In De-Occupied Areas, Russian Peacekeepers, Red Cross Officials, Departing Armenians and Returning Azerbaijanis Cooperating, Moscow Paper Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 3 – Sorting out a situation in which control over a particular territory is passing from one state to another and involving both peacekeepers and representatives of the International Red Cross as well as the departure of one group and the return of another is invariably fraught with difficulties.

            That is all the more likely to be the case in the first days of such a transfer when confusion reigns and when those returning see the destruction of the homes and institutions they had relied on and are inclined to blame what they see on the ill will of the occupiers rather than the ebb and flow of the fighting.

            Obviously, the situation can lead those returning and those leaving to clash with one another, posing particular challenges for monitoring and assistance groups like peacekeepers and the Red Cross and for the two governments involved who may want to exploit the situation one way or another.

            But fortunately, Kirill Krivosheyev, a Kommersant journalist who has visited regions of this kind in Azerbaijan, says that while returning Azerbaijanis are often furious because of what they have found, Azerbaijani officialsare working closely with the Russian peacekeepers, the Red Cross, and the departing Armenians (kommersant.ru/doc/4595500).

            He notes that Azerbaijani police are keeping the returnees in check and are even taking inventory of livestock and personal property so that what belongs to Armenians can be returned to them through the good offices of the Red Cross and devoting particular efforts to identifying the dead for the same end.

            “It is difficult to believe that such a complicated arrangement is working,” Krivosheyev says, but in fact it is, at least in part. And that shows that “nothing is impossible.” He points to a column of vehicles he observed going through one checkpoint as an example of what is now occurring in large measure thanks to Azerbaijani official discipline.

            There, the journalist says, he observed in one convoy, “a jeep with Azerbaijani license plates, a truck with Armenian ones … two APCs of Russian peacekeepers with their flags, and automobiles of the Red Cross.” They were all working together apparently to exhume and return the bodies of those who died in the conflict.

            Krivosheyev’s report does not mean that there won’t be problems as the return process continues; but it is an indication that at least for the moment, those on the ground are prepared to cooperate with each other to address some of the problems occupation and now de-occupation present. And that provides some basis to hope that the process will go better than many feared.