The forgotten people of Baku

17 November 2005
Aljazeera.net
By Jonathan Gorvett in Baku, Azerbaijan

For the last 12 years, 72-year old Mammadova Pari has had to call the dank and decrepit basement corridor of an old student dorm in Baku home. It is a cold space she shares with some 3000 others, crammed into half a dozen crumbling and derelict buildings.

She is one of around a million Azerbaijanis who are refugees in their own country, victims of a war now largely forgotten.
[...]
She lives in a refugee camp with no name.

Although most of its residents have been here for more than a decade, officials have been wary of giving it a title for fear it would suggest they are here to stay.
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The office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Baku says the problem dates back to 1988 when refugees first started escaping the inter-ethnic violence in neighbouring Armenia.

Many thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis who had lived in Armenia fled the violence - as did many thousands of ethnic Armenians who had lived in Azerbaijan.

Before 1989, Baku itself had an ethnic Armenian population of some 200,000. Now, few remain.
[...]
But as the Soviet Union further disintegrated, the next wave of Azerbaijani refugees came to Baku from Nagorno Kharabakh, a majority ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijani territory.

Many Azerbaijanis living there were forced to flee as the Armenians took control of the region.
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Many of last wave ended up here, in the camp with no name - and here they have stayed.
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Pari herself is a native of Aghdam, 340km west of Baku. Today, Aghdam is considered a buffer zone between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces.
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She says that she only seeks to return home so that she can visit the graves of her relatives and offer prayers to Allah. [...].

The chances of that happening, however, are slim to none.
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Average incomes in Azerbaijan are low, with 40% of the population officially estimated to be below the local poverty line of $40 a month.

The people here — officially known as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) — survive on a monthly government hand out of $6 'bread money', plus 30 litres of kerosene during the winter. The latter is their only source of fuel for heating and cooking.
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Azerbaijan is now a major oil producer and over the next 20 years, some $150 billion in oil revenues are expected to be heading Baku's way.

Some of those funds are already finding their way to the IDPs and the government is moving to improve living conditions for its people.
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Yet, city camps like Pari's have lagged behind. Tall told Aljazeera.net that it might be "several years" before the camp got a refurbishment.
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"In any case, there will be no real benefit to Azerbaijan from the oil revenues until 2008 or 2009, when pay backs on the initial investments will be finished."

Which may mean many more years in the camp for Pari and her fellow IDPs.
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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.