In 2015, one hundred years after my family fled the Armenian Genocide, I journeyed to Armenia, keeping a promise to my grandmother. Many members of my family disappeared into the violence and forced marches that consumed one and a half million souls. Arriving in Armenia, I learned that the terror was not over.
Borderlands Under Fire exposes the world of a frozen conflict and documents the effects of state-sponsored violence on daily life in 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 genocide survivors, I grew up aware of the human cost of war, questioning whose voices are heard and why. Borderlands asks us to consider what happens 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, as Azerbaijan did when it attacked Tavush in July of 2020.
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 spawned the twenty-five-year long terror campaign that the government continues to run against the 18 villages along the 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. 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. This has left many despairing while Azerbaijan looms threateningly over Armenia, starting a brutal war on September 27, 2020 which ended with a Russian imposed agreement which may further threaten Armenia’s security.
“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 wish only for the shooting to stop, so that they can rebuild their lives and pursue their dreams. But the flow of oil from Baku continues unimpeded by political or economic sanctions. 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. Though they confront the grim reality of violence in their everyday lives, their stories are suffused with determination, faith, and love, a hopeful model for a positive future.