Azerbaijani IDPs and Their Stories
[last updated: 25/04/2023]
In the late 1980s-early 1990s, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan displaced as many as one million people, including ethnic Azerbaijanis who left Armenia as refugees and Azerbaijani internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled their homes in the Mountainous Karabakh region (former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast) and seven adjacent districts of Aghdam, Fuzuli, Gubadli, Jabrayil, Lachin, Kalbajar, and Zangilan. In the autumn of 2020, Azerbaijan recovered most of the territories it lost in the 1991–1994 war. The story of Azerbaijani IDPs is a story of trauma and longing for lost homes, but it is also a story of hope as many IDPs’ dreams of returning home are about to come true.
1.Ruslan Rehimov, Azerbaijan: Journey home to Shusha stirs emotions, Anadolu Agency, November 16, 2020, link
Sugayet Medetova said she never lost hope of returning to her hometown Shusha. “I saw this moment in my dreams many times.”
2. Associated Press, Azerbaijanis who fled war look to return home, if it exists, November 22, 2020, link
“We all have houses in Baku, but everyone considered them to be not permanent, because all these years we lived in the hope that we would return to Shusha. Our hearts, our thoughts have always been in our hometown.” — Ulviya Jumayeva, 50, from Shusha
3. Seymur Kazimov, Azerbaijanis forced to flee in the 1990s hope to return home, AlJazeera, November 9, 2020, link
Leyla Jahangirova, was forced to leave Tug, a village in the Khojavend region, when she was a child in the 1990s [Courtesy: Leyla Jahangirova]
“First, we had to live on the front line. Both of my parents were doctors and helped the wounded at the front. We lived in a number of villages, districts and cities. We almost toured Azerbaijan. We changed a school every year. We always wore only old clothes.” Jahangirova told Al Jazeera.
4.Liz Cookman, Azerbaijan’s internally displaced long to return to regained land, AlJazeera, November 23, 2021, link
“You can’t really describe these emotions. There is both a lot of happiness and a lot of sadness,” said Sahnaz Abbasova, 47, a pupil in the last class to graduate Shusha school before she fled in 1991. [photo: Emre Caylak/Al Jazeera]
5. Seymur Kazimov, When will the people of Shusha return to Shusha? Pressklub.az, September 1, 2021, link
“I am here since November 13, 2020. At first, there were no normal conditions. The city had just emerged from the war, the weather was unfavorable for business, and there was no light. When I returned to Shusha, I went to the place where I used to work, it was completely destroyed, then I came here and set up my business. I promised in the tender that we will start baking bread in Shusha from January 1,” Gazanfar Dadashov said.
6. Rena Effendi, ‘I don’t even know if my home still exists.’ National Geographic, February 5, 2021, link
Sanuber Hajiyeva’s family fled Fuzuli in the 1990s. Now they live in an abandoned cinema in Sumgayit, a city on the other side of Azerbaijan. [photo: Rena Effendi]
7. Kifayet Suleymanova — Going Home After 27 Years, The Caspian Post, Jun 18, 2021, link 1 link 2
One of the treasures found in the dug-out were photos like this. Zangilan in 1991, Kifayet is on the far left, 10 years old, crouched next to her neighbours. Her parents on the right, her father in his police hat. [Image: Kifayet Suleymanova]
8. Burcu Calik Gocumlu, Displaced Azerbaijanis of Shusha city happy to be home at last, Anadolu Agency, September 9, 2021, link
lhame Ibrahimova, now 30, has returned to her hometown Shusha. Settling back in the city with her children and husband four months ago, Ibrahimova expressed her joy in an interview with Anadolu Agency. “I had to leave here with my family when I was a child. We were very emotional and happy when we returned. We came to Shusha in tears. It’s really hard to express my feelings. It’s very nice being here,” she said. “I hope my children will go to school in Shusha and grow up here. I want my children to have the life we could not.” [Image: Anadolu Agency]
9. Hamida Giyasbayli, Azerbaijan’s children of war: Part I, OC Media, August 25, 2021, link
Imdad Alizade was born in 1980 in Oghuldere, a small village in Azerbaijan’s Lachin district. Imdad’s family, the first year of displacement. Terter region, Husanli village, 1993.
10. Hamida Giyasbayli, Azerbaijan’s children of war: Part II, OC Media, December 30, 2021, link
Imdad Alizade was born in 1980 and was on the cusp of adolescence when the First Karabakh War broke out, and his family was forced to flee their home village of Oghuldere, in the Lachin region. When he arrives in the village of Oghuldere, he knows there will be no house waiting for him, but he is also sure that there will be at least one wall still left standing. He said that he will kneel before this wall, rub his tears into it and say: ‘My Father’s house, we have returned’.
11. André Widmer, Was übrig bleibt, Republik (Switzerland), May 20, 2021, link
“I can’t believe I’m standing here.” Azerbaijani IDP, Ulvi Abasguliyev, in front of his childhood house in Jabrayil, from which his family was evicted 27 years ago. [photo credit: Roland Schmid]
12. The Caspian Post, To the Ruins of Jabrayil: former IDPs search the wreckage of their childhood homes, December 18, 2021, link
Samira Shukurova explains: “Houses were destroyed, noisy streets were silenced, and the owners of those noises had disappeared. It was wild everywhere. But when I set foot on that land, everything came to life [in my mind] as it had been 28 years ago. I became a thirteen-year-old girl again… For this, I prayed to God that whatever happened, he would take me to that land. Thankfully, my dream did not remain only a dream.” [photo: Orkhan Azim]
13. The Caspian Post, Agdam: In Search of Home, February 4, 2022, link
Tamam Gurbanova, was one of many people forced to leave her life behind during the First Karabakh War. Almost 30 years later, she returns to Aghdam to witness for herself the sheer devastation that remains.
14. The Caspian Post, All Change in Zabukh: Who is Telling Who to Leave and Why, August 19, 2022, link
Zabukh in 1972, Meher Quliyev (centre front): 72-year-old Meher Quliyev, who was born and raised in Zabukh and other villagers returning from visiting friends in another village. “In 1992, when Armenians occupied our village, all my fellow villagers and I were ejected at gun-point… we had to leave behind 800 head of livestock [a major financial loss]… All our property was destroyed, and many people were killed and wounded.”
15. Asaf Kuliyev, In search of a brother’s grave in Aghdam, JAM News, December 26, 2022, link
“Here I found my brother’s grave, although not quite preserved. I hadn’t even hoped for that. But many can’t find the graves of their parents. How can you explain all this to them?” — Shahlar Alif oglu at the destroyed grave of his brother in Aghdam’s central cemetry Garagadzhi. Photo: Asaf Guliyev
16. The Caspian Post, A Father and Daughter Return to Their De-occupied Village 29 Years Later, May 23, 2022, link
Follow Ilham Karimov and his daughter Khumar back to the ruins of Gecegozlu — the village they left just before it was burned to the ground by Armenian forces in 1993.
17. Aybaniz Ismayilova, “And the Mountains Echoed…” The Thrill of Return as a Hundred IDPs see Shusha at Last, The Caspian Post, September 8, 2021, link
“- Do you want to come to Shusha, your hometown?
- Oh, my dear, of course I want to, I will come barefoot. I have been waiting for this call for 29 years.”
Sama Asadullayeva (52) is a nurse who was 23 when she was forcibly expelled from Shusha. Sama’s father, Ali Asadullayev, was killed on May 8, 1992, during one of the battles at Shusha. “I know every tree, flower, street and valley of Shusha. I have been walking around Shusha in my dreams for many years. Now, in these streets, in the Jydyr plain, in the mosque, I put my hand on the stones and talk to them, saying ‘we are back, my Shusha! We came to our house, we came to revive you, we came to stay.’”
18. Martin Vennard, “Azerbaijan displaced await end of conflict”, BBC Europe, 18 February 2009, Link
“In collective centres, I saw people living in very precarious conditions. It is the same in Baku, in Sumgayit and other places where IDPs live. People live in very bad, unbearable conditions”.
19. Carlotta Gall, In Azerbaijan, Pain and Loss Drive War Fever, New York Times, October 24, 2020, Link Link 2
“From 1993, we were called refugees, but now our lands have been liberated, we are no longer refugees,” said Ulriya Suleymanova, 34, who lives with an extended family of eight in a damp set of rooms that smelled of the sewers below. “We have proof. We saw the bridge and the flags in Jabrail. Of course we are very happy when we see these things. I was 7 when we left.”
For Ms. Suleymanova, there is no doubt they will return home. In Baku, she works cleaning houses and her husband sells security cameras. But work has dried up with the coronavirus, and they are struggling, she said.
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