Armenians burn their homes before Azerbaijan takes over
KALBAJAR, Azerbaijan — In a bitter farewell to his home of 21 years, Garo Dadevusyan wrenched off its metal roof and prepared to set the stone house on fire. Thick smoke poured from houses his neighbors had already torched before fleeing this ethnic Armenian village.
The village is to be turned over to Azerbaijan today as part of territorial concessions in an agreement to end six weeks of intense fighting with Armenian forces. The move gripped its 600 people with fear and anger so deep that they destroyed their homes.
The settlement — called Karvachar in Armenian — is legally part of Azerbaijan, but it has been under the control of ethnic Armenians since the 1994 end of a war over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. That war left not only Nagorno-Karabakh itself but also substantial surrounding territory in Armenian hands.
After years in which sporadic clashes broke out between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces, full-scale fighting began in late September this year. Azerbaijan made relentless military advances, culminating in the seizure of the city of Shusha.
Two days after Azerbaijan announced it had taken Shusha, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a cease-fire under which territory that Armenia occupies outside the formal borders of Nagorno-Karabakh will be gradually ceded.
Russia facilitated the ceasefire and territorial concessions and is sending in nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to enforce it.
On Saturday, miles-long columns of cars and trucks carrying fleeing residents jammed the road to Armenia.
Hundreds of thousands of Azeris were displaced by the war that ended in 1994. It is unclear when any civilians might try to settle in Karvachar — which will now be known by its Azeri name Kalbajar — or elsewhere.
Any returns could be wrenching. Settlers will confront the burned, empty shells of houses — or worse. Agdam, which is to be turned over this week, once was a city of about 40,000, but now is an empty sprawl of buildings that were destroyed in the first war or later ruined by pillagers grabbing building materials.