When will it ever stop?

This morning, like many other mornings, the first thing I read in Today.Az is another news reporting on how Armenian Armed Forces break ceasefire. Literally the following is written: On Oct. 13, the Armenian Armed Forces opened fire at Azerbaijani troops from areas outside the Khojavand region at 21:00-21:30 and from an area outside the Ashagi Abdulrahmanli in the Fuzuli region at 21:50-22:10, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said. The Azerbaijani troops answered their fire. No causalities were reported.

During my four months in Azerbaijan I can't recall all the times I read news like these and every time it gets more frustrating not knowing what is actually happening along the borders of Nagorno Karabakh. The reason why I say this is that Azerbaijani news channels are not considered to be totally independent why I as a Swedish citizen choose not to believe in everything I hear, see or read. For more information on this specific topic please visit Amnesty's statement from June 29 on how Europe shows support for Azerbaijan's threatened independent media.

What I do try to believe are the stories I hear from the young IDP (internally displaced people) women when I teach English in Yasamal community. Unlike what I first assumed, these young girls are very reluctant to talk about their situation and about what they remember from the years they lived in Nagorno Karabakh. So, whenever we talk about nationalities, origin, beautiful places or dreams they directly mention the nationalites they don't like (Russian, Armenian, American), their origins (always Nagorno Karabakh no matter if they in reality were born in Baku), their regions and cities as the most beautiful places on earth and the dream of some day be able to move back with their big families to the place where they belong. You meet these lovely kids and what they tell you is anything but pleasant. And then you try to understand how it would feel to be forced to leave your home and your past to be placed in a settlement where you will stay for more than ten years.

Yasamal is one of those places where the people (I don't like calling them IDP's) had no other choice but to stay there and bring up a new generation - a generation that in one way or another will grow up without a true home. I am sincerely grateful to have the chance to meet this people three times a week. It is highly rewarding and gives you a true and at times hard image of how life actually is affected by these kind of territorial conflicts. When I stand there in the classroom and they tell me their stories about how they had to leave their hometowns in order to survive, Sweden weighs heavily on my shoulders and I ask myself - when will it ever stop?

Yesterday was the 16th anniversary of Khojali Tragedy (January 25, 1992) and I promised the students that are from this specific region of Karabakh that I was going to write about this tragical event from the Nagorno Karabakh War on my blog. Please read the following text on the massacre in Khojali.