Armenian-Azerbaijani Water Politics
Armenian-Azerbaijani Water Politics
Working on stories about water in and around Nagorny Karabakh proved an education in itself for me as IWPR’s Caucasus editor.
It is standard practice to seek comment from both sides when we report on a dispute, but doing so can become controversial when a journalist based in one place is asked to seek views from the other side of the frontline.
That is especially true when it comes to a place like Nagorny Karabakh, whose very existence is disputed.
While the Armenian community there insists that Karabakh became a legitimate independent state as a result of the 1991-93 war, Azerbaijan insists the region belongs to it and is being illegally occupied. The international community has not recognised Nagorny Karabakh as a state.
When Karine Ohanyan, an Armenian reporter from Karabakh, produced a piece that focused on water issues, her IWPR colleagues in Azerbaijan suggested we include a comment from the foreign ministry in Baku, given that the story dealt with a town internationally considered part of Azerbaijan, and which many refugees who fled during the conflict still call home.
Karine objected, saying she felt there was no need to introduce “artificial balance” into the piece.
“It would be like adding a comment from the Karabakh foreign ministry to an article about Azerbaijani domestic affairs.”
IWPR tries to maintain high standards of unbiased journalism, so as editor I felt we still needed to reflect the official Azerbaijani position, and acknowledge the fact of the territorial dispute without offending the article’s author.
The solution I found was to ask my predecessor at IWPR, Thomas de Waal, an acknowledged expert on the Karabakh conflict now working at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, to comment on the Azerbaijani perspective.
The resulting story was Water Complicates Karabakh Peace Talks.
However, our colleagues in Azerbaijan remained unhappy that the quote from their foreign ministry had been left out, even though Thomas had summarised the official position fairly.
To resolve things, I suggested they commission a story of their own to provide a mirror image of the piece Karine had done, and they agreed to do so.
The result was a fascinating insight from Samira Ahmedbeyli into the difficulties facing villagers on the Azerbaijani side of the front line because much of their water supply had been cut off as a result of the conflict.
Samira explained why in this case, she felt comment was needed from both sides.
“It became clear that Azerbaijan was blaming the Karabakh Armenians for its water problems, and I decided we needed an Armenian comment to maintain balance in the article. As a result, we quoted an official from the unrecognised Nagorny Karabakh government,” she said.
For her part, Karine felt that in this instance it was better to have two separate but parallel articles.
“Of course I’m in favour of Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists writing articles together; it offers a unique opportunity to see things from both sides, and I’ve done this many times,” she told me. “But I think there are times for duets and times for solos. Sometimes two opinions expressed separately create a harmony that ultimately tells a richer truth than if they were expressed together.”
Our efforts to produce two articles that made for balance were not, however, the end of the story. After Samira’s piece was published, the Azerbaijan foreign ministry rang Samira to object to our headline, “Azeris Accuse Karabakh of Denying Them Water”.
“Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan’s territory. How can the Azeris be accusing Karabakh?” asked Elkhan Polukhov, a spokesman for the ministry.
He was also angry that the article included comments from the Karabakh authorities, not from the government of the Republic of Armenia itself.
“The conflict is between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” he said.
But his major complaint was that we had not included the official Azerbaijani comment in Karine’s published story.
“If IWPR wants to maintain balance, then you need to do so in every article,” he said.
The difficulties we had in negotiating our way through the production of these two stories reflect the heightened sensitivities of communities living on either side of the lines of conflict in the Caucasus and elsewhere.
Even the terminology we use is important – Karine was writing about a town she calls Karvachar but which an Azerbaijani journalist would name as Kelbajar.
All we can do is debate these issues and try to arrive at the best possible compromise in a way that does not undermine basic principles of objectivity.
We may not always agree 100 per cent on the final results, but we would hope readers on either side of the divide see articles on such controversial matters as fair.
I always look forward to the next time we can air these live issues.
Oliver Bullough is IWPR’s Caucasus Editor.
