THERE IS A LOT of agricultural land in Fuzuli, one of the districts of Azerbaijan that surround the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. But there is nothing to be harvested. Where wheat and grapes once grew, unexploded rockets shoot from the ground at eerie angles, a reminder of the vicious fighting that ravaged the region in the fall. The charred carcasses of the tanks remain. A cratered road winds its way through a wasteland of villages and towns abandoned after an episode of violence three decades ago. Thousands of landmines are lurking underground.
Further north, in Agdam, once an Azeri town of 40,000 inhabitants, Aide Huseynova, a retiree, takes photos of a ruined 19th-century mosque. She escaped from Agdam in 1993, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, fleeing an Armenian offensive. About 1 million people, mostly Azeris, have been displaced in the fighting. Now, for the first time since, she’s back. Yet there is nothing left for him to see except a sea of rubble and crumbling walls that stretch for miles in all directions, resembling the aftermath of a nuclear attack. The mosque is the only building remaining standing. “My heart hurts,” says Huseynova. “I don’t want to see this at all.”
In a campaign that lasted more than six weeks and ended with a ceasefire on November 9, Azerbaijan reclaimed the seven districts, including Fuzuli and Agdam, which Armenian forces had occupied since the 1990s. (Much of Nagorno-Karabakh, still populated almost exclusively by Armenians, remains in separatist hands.) At least 5,000 people have been killed in recent fighting. Human rights groups called on both sides to investigate reports of war crimes, including videos that appear to show executions and other atrocities committed by Azerbaijani troops.
The devastation inflicted on Azeri cities during the 27 years under Armenian control will be difficult to undo. The Armenian separatists who ruled Nagorno-Karabakh have used the districts once occupied by the Azeris as a buffer zone and as future currency, rendering many of them uninhabitable. The buildings were bulldozed. The looters took whatever the former residents had left behind. Some estimate the cost of reviving these ghost towns at $ 15 billion, although the Azerbaijani government has yet to make an estimate. It could take seven years to clear the districts, said Hikmet Hajiyev, an aide to the Azerbaijani president.
Many Azeri refugees from the disputed enclave are destitute, while Azerbaijani upper class thrives on the abundance of oil. In a shabby building on the outskirts of the capital Baku, Aliyev Karim Hasimoglu, a former metallurgist from Fuzuli, shares a single room with four parents. He says he wants to live long enough to reincarnate a brother, who died during the First Karabakh War, in their ancestral village. He has spent the past 25 years in the same room; 20 other refugee families live on the same floor. Three shared bathrooms serve approximately 100 people. Paint is peeling off the walls, leaking pipes and cigarette butts litter the stairs. Mr Hajiyev says his government spends $ 1 billion a year on refugees, but many say that is not enough.
Ms Huseynova says she had Armenian neighbors before the war, but would curse them if she saw them again. “As an Azerbaijani citizen of Agdam, I don’t want to live next to them.” ■
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Bitterness prevails”