Oleg Harutiunian, the mayor of Taghavard<\/span><\/div>\n\u201cAlmost none of the women and children have been able to come back,\u201d says Harutiunian. \u201cHow can they be safe? The Azerbaijanis are right there,\u201d he says, pointing to a hillside barely 500 meters away. Two Azerbaijani soldiers are visible there, standing in front of a ruined building.<\/p>\n
The danger Harutiunian speaks of is not speculative. Several times while talking during his interview, cracks of gunshot can be heard.<\/p>\n
Ethnic Armenian soldiers in the village are billeted in an abandoned house near the checkpoint on the front line. In a brief conversation before their superiors arrive and forbid them from saying more, they confirm that the cease-fire is not holding here.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Azerbaijanis have been firing at us all day,\u201d says Artur, 20. \u201cWe have not returned fire but we have suffered casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sniper war now,\u201d says another young soldier who does not want to give his name.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s peacekeeping contingent, stretched thin along a line of contact that extends for roughly 300 kilometers around the remainder of Armenian-held territory in Nagorno-Karabakh, is not present in Taghavard.<\/p>\n
The Russians’ nearest position — a small checkpoint with a dozen soldiers and two BTR infantry fighting vehicles — is more than 5 kilometers away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Russians aren\u2019t here,\u201d Harutiunian confirms. \u201cI don\u2019t know why. There is just the flag,\u201d he says, gesturing to a Russian tricolor hanging across the middle of the no-man\u2019s-land minefield that marks where Armenian control ends and the Azerbaijani presence begins.<\/p>\n
Confusion reigns over where the lines of control throughout southern Karabakh are supposed to be.<\/p>\n
The tripartite agreement signed on November 10 stipulates in its first clause that both Armenian and Azerbaijani forces “shall stop in their current positions.” But this has not stopped the more numerous and better equipped Azerbaijan troops from attempting to seize additional land.<\/p>\n
On December 12, Azerbaijani troops attacked the villages of Hin Tagher (Kohne Taglar in Azeri) and Khtsaberd (Caylaqqala), two Armenian-held settlements about 30 kilometers south of Stepanakert that were not captured during the war. An estimated 73 ethnic Armenian servicemen were taken prisoner as a result, and the head of Hin Tagher later confirmed that Azerbaijan had taken control of the village.<\/p>\n
Russian peacekeepers were not in the area before the attack. While a contingent of Russians later arrived and negotiations are ongoing over the final status of the villages, the incident poses a major challenge to the effectiveness of the Russian peacekeeping mission.<\/p>\n
Harutiunian, meanwhile, remains confident that negotiations will resolve the situation in his village in Armenia\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI talked to the head of the Martuni region,\u201d he says, referring to the Artsakh “province” to which Taghavard belongs. \u201cHe is in close contact with the Russians and he assures me we will get the rest [of the village] back.\u201d<\/p>\n
If this does not occur and the village remains split, it is difficult to see how ethnic Armenian civilians will be able to return to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course no one will live here with the enemy right there,\u201d scoffs Harutiunian. \u201cNo one will return to Karmir Shuka either,\u201d he adds, referring to the nearby town of 2,000 prewar inhabitants that was heavily damaged in the fighting.<\/p>\n
Harutiunian’s remark is punctuated but yet another gunshot ringing out in the distance.<\/p>\n
The village of Taghavard appears to merely be part of the latest front line in this more than 30-year old conflict.<\/p>\n\n
This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAGHAVARD, Nagorno-Karabakh \u2014 The war in Nagorno-Karabakh may be over, but the gunfights are not. The village of Taghavard lies at the end of a winding road 45\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28,107,4,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2888,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions\/2888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}