Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, a small patch of land inhabited by over 100,000 Armenians, has been a constant bone of contention between the two former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. At least that's how it was in 2011 and 2012, when I was there. Wars and conflicts repeatedly catapult hitherto completely unknown and inconspicuous places into the focus of world attention. Who knew about Sebrenica before it became a synonym for a major failure of the West, among other things?
If Nagorno-Karabakh had been a peaceful region in Armenia or Azerbaijan, I might never have known about it and therefore would not have seen any reason to travel there. But for my project, it was an ideal setting, characterized by a delicate balance between war and peace, in which it was never possible to know when it would tip in one direction or the other.

A brief summary: Stalin assigned Nagorno-Karabakh, although mostly populated by Armenians, to the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, albeit with autonomy status. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, a bloody conflict broke out that ended in 1994 with a ceasefire. The Armenians were victorious and were able to take the original Karabakh and other areas. Nagorno-Karabakh declared itself an independent state in 1991, but it was never recognized internationally. Since the ceasefire, the two hostile armies have faced each other on the line of contact, and skirmishes repeatedly occurred with victims on both sides – a state of affairs that was to last for several years.
On May 9, 2012, I attended the large army parade in the capital, Stepanakert. This day commemorates the liberation of Shushi (Shusha in Azerbaijani), a tactically important city that marked a turning point in the war. One could almost think that the Armenians deliberately timed the liberation for this day, because May 9 is also the day on which the victory over Nazi Germany is celebrated, and two important days of remembrance could be combined. I will never forget the mood around this parade. It was characterized by pride, confidence and the conviction that the country was well prepared for the future in military terms. At least that's what I thought I could read on people's faces. Whether more critical discussions were taking place behind the scenes, whether the military leaders and politicians were well aware that Azerbaijan knew how to tip the military balance in its favor thanks to the income from oil and gas deals and the help from Turkey – I can only speculate about that.

In any case, in 2020, Azerbaijan used its superior strength and was able to reconquer part of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the strategically important city of Shushi. Russia, which was considered Armenia's protecting power, was supposed to stabilize the newly created situation. In September 2023, Azerbaijan seized the opportunity, with Russia preoccupied and distracted by its invasion of Ukraine. With relatively little effort, the Azerbaijanis drove practically the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh into flight. More than 100,000 Karabakh Armenians left their homeland overnight, mainly for Armenia – an unparalleled disgrace and tragedy. Why is Karabakh so important in Armenian history, which is also marked by genocide? While the lowlands of Karabakh were mostly settled by Azeris, the highlands were almost exclusively inhabited by Armenians – and this has been the case to varying degrees since ancient times. Nagorno-Karabakh had and has a special significance for Armenian national identity and for another reason as well. In the early modern period, principalities in the region remained a bulwark of Armenian independence, while all other Armenian settlements had long since come under foreign rule. Of course, the Armenians are also justifiably afraid that the bitter loss of Karabakh does not mark the end of these disastrous developments. For example, Azerbaijan wants to connect its exclave, the Autonomous Republic of Nakhichevan, directly to its territory through a corridor through Armenian territory.

The question of how to create peace in multi-ethnic regions hovers over all these events. Is there a way to live together or does it boil down to segregation and thus the expulsion of one or the other ethnic group? It should not go unmentioned here that during the course of the first war over Nagorno-Karabakh, all Azerbaijanis were expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh.

And today? What exactly is happening in this small strip of land now, where I documented these pictures? The people are gone. They were forced to leave. Have new ones arrived already? What will happen to the houses? Will they be reoccupied? What will happen to the churches? The Azeris, as Muslims, have no use for them, just as the Armenians had no use for the mosques in Shushi or in Agdam, a city that lies in what used to be a restricted military area. And the cemeteries, the museums? Will all memories of the Armenians be erased or reinterpreted? There are no answers to these questions at the moment, only suspicions or fears. The fact is that it is not possible for Western journalists to get a picture on the ground. Karabakh has thus become a blind spot on the world map.

What happened and is still happening here, are historical upheavals that are quite alien to me as a Swiss person. When I go back to the city of my birth today, despite all the changes, much still looks very similar to when I was young. In contrast to this, there is a personal story: in my early twenties, I wanted to visit the city where my father was born, as he had never been back there since fleeing in 1945. My father's family fled from Silesia, which was then part of Germany, to escape the Russians. I visited this city, which is now in Poland, and I couldn't find anyone to talk to. The house where my father was born and grew up was still standing and intact. It is difficult for me to put this experience into words, but I remember very clearly the moment when I was invited to vodka by men whom I didn't know in a restaurant and after a few glasses I got the feeling that we would understand each other, that I understood Polish and they understood German.

Sometimes I think that this experience is one of the reasons why I am dealing with the topics of flight, expulsion and war.

And so I’ll try to imagine what it would be like if one day I were to travel to Nagorno-Karabakh again to see with disbelief how what at first glance appears to be a normal life taking place. A life of people with a different ethnicity and a different language.