Letter from a Fictive Country

Seeking Stability Inside War-Torn Azerbaijan

by Deacon EZRAS TELLALIAN

The afternoon of October 27, 2020 was a beautiful, sunny, quintessentially fall day in Nagorno-Karabakh. On the road to Martuni, we posed for a photo with a team of journalists. Less than a minute later, I dropped to the ground, prone. I remember feeling the ground beneath me shake before I even realized what was happening. A bomb landed in the field less than 100 meters from us. We were alone in the middle of a valley and being attacked. Thank God no cluster munitions were dispersed, or you would not be reading this. I looked up from the ground, toward my team members— none of us were bleeding. There was no sound. I rose to take some photographs of the explosion as our cameraman captured video. I remember feeling at peace—no anger at being attacked, no ill will against those trying to kill us, no fear of dying (what would be the use?), but a sense of calmness almost to the point of numbness. Some might call it radical acceptance. After a few shots, we climbed back into the van and turned around toward the capital, Stepanakert, where we were staying. On the road, Azeris also detonated five loitering munitions (also known as suicide drones) just above us, maybe 50 meters away. In my photographs of this attack, I inadvertently captured what appears to be a Bayrakdar drone, which would have guided both attacks, indicating that they were intentional. Why were we being attacked? Well, I mentioned a capital. This capital, however, is of a country that does not exist.

Borders are one of those Socratic things. Like love, beauty, and justice, we think we know what they are, but when asked to define them, we struggle. So, what is a border? As someone born and raised in the U.S.A., borders have always seemed stable to me. I would never have imagined finding myself amidst a border dispute so intense that my life would be in danger. My trip to Artsakh (as the Nagorno-Karabakh region is known to indigenous Armenians) during the war last October was a visceral object lesson in the complicated nature of political borders.

As far as I was concerned, I was in Artsakh, a place Armenians have inhabited for millennia. Even through Muslim rule, which lasted from the seventh century until 1805, Armenians had governed themselves, with five meliks, or princes, overseeing the region’s five principalities. After World War I, however, Joseph Stalin offered the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) and Nakhichevan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) to Azerbaijanis as an incentive to join the Soviet Union. So, the territory became recognized as part of the Azerbaijan SSR. The Russians, it should be noted, also laid claim to the region, and therefore viewed this territorial gain as a reconquest. This border drawing followed Stalin’s modus operandi of dividing and controlling, not only intentionally weakening the cohesiveness of these protectorates to mitigate the threat of revolution, but also setting the stage for conflict for decades to come. As for demographics, in 1929, nearly 90% of the population of NKAO were Armenian and 10% Azeribaijani. By 1989, the Armenian population was reduced to about 75% and Azerbaijanis made up over 20%.

In 1991, as the Soviet bloc was fracturing, the Armenians in the NKAO had a referendum in which they declared themselves the Republic of Artsakh, independent of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan passed an analogous referendum about six weeks later. I say, “the Armenians in NKAO,” because the Azeris living there boycotted the election, thereby complicating the argument for recognizing Artsakh’s independence based on self-determination. But even if they had participated, the majority rule would have been the same. Though the referendum passed, latent ethnic conflict erupted into full-blown war from 1988 to 1994, after which Armenians controlled not only NKAO as it had been defined under the Soviets, but additional territories that belonged to traditional Artsakh as well. While on the one hand, these served as buffer zones for Armenians, the expansion of territory also displaced thousands of Azeris. Armenians remember mass killings in Baku and Sumgait; Azeris remember the mass killings of Khojaly. Though the fighting subsided for a couple of decades, tension between the two countries never abated.

"Borders are one of those Socratic things. Like love, beauty, and justice, we think we know what they are, but when asked to define them, we struggle."

From the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994 until 2020, the so-called “line of contact” separated approximately 130,000 to 150,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians on 1,700 square miles of land from 7 to 10 million Azeris, who are 97% Shia. Armenians appeared content to live in relative peace on their ancestral land, not considering another serious war. The line of contact appeared to function as a border, albeit with the regular skirmish, and though Armenians were satisfied with the status quo, Azerbaijanis clearly were not.

Borders mean little, or nothing, if they are not respected by parties on both sides. Armenians did not see themselves as living in Azerbaijan, but Azerbaijan and the rest of the world never recognized the Republic of Artsakh, so it remains essentially nonexistent.

Thus, the tension was never resolved. There were skirmishes in 2014 and 2016. On September 27, 2020, Azeris attacked with full force, and another war began. In an instant, the line of contact became the frontline.

As a third-generation, Armenian-American descendent of genocide survivors, I had a deep, personal interest in this war. It seemed to progress with all-too-familiar elements. A grossly disproportionate attack by a major world power on an ethnic minority was ignored by the international community. The press, as usual, appeared to be interested only in the militaristic aspects of the conflict—attacks on military and civilian targets; number of soldiers sacrificed; numbers of planes, helicopters, and drones that were shot down; shifts on the frontline—not exactly a nuanced, human picture of the impact of war. There were constant attacks on civilian targets, but where were the civilians? Though I never imagined myself travelling to a war zone, I felt compelled to use my experience with photography and my training as a psychologist to bring light to these souls and their experiences.

From the perspective of the United Nations, this is a sort of civil war—and I was in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani government used their territorial claim to justify attacks on civilians. Its army seems to have targeted local and international journalists in the areas controlled by Armenians, and Azeris even posted rationales on social media for injuring and trying to kill journalists, including the notion that they were there illegally, without permission from Azerbaijani government. The dispute over this particular “border” I had crossed when I left Armenia was not simply an abstract problem in need of a diplomatic solution; it posed an immediate, real threat to our lives.

While you may be thinking, Well, they were journalists in a war zone and should have expected this, or even, They asked for it!, I invite you into another scene.

A month into the war, three local children were taking refuge in a bomb shelter in the capital, Stepanakert, despite the constant—and I mean constant—shelling. These children could differentiate between the sounds of this conflict: Smerch and Grad missiles, with and without cluster bombs, artillery, loitering munitions, and so on. They even seemed proud of this ability. One of the children played with a toy AK-47. He did not yet seem to understand the concept of this weapon and hadn’t learned to point it only at targets one intends to shoot. Altogether, there were a dozen people living in two dark, cold, damp, underground rooms. One of the adults declared that nothing was different about living in a shelter during this war compared to the one in the 1990s, except the TV was newer and larger. These people merely wanted to be left alone to live in peace, yet they knew there was some incomprehensible geopolitical war over the land they happened to live on. The unwanted war over borders affected their lives and will continue to do so. To say that no one should live like this seems trite, and though a ceasefire agreement was signed on November 9, 2020, the war continues. As I write this, the Holy Savior Cathedral (Ghazanchetsots) in

Photo: Dn. Ezras Tellalian

Shushi is being dismantled. Perhaps worst of all, there are hundreds of Armenian soldiers and civilians being held, tortured, and killed as “captives” by Azerbaijan, rather than returning these people as POWs. How? By the same argument that this is an internal conflict based on the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani government is rightfully detaining and punishing these people. Once again, the definition of borders affects the lives of individuals in active, tangible ways.

This is certainly not the only conflict of its kind happening today, nor are competing territorial claims a new phenomenon, but is it possible to improve what appears to be an inherent part of the human condition? The answer, I would suggest, is directly related to the construct of a border. In some ways borders unite people, but the definition of an ingroup necessarily also defines an out-group, allowing for social psychological processes like stereotyping and its ugly corollary, dehumanization.

But borders are, as we have seen, fuzzier than we might want or expect them to be. As with many social constructs, our tendency to impose binary psychological distinctions, rather than appreciate the complexity of human experiences and subjectivity, gets us into trouble. And if border, a construct that ought to provide clarity, is itself so unclear, what are we to make of more abstract concepts as sovereignty and self-determination of nations?

Let’s take a big step back. It is natural for us to desire clarity—a better understanding of our environment may make it seem less threatening—but I submit that if we seek clarity about relationships between groups of humans, trying to find it in the physical demarcation of commodified land will not prove fruitful. If competing claims are being made on land based on past occupancy, usage, and importance (and there is little reason to believe these claims will cease anytime soon), borders will remain unstable. The concept of land borders, therefore, is inherently problematic.

How about another big step back, this time all the way to the foot of the Cross? Yes, that is a huge step back, but from this perspective, where was the division between Jesus Christ and humanity? His arms were opened wide to embrace the world as He prayed for His persecutors to be forgiven. Notice the

Photo: Dn. Ezras Tellalian

disparate attitudes toward each other: we betray and kill Him, while He forgives us and grants us Life.

I have spent a lot of time trying to explain (from my admittedly biased perspective) how we arrived at this point based on history, but one of the beautiful aspects of our faith is, I believe, its ability to pull us out of the maelstrom of socially constructed reality and invite us into the peace of spiritual reality. Perhaps you have experienced such peace as your awareness of the presence of God has increased. This is an aspect of God’s grace.

In our liturgical lives, we often collectively pray for peace in the world, peace among ourselves, and peace within ourselves. We pray for “the peace from above,” a peace that the world cannot give. While it may seem that properly defined borders may result in more sustainable peace, any residual grievances over past actions and the status quo make conflict and war over borders, and within borders, inevitable.

When we can forgive, both as individuals and groups, somehow these borders we have erected to separate ourselves from others may dissipate. To build a peaceful future, we must figure out a way to unite, as humanity, around common goals. This, it turns out, is incredibly difficult, evidenced by its rarity in our personal lives (see also Rom. 7:8). Perhaps one day, though, as we are waiting for Jesus to come again, we might all agree that peace is paramount and should be sought after at all costs. We may never see a peaceful world, but we must continue to hope in, pray for, and work toward one.

DN. EZRAS TELLALIAN is a graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and is finishing a PhD in Cognitive, Social, and Developmental Psychology at The New School for Social Research. He is a deacon in the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America. His photographs are published at rezras.com.