Amazon.com… via Oneworld Multimedia
In continuing attempts to set a precedent for online media resources and blogs in Armenia to become self-sufficient and truly independent, Oneworld Multimedia has now become an Amazon affiliate. What this means is that items such as CDs, DVDs and books can be ordered online from Amazon.com through a newly established aStore.
All orders are handled via secure online transactions by Amazon.com.
Ordering through the Oneworld Multimedia / Amazon aStore won’t cost readers extra and might actually save them money on selected items, but a small referral fee will be paid by Amazon.com which will be used to fund new projects and coverage on issues that were first brought to light by Oneworld Multimedia or still remain ignored by the media here and in the Diaspora.
However, items sold through the Oneworld Multimedia / Amazon aStore will be relevant to this site and thus provide a service to its readers. From time to time, Oneworld Multimedia will also recommend certain items which it considers invaluable or especially relevant to the South Caucasus republics, and Armenia and Azerbaijan in particular.
Two such items are the excellent Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War
On February 20, 1988, the local assembly of Nagorno-Karabakh issued a stunning, plainly-worded resolution that called for the transfer of their autonomous region from the republic of Azerbaijan to the republic of Armenia. “The dreary language of the resolution,” writes Thomas de Waal in his fine new book Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, “hid something truly revolutionary.”
The resolution helped trigger a cycle of events that sparked the first inter-ethnic war of the Perestroika era, Mikhail Gorbachev’s ill-fated attempt to reanimate the Soviet Union. The “hot” phase of the Karabakh conflict lasted six years, claiming an estimated 15,000 lives and creating a wrenching population “transfer.” The warfare displaced hundreds of thousands Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The two countries remain stalemated to this day on a political settlement.
[…]
De Waal goes on to debunk some of the conspiracy theories that helped drive the conflict, namely that the Kremlin orchestrated the conflict. Through presentation of papers from Soviet archives and interviews with key players, de Waal shows that Soviet leaders in Moscow were “running to keep pace with the dispute, rather than leading it.”
Perhaps most interestingly, de Waal argues that the conflict “cannot usefully be reduced to its socioeconomic components.” History and identity – or, rather misguided and dangerous ideas of history and identity – played a more important role. He writes: “The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict makes sense only if we acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Azerbaijanis were driven to act by passionately held ideas about history, identity, and rights.”
“That the vast mass of these ideas were dangerous and delusory does not make them any less sincerely felt,” de Waal continues. “From 1990 and 1991, there were plenty of volunteers prepared to risk their lives for them… The darkest of these convictions, ’the hate narratives,’ have taken such deep root that unless they are addressed, nothing can change in Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
[…]
De Waal points out that the 1988 movement for Karabakh’s transfer to Armenia was organized chiefly by those who were, at the time, living outside of the enclave. As in many Diaspora communities, romantic nationalism has the power to erase historical memory: in this case, the confluence of cultural and personal ties between the two peoples on the ground.
[…]
De Waal does well to remind his readers of the eighteenth century Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova who wrote in Armenian, Georgian, and Azeri and “moved happily between the nations and regions of the Caucasus.” Sayat Nova, a revered poet in the region, represents the best of cosmopolitan Caucasus culture, a culture that is being choked by a conflict that locks Armenians and Azerbaijanis in “their self-destructive states of fear and defiance.”
The other book, Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic
Based on his experience, Goltz wrote a draft manuscript that was published in Istanbul in 1994 with the title Requiem for a Would-be Republic and covers the period from the Azerbaijani declaration of independence in 1991 to the Azerbaijani decision to join the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1993. In addition to the slightly revised text of Requiem, the present book, Azerbaijan Diary, includes an epilogue about the time from 1994 to November 1997, which he wrote after a short visit to Baku in the autumn of 1997.
Reading the book it becomes obvious that Goltz saw and experienced quite a lot during his stay in the Caucasus. The reader is overwhelmed by “new facts”, unique first-hand observations, portraits of individuals from all spheres of Azerbaijani society, travel accounts, reports from the battlefront in Nagorno-Karabakh (e.g. the Xodjali catastrophe of February 26-27, 1992) and the negotiating table. Goltz also reproduces several interviews, for example with Abulfez Elchibey, the first democratically elected president of Azerbaijan, and Heydar Aliyev, the “Grand Old Man” of Azerbaijani politics, who returned to power in Baku in 1992-93 and rules as Azerbaijani president since that time.
The density and richness of his impressions are both an advantage and disadvantage for the book; sometimes the gripping story outweighs analytical clarity and structure. Goltz’s aim is not to prove a thesis or a certain argument, but to disseminate as much information as possible about Azerbaijan and thereby to correct misperceptions and misinformation in the Western press. He states: “I have the arrogance to suggest to the reporters, editorial writers, and, ultimately, scholars of the period and place that they take the time to wade through this opus before furthering the promotion of “facts’ based on repetitive errors” (p. xii). Thus, the book with its twenty-five chapters, a prologue and an epilogue is a “quarry” for all who are interested in the recent history of Azerbaijan.
Both are required reading by anyone interested in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh, and for those interested in the conflict, a whole chapter from Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic
The GRAD is not a very accurate weapon. Rather, it is designed to instill fear and panic. It whistles and screams and screeches through the sky before smashing home, wherever that was, and keeps you hunkered down and frightened. It was doing a very good job of doing that right now: there were about two or three hundred people on the landing pad and we were all hunkered down and frightened.
The only reason no-one ran away was because there was nowhere to go except up. The only way to that was to get on a helicopter. That was how I had gotten in to this rat-hole, killing zone called Kelbajar, and I was cursing myself for having done so. I wanted to get back up and out very badly.
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“Forty Armenians–and they take Kelbajar!” he wailed. He was using the number 40 rhetorically, in the sense of ‘40 days and 40 nights,’ ‘Ali Baba and the 40 thieves’ and even the 40 day period of mourning in Shiite Islam.
Ironically, from what I have been able to patch together in the aftermath of the Armenian assault, the real number of attackers was not much higher. […]
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Kelbajar–the province that extended like a finger in a vice between Karabakh and Armenia. With access restricted to a logging road over a 12,000 foot pass over the Murov Mountains, it had been under virtual blockade for a month and was the obvious place where the Armenians would pursue the war next. That day had apparently arrived.
There’s also an interview I conducted with Thomas de Waal in 2002 on Black Garden and I said before, both books can be ordered via Amazon.com:
Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War
by Thomas de WaalAzerbaijan Diary
by Thomas Goltz
To search, browse or order other items including DVDs and CDs, please access the Oneworld Multimedia / Amazon Affiliate aStore.
