MINELRES: Caucasus Reporting Service No. 174: Kurds Targeted Aagain in Azerbaijan

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WELCOME TO IWPR'S CAUCASUS REPORTING SERVICE, No. 174, 11 April, 2003.


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AZERBAIJAN: KURDS TARGETED AGAIN

Thousands of Kurds forced to leave Nagorny Karabakh a decade ago find
themselves under threat once more.

By Rauf Orujev in Baku

Aligismet Jabbarov never thought he would have to leave his hometown of
Lachin in western Azerbaijan, where he worked as a restaurant inspector.

But soon after his second child was born in 1993, Armenian forces
attacked Lachin - a finger of land separating Nagorny Karabakh from
Armenia - and his family abandoned their home and all their possessions,
joining thousands of other Kurds in their exodus to the east of the
country.

"We got as far as Agjabedin district, where they placed us in a
dormitory. Locals brought us clothing. Three years ago they built some
300 single-story homes for refugees in Takhta-Kerpu village nearby, and
we moved in," recalled Aligismet.

On April 2, the Kurdish refugees marked the tenth anniversary of their
exodus - an event made all the more distressing by media demands for an
investigation into alleged links between members of the community and
the extremist Kurdish Labour Party.

Azerbaijani Kurds have always lived in close-knit communities - mostly
in the districts of Kelbajar, Lachin, Zangelan and Gubadlin - located
close to the epicentre of Karabakh conflict and now controlled by
Armenia.

"On March 27, 1993, the Armenians attacked Kelbajar from three
directions," recalled Shamil Askerov, the seventy-three-year-old former
director of the Kurdish Museum in Kelbajar. "They were firing Grad
rocket launchers on us. The only escape route was a narrow mountain path
across the Murovdag ridge. Adults, seniors and children set out walking
across the mountains in the snow and the sleet."

There were some 41,000 Kurds in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era.
According to Arab chronicles, the first Kurdish settlements appeared in
these parts in the 7th century AD, but mass migration began in the late
16th century, when Shah Abbas of Iran sent 24 Kurdish tribes here from
western Iran to guard the empire's north-western frontier.

Local Kurds had always been on good terms with the Azerbaijani majority.
But now that they are scattered across the country's 60 municipalities,
they feel more estranged and on their own.

A Kurdish radio station, newspaper and numerous schools attempt to keep
Kurdish culture alive, but fewer families bother to teach their mother
tongue to their children anymore. Askerov, who travels around Kurdish
communities a lot, has observed that more than 50 per cent of families
speak Azerbaijani to each other.

"My father told me our ancestors moved to Karabakh from Iranian
Kurdistan about 200 years ago, when they all spoke Farsi. Now we all
speak Azerbaijani. There's nothing wrong with that as long as no one
forces us to learn it," said Adaliat Khashimov.

Coming to terms with life as refugees has been hard, but it seems the
Kurds' troubles are far from over. Over the past few months, there have
been reports in the Azerbaijani opposition press linking some of their
community with the Kurdish Labour Party.

The National Security Ministry has not taken the reports seriously,
saying that 32 people have been arrested on suspicion of such links over
the past ten years, with the last detention in 2001.

Kamil Gasanov, director of the Kurdish Culture Centre in Baku, insists
the accusations are unfounded. "This is just a side-effect of the
political struggle between opposition parties. They even accuse our
culture centre of terrorism in their papers," Gasanov told IWPR.

Independent analysts believe the controversial media reports started
appearing with the start of the Iraqi war when Turkey - Azerbaijan's
historic ally - considered deploying its troops in Iraq's northern
Kurdish-controlled provinces.

They say tensions may also have been raised by worries about a possible
influx of Kurdish refugees from northern Iraq. But the fears have proved
to be misplaced, as only several hundred are reported to have arrived in
recent months, many of them heading for Baku, hoping to eventually move
to the West.

Meanwhile, Askerov believes the best way to handle the current
difficulties is to mind your own business. He has sought to rebuild the
Karabakh museum in Baku, so far collecting 4,000 items, donated by other
Kurds, and is preparing a Kurdish ethnography exhibition for early May.

"Two of our exhibits are rarities of international significance. These
bronze totems depicting a goat and a wolf are 4,000 years old and
priceless," he said.

Rauf Orujev is a correspondent for the Ekho newspaper in Baku

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