'I'll cut missiles in half and use them to feed my pigs': Nagorno-Karabakh defiant in face of Azeri shelling
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 himself.
Just as he was eating lunch, a rocket landed in Stepanakert’s main fire station compound, the blast echoing across the city and wrecking part of the building, injuring 11 of his colleagues.
"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 that the rocket tore 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 last week - some hitting military targets, some smacking harmlessly into nearby hills and gorges, some wrecking civilian homes and farmsteads. But while much of the shelling appears to be almost indiscriminate, there is nothing random about the choice of Stepanakert as a general target.
Three decades ago, when Armenian-dominated Nagorno-Karabakh fought a brutal war for independence from Azerbaijan, Stepanakert was crowned the de facto capital of the new breakaway region. Today, the city of 50,000 is seen as a symbol of pride by Armenians - and as a living, breathing insult by Azeris, many of whom were forced to flee during the 1988-94 war.
To the outside visitor, modern-day Stepanakert does not seem like much of a place for either side to fight for. With the war here officially "frozen" since a ceasefire in 1994, much of the city has changed little since Soviet times, with many residents still living in drab, Communist-era housing blocks. Some outlying towns and villages still bear the scars of the 1990s war, and in areas close to the Azeri frontlines, much of the farmland is off limits because of minefields.
The term "frozen" also belies the fact that over the last 30 years, the two sides have skirmished almost constantly, with at least 3,000 people killed. Many of the deaths are caused by snipers shooting at each other in World War One style frontlines only 100 metres apart.
For most of that time, though, the two sides were roughly evenly matched, the 150,000 Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh enjoying military and political support from Armenia proper. In the recent flare-up, however, oil-rich Azerbaijan appears to be prevailing.
Azerbaijan's authoritarian president, Ilham Aliev, not only has explicit backing from his fellow strongman in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he also has brand 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 seems to tell its own story.
At a briefing yesterday in Stepanakert, a spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabakh military said that 54 of their soldiers had been killed in the previous 24 hours. Around 80 died earlier in the week.
With President Aliev now threatening to press home his advantage and recapture the entire region - still recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan - Stepanakert is now a town readying for 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 service at the frontlines. Air raid sirens sound regularly, ordering residents to take cover in bomb-proof shelters. And at night, as residents soothe their nerves with home-made vodka, the city's lights are switched off to avoid attracting drone attention.
World leaders are now increasingly anxious to bring the conflict to a halt, mindful that the total death toll has already passed 200 in just six days. President Emmanuel Macron of France has criticised Mr Erdogan for stirring the conflict, saying that France now has "certain" proof that Turkey has sent Syrian jihadists to assist the Azerbaijani forces. But on Friday, Mr Aliev insisted that the "ball was in the court of Armenia", demanding that it withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh before any ceasefire discussions could take place.
That, however, seems unlikely - as does the prospect of any of Nagorno-Karabakh's ultra-patriotic residents conceding defeat in the face of superior military might.
Yura Arzumanian, 52, a veteran of the original war in the 1990s, was woken up last Sunday by three ten-foot long Azeri missiles, which landed in the garden of his farmstead on the outskirts of Stepanakert. They failed to explode, and now the long 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 water troughs to feed my pigs."
