World Soccer - UK (2022-06)

Emanuele Giulianellireports

Qarabag are on course to win the
ninth Azerbaijani Premier League
titleoftheirhistory.Andmaybe,
forthefirsttime,they’llbeable
to celebrate this achievement
in their hometown, Agdam.
The club belongs to a disputed
region that, sadly, has become
famous for a long war between
the Azerbaijani army and the self-
proclaimed independent republic
of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
Theconflictisoneofthemany
legaciesoftheSovietUnion.
The name Nagorno-Karabakh
embodies all the complexity, cultural
richness and contradictions of a region
in which the word “peace” disappeared
from the vocabulary 30 years ago.
While Nagorno is a Russian adjective
that translates as “mountainous”,
Karabakh – the traditional pre-Soviet
name for the region – is made up
of two words of different origin:kara,
meaning “black”, andbakh, meaning
“garden”, a term from the Farsi
language. To make the mixture
even richer and the tanglemore
inextricable, the local Armenian
population uses the term Artsakh to

describe this rocky and harsh patch

of land, wedged between Armenia

and Azerbaijan and disputed by the

two countries for decades.

The First Nagorno-Karabakh

War ended in1994 with the Bishkek

Protocol, which was nothing more

than a ceasefire agreement between

the contenders, failing to solve the

territorial disputes and leaving the

war without real winners or losers.

To cut a long and messy story short,

after the break-up of the USSR the

region was officially considered part

of the newborn Azerbaijan Republic.

Butthe majority Armenian population

didn’taccept this and decided to

proclaim their independence. They were

supported in this decision – politically

and militarily – by Armenia, another

newly independent post-Soviet state.

Agdam itself had never been part

of Nagorno-Karabakh, but was in one

of the districts that the Armenian

army occupied during the war and

was torn away from Azerbaijan. The

city was captured inJuly1993, for the

importance of its strategic position,

and razed to the ground. In the same

year, Qarabag won the top flight of

eye

witness

AZERBAIJAN

A long-awaited

homecoming