Borderlands Under Fire

2018 Lange-Taylor Prize Finalist

Borderlands Under Fire exposes the world of a frozen conflict and documents the effects of state-sponsored violence on the daily lives of the people of the frontier villages of Armenia, a tiny country in the South Caucasus. The project explores the villagers use of nonviolent resistance to defend their human rights and preserve their communities. As a descendant of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, I grew up aware of the human cost of war, questioning whose voices are heard and why.

Borderlands exposes of one of the conflicts simmering in the region, ignored by the West. From the beginning of work on this project, I recognized the frightening potential for it to explode into an all-out war, that could draw in powerful countries like Russia, Iran, and Turkey. On September 27, 2020 Azerbaijan and Turkey attacked Armenia and Artsakh resulting in forty-four days of war which ended when Russia imposed an agreement on Artsakh ceding some of its land to Azerbaijan and allowing the ethnic cleansing of its people. This may contribute to further instability in the region. Borderlands asks us to consider the questions that arise when a powerful country imposes its will on its impoverished neighbor through a campaign of terrorism on a civilian population which remains unacknowledged by the world.

Azerbaijan, an oil rich country with an autocratic government, is notorious for human rights violations, including the ethnic cleansing of its Armenian population in the early 1990s. This provocation of ethnic hatred spawned the twenty-five-year plus terror campaign that the government continues to run against the 18 villages along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. From safe places on mountaintops or tucked away in villages, the Azeri posts attack Tavush, a tiny province of less than 150,000 people.

Faced with a much larger, wealthier and more powerful enemy, Armenia's government forbids its soldiers to fire back in order to avoid civilian casualties. But the people of Tavush see their homes and farms decimated, potential businesses fleeing at first sight of the violence and the OSCE's continued silence on the conflict, which has left many despairing while Azerbaijan looms threateningly over Armenia.

“People here could tell you stories for hours,” said the mayor of one village. “But there is no one to listen, no one to hear us.”

Even as the people of these border villages suffer violence and privation daily as a result of war, they hold fast to their homeland, preserving their language and culture as part of the world's heritage for future generations. They do not hate the people on the other side of the border. They do not wish them harm. They wish only for the shooting to stop, allowing them to rebuild their lives and pursue their dreams. But the flow of oil from Baku continues unimpeded by political or economic sanctions from Russia, the U.S. or Europe. And, caught at the geopolitical crossroads of East and West, the people of the borderlands continue to suffer the mental, emotional, and physical devastation of war.

Borderlands Under Fire investigates the people of Tavush’s efforts to defend their human rights through nonviolent resistance, and the ways in which they have kept their communities alive through more than twenty-five years of attacks. Though they confront the grim reality of violence in their everyday lives, the residents are infused with hope. Their stories are suffused with determination, faith, and love, a hopeful model for a positive future. But for now, the future remains uncertain.