Your Namak for Monday, December 18
The Region That Ceased to Exist
Dear Readers,
Today we are sharing a personal essay by our co-founder Astrig Agopian, who was on the ground in Armenia during the exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.
As a freelance journalist, Astrig has spent the past three years reporting from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh for international media. She describes her experience documenting Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenia-Azerbaijan border as her “baptism by fire,” an industry term that refers to a reporter’s experience covering their first conflict. In this first-person piece, Astrig shares her candid reflections upon witnessing the ethnic cleansing of her own people.
We have spent the past several weeks hearing from readers about what you all value most in this newsletter. Namak will be back in the new year with an updated format, focusing on the profiles that our audience has grown to love. Thank you for staying with us in 2023.
Wishing you peace and prosperity in 2024,
Astrig and Maral
The Region That Ceased to Exist
I have never really suffered from the blank page syndrome, but this piece has been tormenting me for several weeks now. Every time I sit down to write, I am swept away by a tornado of mental images and sounds.
What should I do? Where should I start? What can you write when it feels like, as most people I have interviewed on their exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh have told me, “There’s nothing left to say”?
Should I describe what it was like to witness and document the ethnic cleansing of more than one hundred thousand people? The cars of refugees passing by? People’s faces? The situation at the hospital?
Type. Erase. Type. Erase. Type. Erase.
The unbearable death rattles of the seriously burnt victims of the Stepanakert fuel depot explosion? Should I quote these people who had just lost everything?
Type. Erase. Type. Erase. Type. Erase.
Should I discuss the situation in Armenia now? Explain the quiet refugee crisis? Or is it necessary to explain the blockade first? The situation before that? The aftermath of the 2020 war?
Type. Erase. Type. Erase. Type. Erase.
The 2020 war itself? How can you sum up three years of a geopolitical and emotional rollercoaster that ended in a textbook example of ethnic cleansing? Some would argue you should not even try to do so.
A disclaimer — this is not an attempt to explain the whole conflict; this is not a proper dispatch from the ground nor an analysis piece. This is an essay made of my field notes and mental rumblings, as a reporter who has been covering Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia extensively over the last three years.
How can you sum up three years of a geopolitical and emotional rollercoaster that ended in a textbook example of ethnic cleansing? Some would argue you should not even try to do so.
On September 19, when the short war started in Nagorno-Karabakh, I booked a plane ticket for Armenia and went straight from Paris to Goris. At a time when no Western newsroom seemed to believe ethnic cleansing could happen, I teamed up with French photographer Rebecca Topakian and a foreign journalist based in Armenia. We headed to Kornidzor, the last village before the entrance to the Lachin corridor –– the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and the rest of the world –– which had been blocked for 10 months by Azerbaijan, depriving residents of food, medicine, electricity, gas and other essentials.
We arrived at the border on September 20 and everything seemed empty. It was silent. At some point we stopped near a road sign that said “Artsakh.” Something caught my attention. A sort of wounded snake. Was it even a snake? Or some sort of onshore eel? Maybe a long legless lizard? Whatever it was, its long silvery body was shining under the sun, slowly rolling to the side, blood rushing from a cut below its head. It was looking at us, horrified. And then it stopped. As stupid as this might sound, I thought it was a bad omen. Or a disturbing metaphor of a region on the brink of death.
Right before the last Armenian checkpoints leading into Nagorno-Karabakh, we encountered a line of cars. There were a dozen men, all from Nagorno-Karabakh, stuck in Armenia because of the blockade, hoping their relatives would be able to leave and waiting there to pick them up. They offered us food, coffee and vodka. We offered them and the policemen at the checkpoint sweets and cigarettes.
Nobody seemed to know, or be willing to tell us, if and when evacuations would start. We were so sure the exodus would happen and so paranoid about when it would be, that we went to the border all the time, even at night. At this point there was pretty much no media. The silence was deafening, especially because we knew that a few kilometers away, people were under shelling.
We were in touch with people inside; whenever they had enough connection, they sent us voice notes, photos and videos. “We need to get out of here or we will die,” was the prevailing message.
…we went to the border all the time, even at night. At this point there was pretty much no media. The silence was deafening, especially because we knew that a few kilometers away, people were under shelling.
There was one man originally from a village near the Amaras Monastery in Nagorno-Karabakh’s Martuni region. I remember him because he had a cheeky smile, was very chatty and we jokingly got into a few little arguments about women’s rights. I saw him again a few days later. Part of his family had crossed, but he had lost several relatives in the fuel depot explosion in Stepanakert on September 25, in which at least 220 people died and 300 were injured while attempting to obtain fuel to flee the region by car. He was crying. “There’s nothing left to say.”
A few more journalists had arrived when the Spayka trucks left –– the vehicles carrying tons of humanitarian aid from Armenia had been stalled at the border for weeks. That’s when we understood that people would begin fleeing. And it started. One by one, cars, and then minivans, and then buses, and then trucks.
The first person I talked to was Arsen, an old man driving a navy blue car. The car’s roof rack was loaded with a few plastic bags containing some clothing, pictures, blankets –– the remains of his life. Next to him, his wife seemed so lost, she was looking back a lot. As if she still did not believe it.
“What can I say? It’s over, we lost everything,” Arsen told me. “Our house is there, our land, our animals. Our life. We left everything behind, and we are leaving. Where are we even going? I don’t know.” Tears rolled down his cheeks into his white beard. He punctuated his sentences with “aziz jan” and “bales.” “I am a refugee now,” he said. That's when I realized a group of reporters had gathered around us and made Arsen feel uncomfortable. I took a step back and he drove away, crying.
“Where were you?”, “Why didn’t you talk about the blockade?”, “Why did you let this happen?”, “Why are you here now?”
The circus has arrived, I thought. Which is unfair, because I am part of the circus. And what was happening definitely deserved the media attention that it had finally started to receive. In a few days, all the major media outlets had either sent their teams or given assignments to us, the freelancers.
But as more people got out, the more they were angry and screamed at us: “Where were you?”, “Why didn’t you talk about the blockade?”, “Why did you let this happen?”, “Why are you here now?”. All those questions made me feel uncomfortable. I understood where they came from, but did not know how to respond. I was there actually and tried to cover the situation as much as possible. But so what? These people had just lost their homeland. There was nothing we could say or do.
As usual in these situations, we saw the best and the worst in journalists. Some photographers behaved like they were photographing zoo animals, others did their jobs in the most humane way possible, stopping to hold a grandmother’s hand, making silly sounds to cheer up a kid, or spending hours at night trying to find a desperate family a place to sleep.
It was non stop. Day and night. And we got the official numbers updated all the time. 2,000 people have fled. 5,000, 10,000, 19,000, 30,000… and just like that, more than 100,000 people. In a few days, everyone fled. Now it was official, it was in the headlines and the public statements: “exodus,” “ethnic cleansing.” All the NGOs had arrived and set up tents. The hotels were full, there was virtually no housing. Some people slept in their cars or in the street. I have heard some reporters say that their camera is like an emotional shield. I don’t think that’s true.
“You know after the last wars I rebuilt, but now, I am too old, I cannot. How many times can one lose everything?”
I was struck by my encounter with a man named Parkev. I photographed his children and wife on a bus when they arrived. Later, I saw them again at the Goris Hotel. He told me that he was an orphan, a refugee from Baku, both his parents had died during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Parkev had built a new life for himself in Nagorno-Karabakh’s Askeran region and now had lost everything, but he was grateful they all survived, and his kids were not orphans too.
Another day in Goris, I met a mother and two kids sitting on a bench, looking into the void, lost. The woman explained that the authorities had offered her a spot on a bus to Kapan and that there would be housing there. But she refused. “I am scared. I don’t want to live on the border with Azerbaijan,” she said.
Another man I met, who was in his 50s, had a prosthetic leg after being wounded and losing his limb during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. “We ran. I took my family, my grandchildren, and we left,” he said. He cried about his dogs that he had to leave behind. “You know after the last wars I rebuilt, but now, I am too old, I cannot. How many times can one lose everything?”.
Just like that, in a few days, the influx of people stopped, Nagorno-Karabakh was empty of its population. We visited hospitals where we saw elderly people who had strokes and heart attacks on the way, a journey that lasted more than 40 hours in some cases, with no food or water. Some children were hospitalized because of malnutrition.
Back in Yerevan, at the center for burn victims, we heard and saw the people who were severely burnt and injured after the fuel station explosion. And then as quickly as everything went from silence and emptiness to crowds and chaos, it went back to silence and emptiness. The media left. The NGO tents disappeared.
After Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s continuous bombardment of Gaza, media attention shifted to the Middle East. Some of the very same reporters who were in Armenia took a plane to cover that war. Now in Armenia, even though it’s less visible, it’s there: ethnic cleansing happened and there are more than one hundred thousand refugees, some of whom are living in spartan conditions, or in some cases, squalid ones. It’s a quiet crisis, with people staying with relatives or in some schools and other buildings, in garages, trailers…
After all this, we went back to Yerevan. But mentally, we were not really back. One day in the capital, a friend of mine from Stepanakert called my name. It was like seeing a ghost. It was also probably when I realized it was all true. It was not just a blip or bad dream. We hugged, he was so thin and looked so much older now, but he was alive.
My friend said something that struck me: “I thought people here in Armenia would throw stones at us, that we would have to leave. But they did not, they are actually nice. Every time they hear us speak in our dialect, people stop us, say they are so sorry for what happened to us and ask if they can help somehow.” This deep wound for Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh also awakened the collective trauma of genocide and war for all Armenians.
I am a reporter, that’s my job. I go on the ground, talk to people, fact check, document what’s happening. I graduated from university in 2020. The coverage of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia was my “baptism of fire,” as we say in journalism. It has also been one of the most painful experiences of my life to cover conflict and the ethnic cleansing of my own people.
I went to Nagorno-Karabakh for the first time in 1999, when I was almost one year old. So obviously, I do not remember it. But there’s a picture of me in front of Tatik Papik to prove it. The last time I visited Nagorno-Karabakh was for a reporting trip in October 2022, a few weeks before the blockade began. For some reason, I did something I usually did not do during my trips to Stepanakert over the last three years. I took a picture in front of Tatik Papik. As if a part of me knew.
Now, Nagorno-Karabakh, the homeland for more than one hundred thousand Armenians, will “cease to exist” as of January 1, 2024. Cease to exist. Erase.
But I’ll dig into my archives, keep talking to Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh who are now refugees. And I’ll keep typing.
Astrig
A note to our readers: When international journalists cannot access a region, or when the media attention decreases, only journalists on the ground –– people directly affected by the conflict –– can document the story. They have to survive and often suffer the exact same pain and dangers as the people they report on.
We have seen examples of this most recently in Syria, Ukraine and Gaza. It was also the case during the 10-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh and exodus of Armenians from the region. These journalists are suddenly contacted –– or in some cases harassed –– by international media during a short period of time. Then they are immediately forgotten after the news cycle passes and they are not needed anymore. But while international attention turns elsewhere, these reporters have lost everything and are now refugees. Among them is Marut Vanyan, who wrote a personal essay for Namak during the blockade.
Please consider supporting displaced Nagorno-Karabakh freelance journalists through this fundraiser organized by scholar Simon Maghakyan and photojournalist Scout Tufankjian (who was reporting on the ground from Kornidzor and Goris during the ethnic cleansing).
Questions? Story ideas? An urge to say barev/parev? You can send us a secure email at namaknews@protonmail.com.
good work, enjoy reading namak