By Oliver Bullough
Working on stories about water in and around Nagorny Karabakh proved an education in itself for me as IWPR's Caucasus editor.
It is standard practice to seek comment from both sides when we report on a dispute, but doing so can become controversial when a journalist based in one place is asked to seek views from the other side of the frontline.
That is especially true when it comes to a place like Nagorny Karabakh, whose very existence is disputed.
While the Armenian community there insists that Karabakh became a legitimate independent state as a result of the 1991-93 war, Azerbaijan insists the region belongs to it and is being illegally occupied. The international community has not recognised Nagorny Karabakh as a state.
When Karine Ohanyan, an Armenian reporter from Karabakh, produced a piece that focused on water issues, her IWPR colleagues in Azerbaijan suggested we include a comment from the foreign ministry in Baku, given that the story dealt with a town internationally considered part of Azerbaijan, and which many refugees who fled during the conflict still call home.
Karine objected, saying she felt there was no need to introduce "artificial balance" into the piece.
"It would be like adding a comment from the Karabakh foreign ministry to an article about Azerbaijani domestic affairs."
IWPR tries to maintain high standards of unbiased journalism, so as editor I felt we still needed to reflect the official Azerbaijani position, and acknowledge the fact of the territorial dispute without offending the article's author.
The solution I found was to ask my predecessor at IWPR, Thomas de Waal, an acknowledged expert on the Karabakh conflict now working at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, to comment on the Azerbaijani perspective.
The resulting story was Water Complicates Karabakh Peace Talks.
However, our colleagues in Azerbaijan remained unhappy that the quote from their foreign ministry had been left out, even though Thomas had summarised the official position fairly.
To resolve things, I suggested they commission a story of their own to provide a mirror image of the piece Karine had done, and they agreed to do so.
The result was a fascinating insight from Samira Ahmedbeyli into the difficulties facing villagers on the Azerbaijani side of the front line because much of their water supply had been cut off as a result of the conflict. (The piece is [...]: Azeris Accuse Karabakh of Denying Them Water)
Samira explained why in this case, she felt comment was needed from both sides.
"It became clear that Azerbaijan was blaming the Karabakh Armenians for its water problems, and I decided we needed an Armenian comment to maintain balance in the article. As a result, we quoted an official from the unrecognised Nagorny Karabakh government," she said.
For her part, Karine felt that in this instance it was better to have two separate but parallel articles.
"Of course I'm in favour of Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists writing articles together; it offers a unique opportunity to see things from both sides, and I've done this many times," she told me. "But I think there are times for duets and times for solos. Sometimes two opinions expressed separately create a harmony that ultimately tells a richer truth than if they were expressed together."
Our efforts to produce two articles that made for balance were not, however, the end of the story. After Samira's piece was published, the Azerbaijan foreign ministry rang Samira to object to our headline, "Azeris Accuse Karabakh of Denying Them Water".
"Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan's territory. How can the Azeris be accusing Karabakh?" asked Elkhan Polukhov, a spokesman for the ministry.
He was also angry that the article included comments from the Karabakh authorities, not from the government of the Republic of Armenia itself.
"The conflict is between Azerbaijan and Armenia," he said.
But his major complaint was that we had not included the official Azerbaijani comment in Karine's published story.
"If IWPR wants to maintain balance, then you need to do so in every article," he said.
The difficulties we had in negotiating our way through the production of these two stories reflect the heightened sensitivities of communities living on either side of the lines of conflict in the Caucasus and elsewhere.
Even the terminology we use is important - Karine was writing about a town she calls Karvachar but which an Azerbaijani journalist would name as Kelbajar.
All we can do is debate these issues and try to arrive at the best possible compromise in a way that does not undermine basic principles of objectivity.
We may not always agree 100 per cent on the final results, but we would hope readers on either side of the divide see articles on such controversial matters as fair.
I always look forward to the next time we can air these live issues.
Water Complicates Karabakh Peace Talks
By Karine Ohanyan
The Armenian residents of the town they call Karvachar boast of the quality and quantity of their water.
“We have the most delicious and cleanest water. It does not need filtering. You can drink it straight from the river. Apart from this, in Karvachar, unlike in many regions and towns of Karabakh, the water comes round-the-clock,” said Alexander Kananyan, who has lived in the town for nine years.
And their water is valued beyond the town. Nagorny Karabakh, a state carved out of Soviet Azerbaijan by local Armenians, relies on this region for more than 80 per cent of its drinking supply.
The trouble, however, is that Karvachar has another name: Kelbajar, by which it is known to ethnic Azeris, as well as on maps of the region from Soviet times and before. Unlike most of Karabakh, the town did not form part of the Autonomous Region of Nagorny Karabakh within Soviet Azerbaijan, and that means it is treated separately in peace talks currently going on.
Therefore, experts say that if Baku gets its way, the town will be returned to its control whatever the fate of Karabakh, which has declared independence but not been recognised as an independent state by any members of the United Nations.
"The peace deal currently under discussion, like almost all others, envisages the return of almost all the seven Azerbaijani regions which are now wholly or partially under Armenian military control in exchange for some kind of 'interim international status' for Nagorny Karabakh itself and the promise of a popular vote in the future on its final status,” said Thomas de Waal, an expert on Caucasus issues at the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.
“There will be a special status for Lachin, which is the land bridge between Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh and it is anticipated that Kelbajar, the largest Azerbaijan region under Armenian control, which is strategically situated between Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh, will be handed back later than the other provinces.”
But Karabakh Armenians insist even that is unacceptable. Leaving aside the fact that under its constitution, the republic claims all territory that it currently controls, not just the territory of the Soviet-era Autonomous Region, they see the district between Karabakh and Armenia as crucial to their security.
“The territory of Karabakh within the administrative border of the Autonomous Region is extremely vulnerable from the point of view of securing its water resources. The lion’s share of water resources in the former Autonomous Region has its origin outside of its administrative limits. The rivers Terter and Khachen, which start within the Karvachar region, bring in 83.4 per cent of the yearly average of Karabakh’s main water supply,” said David Babayan, who has studied water issues in Karabakh for several years.
“Today, Nagorny Karabakh is in a position to almost entirely provide for its own environmental security and its water resources, and in this context the Karvachar region plays a key role… Therefore, if we lose this region the water security of Karabakh would be under serious threat.”
Most of the present-day residents of the town and its neighbouring region are ethnic Armenians who fled areas currently controlled by Azeri troops during the Karabakh war, which ended with a ceasefire in 1994 but which has not been resolved.
Peace talks are chaired by France, Russia and the United States, who make up the so-called Minsk Group, but have not moved forward significantly in the face of irreconcilable differences between the two sides.
Azerbaijan insists on regaining control of the territory it lost but local residents like Marianna Hovsepyan, who moved to the town from Sumgait, the scene of three days of anti-Armenian riots in 1988 that marked the start of major bloodshed between the two ethnic communities, are adamant they would never allow that to happen.
“How could you even consider it,” she asked. “We with difficulty built here a second house, got our lives together, and now it’s not clear what’s waiting for us. This will never happen. Even when Karabakh president Bako Sahakyan came to Karvachar, he said, ‘As long as Karabakh exists and I want to assure you all that it will always exist, Karvachar will be part of it.’”
Local residents well understand the importance of their town to the future of the whole South Caucasus.
“Of course, the region has a strategic significance, because water is an important resource of the future, and not just of the present day. In worsening environmental conditions in the future, it will be a necessary and expensive resource,” said Alexander Kananyan, a 36-year-old a local resident.
“And of course, I’m not even talking about the military-strategic significance of the Karvachar region. This it the highest and most invulnerable part of Karabakh, and as a result whoever owns it, owns all of Karabakh.”
Azeris Accuse Karabakh of Denying Them Water
By Samira Ahmedbeyli
The Armenian residents of the town they call Karvachar boast of the quality and quantity of their water.
“We have the most delicious and cleanest water. It does not need filtering. You can drink it straight from the river. Apart from this, in Karvachar, unlike in many regions and towns of Karabakh, the water comes round-the-clock,” said Alexander Kananyan, who has lived in the town for nine years.
And their water is valued beyond the town. Nagorny Karabakh, a state carved out of Soviet Azerbaijan by local Armenians, relies on this region for more than 80 per cent of its drinking supply.
The trouble, however, is that Karvachar has another name: Kelbajar, by which it is known to ethnic Azeris, as well as on maps of the region from Soviet times and before. Unlike most of Karabakh, the town did not form part of the Autonomous Region of Nagorny Karabakh within Soviet Azerbaijan, and that means it is treated separately in peace talks currently going on.
Therefore, experts say that if Baku gets its way, the town will be returned to its control whatever the fate of Karabakh, which has declared independence but not been recognised as an independent state by any members of the United Nations.
"The peace deal currently under discussion, like almost all others, envisages the return of almost all the seven Azerbaijani regions which are now wholly or partially under Armenian military control in exchange for some kind of 'interim international status' for Nagorny Karabakh itself and the promise of a popular vote in the future on its final status,” said Thomas de Waal, an expert on Caucasus issues at the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.
“There will be a special status for Lachin, which is the land bridge between Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh and it is anticipated that Kelbajar, the largest Azerbaijan region under Armenian control, which is strategically situated between Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh, will be handed back later than the other provinces.”
But Karabakh Armenians insist even that is unacceptable. Leaving aside the fact that under its constitution, the republic claims all territory that it currently controls, not just the territory of the Soviet-era Autonomous Region, they see the district between Karabakh and Armenia as crucial to their security.
“The territory of Karabakh within the administrative border of the Autonomous Region is extremely vulnerable from the point of view of securing its water resources. The lion’s share of water resources in the former Autonomous Region has its origin outside of its administrative limits. The rivers Terter and Khachen, which start within the Karvachar region, bring in 83.4 per cent of the yearly average of Karabakh’s main water supply,” said David Babayan, who has studied water issues in Karabakh for several years.
“Today, Nagorny Karabakh is in a position to almost entirely provide for its own environmental security and its water resources, and in this context the Karvachar region plays a key role… Therefore, if we lose this region the water security of Karabakh would be under serious threat.”
Most of the present-day residents of the town and its neighbouring region are ethnic Armenians who fled areas currently controlled by Azeri troops during the Karabakh war, which ended with a ceasefire in 1994 but which has not been resolved.
Peace talks are chaired by France, Russia and the United States, who make up the so-called Minsk Group, but have not moved forward significantly in the face of irreconcilable differences between the two sides.
Azerbaijan insists on regaining control of the territory it lost but local residents like Marianna Hovsepyan, who moved to the town from Sumgait, the scene of three days of anti-Armenian riots in 1988 that marked the start of major bloodshed between the two ethnic communities, are adamant they would never allow that to happen.
“How could you even consider it,” she asked. “We with difficulty built here a second house, got our lives together, and now it’s not clear what’s waiting for us. This will never happen. Even when Karabakh president Bako Sahakyan came to Karvachar, he said, ‘As long as Karabakh exists and I want to assure you all that it will always exist, Karvachar will be part of it.’”
Local residents well understand the importance of their town to the future of the whole South Caucasus.
“Of course, the region has a strategic significance, because water is an important resource of the future, and not just of the present day. In worsening environmental conditions in the future, it will be a necessary and expensive resource,” said Alexander Kananyan, a 36-year-old a local resident.
“And of course, I’m not even talking about the military-strategic significance of the Karvachar region. This it the highest and most invulnerable part of Karabakh, and as a result whoever owns it, owns all of Karabakh.”
