn’t think the fire station would be a target because we’re a humanitarian service,” said Mr Naremanian, as he surveyed the two-foot wide crater the rocket had torn in the compound’s car park. “Now it’s going to make it harder for us to rescue innocent victims of this war. They are doing this shelling just to cause panic among people.”
The rocket was part of a constant barrage of Azeri artillery around Stepanakert in the past week. Some hit military targets, some smacked harmlessly into nearby hills and gorges, but some destroyed civilian homes and farmsteads. While much of the shelling appeared indiscriminate, there was nothing random about the choice of Stepanakert as a target.
Three decades ago, when Armeniandominated Nagorno-karabakh fought a brutal war for independence from Azerbaijan, Stepanakert was crowned the de facto capital of the breakaway region. Today, the city of 50,000 is a symbol of Armenian pride – but it is seen as a living, breathing insult by Azeris, many of whom were forced to flee during the 1988-94 war.
To a visitor, Stepanakert does not seem a place worth fighting for. With the war here officially “frozen” since a ceasefire in 1994, much of the city has changed little since Soviet times, with residents living in drab Communist-era housing blocks. Some outlying towns and villages still bear the scars of the Nineties war, and in areas close to the Azeri front lines, much of the farmland is off limits because of minefields.
The term “frozen” also belies the fact that over the past 30 years, the two sides have constantly skirmished, and at least 3,000 people have died. Many deaths are caused by snipers shooting at each other in First World War-style front lines just 100 metres apart.
For most of that time, the sides were evenly matched – 150,000 Armenians of Nagorno-karabakh enjoyed military and political support from Armenia proper. But in the recent fighting, oil-rich Azerbaijan appears to be prevailing. Ilham Aliev, Azerbaijan's authoritarian president, not only has explicit backing from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his fellow presidential strongman in Turkey, he also has new drone weaponry that Nagorno-Karabakh’s tanks have little defence against. And while both sides make exaggerated claims about their military campaigns, the mounting death toll on the Nagorno-karabakh side tells its own story.
At a briefing in Stepanakert yesterday, a spokesman for the Nagorno-karabakh military said that 54 soldiers of their soldiers had been killed in the previous 24 hours. Eighty had died earlier in the week.
With Mr Aliev now threatening to press home his advantage and recapture the region, still recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan, Stepanakert is preparing for a siege.
Hotels and local houses are full of women and children evacuated from outlying villages. Shops and businesses are shut, many of their proprietors having volunteered for the front line. Air raid sirens sound regularly, ordering residents to take cover in bombproof shelters. At night, as residents soothe their nerves with home-made vodka, the city’s lights are switched off to avoid drone attention.
World leaders are increasingly anxious to bring the conflict to a halt, mindful that the total death toll has passed 200 in just six days.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has criticised Mr Erdoğan for stirring the conflict, claiming France has “certain” proof that Turkey has sent Syrian jihadists to help the Azerbaijani forces. But yesterday, Mr Aliev insisted the “ball was in the court of Armenia”, demanding it withdraw troops from Nagorno-karabakh before any ceasefire discussions could take place.
That, however, seems unlikely, as does the prospect of any of NagornoKarabakh’s ultra-patriotic residents conceding defeat in the face of a superior military might.
Yura Arzumanian, 52, a veteran of the original war in the Nineties, was awoken last Sunday by three Azeri missiles, which landed in the garden of his farmstead on the outskirts of Stepanakert.
They failed to explode, and now the 10ft metal tubes stick out of the ground amid his crops of vines and aubergines. Far from being terrified, he plans to sign up for military duty again – this time, he vows, to claim even more territory for Nagorno-karabakh from Azerbaijan.
“I am not scared. I was fighting in 1988 and killed many Turks and mujahideen who were fighting then,” he said. “And as for these rockets? I will cut the tubes in half, and use them as troughs to feed my pigs.”