Armenia Struggles to Aid 100,000 Artsakh Refugees After War
Evangelical, Orthodox, and secular aid workers care for traumatized Nagorno-Karabakh kin they say were ethnically cleansed from their homeland. Azerbaijani Christians reply.
Karolin is one of 30,000 Armenian children without a home—again.
Fleeing the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the face of Azerbaijan’s assault last month, the 12-year-old girl had an unexpected encounter. After crossing the Lachin corridor westward to Goris in Armenia proper, she found her beloved social worker waiting.
Arpe Asaturyan, founder of Frontline Therapists (FLT), was astounded as well. Amid the 100,000 refugees from what Armenians call their homeland of Artsakh, she had found the very same child displaced three years earlier. A special bond formed with then-9-year-old Karolin, who had gripped her tightly before returning home.
Located within internationally recognized Azerbaijani territory, the Armenian enclave suffered a bloody 44-day war in 2020. Over 6,000 soldiers died before a Russian-backed ceasefire left local Armenian authorities in control of only a portion of formerly held Artsakh land.
Karolin and her family went back anyway, vowing to continue their multigenerational presence. But after suffering malnutrition during an Azerbaijani-imposed nine-month blockade, they trudged three days in the slow-moving convoy of cars and buses across Lachin—the only road connecting the enclave with Armenia.
Over the week-and-a-half exodus, Artsakh residents crossed at a rate of 15,000 per day.
But the bittersweet reunion with Karolin is far from the worst of Asaturyan’s ordeal. Suffering in the chaos of relocation and the fog of war, several mothers told their children they would find their daddy in Armenia.
As counselor, Asaturyan was asked to tell them that their fathers had died.
“It is heartbreaking, and you know this will be the worst day of the rest of their lives,” Asaturyan ...