in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijanis return to settle in areas deserted by Armenians

At the last Azerbaijani post before Armenia, in the Lachin corridor, workers are busy. “Here, there are construction sites everywhere. We are building a new area so that people can come back and live there”, explains one of them. A little more than a month after the victory of Baku’s troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan is strengthening its control of the reconquered territory. Numerous checkpoints, manned by Russian or Azerbaijani guards, control access. Almost the entire Armenian population fled Nagorno-Karabakh within a few days last September.

President Aliev went to plant the flag of Azerbaijan in the former capital, Stepanakert for the Armenians, now renamed Khankendi. The question now arises as to how Baku intends to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh into the rest of the country.

“We are happy to have recovered our lands. For 30 years, the Armenians occupied them. And then they took away all their belongings and left. What happened to them was the same thing that we experienced , U.S. too”, continues this worker. Along the Lachin corridor, car wrecks and ripped bags of clothing bear witness to the panic of the exodus. As for the Azerbaijanis, they are starting to return to settle in the houses they had to leave during the first war, at the beginning of the 1990s. This is the case of Leyla’s family, who returned a month ago to penalty.

“I never thought I would be able to return to my homeland after 31 years.”

Leyla, an Azerbaijani woman returning to Nagorno-Karabakh

at franceinfo

“Every day I waited for thisassures Leyla. I dreamed of it every night. Thank God, this dream has come true. God bless those who died! Long life to the President of the Republic and to the war veterans. It was thanks to them that we were able to come back. We are happy, very happy. You can’t imagine.”

Life in exile was not easy every day, remembers his daughter Leman: “We had the label of refugee and that hurt me. These are the conditions we lived in because of the Armenians”. She did not have a tear for the Armenians who had to flee in turn. “They had to leave, this land is ours”she continues.

One of his sons, who is 13, already knows that when he grows up, he wants to be “a warrior”, “to protect the homeland against the Armenians because sooner or later they will try to return, but they will find the army of Azerbaijan facing them”. The reconciliation that the Azerbaijani government says it wants therefore still seems a pipe dream.