{"id":2853,"date":"2017-12-26T11:06:40","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T11:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2853"},"modified":"2017-12-26T11:06:40","modified_gmt":"2017-12-26T11:06:40","slug":"growing-up-in-armenias-border-villages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2853","title":{"rendered":"Growing Up in Armenia\u2019s Border Villages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By GAYANE MRZOYAN and GAYANE MKRTCHYAN<br \/>\n<em>Chai Khana<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Fourteen-year old Tigran Gharakhanyan walks to school in a crouch, flattening himself up against buildings on his village\u2019s main road. He has good reason. His village, Chinari, is barely a kilometer away from Armenia\u2019s border with Azerbaijan, directly in the line of fire of the Azerbaijani armed forces.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWe learn from childhood how to walk safely in the village,\u201d says Gharakhanyan. \u201cOf course, we\u2019ve gotten used to gunfire, but we never know what will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">More than 23 years after the ceasefire that ended full-fledged fighting between the two countries over Nagorno Karabakh, war between Armenia and Azerbaijan is still part of daily life for villages along their border.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sometimes, it\u2019s just a single shot; at others, steady shelling.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The risks affect all, but adult villagers worry particularly about how this life impacts their children. Though defensive walls shield schools and basements safe room students from attacks, ultimately, locals say, nowhere is safe.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Chinari, a low-lying village of about 1,000 people in northeastern Armenia\u2019s Tavush province, is one of the most dangerous settlements. All of its buildings and roads, as well as its school and kindergarten, are within range of the Azerbaijani military, which controls the surrounding hills.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">If gunfire breaks out in the morning, Gharakhanyan, like his classmates, stays home. \u201cWe all go into the house\u2019s safest room, with thick walls and no windows, and wait until [the gunfire] ends,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSafest\u201d is a relative term, however. Azerbaijani artillery hit Gharakhanyan\u2019s house twice, once completely destroying the second floor, he says. The family has since rebuilt it, but the house\u2019s roof and walls still bear traces of bullets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_BH6fI6qgnY?ecver=1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To provide some protection for children on their way to school, Chinari in 2014 erected a 160-meter-long, two-meter-high wall in the center of the village. School windows which face the Azerbaijani lines have been almost completely filled in with stone. Only small slits let light through.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">An additional defensive wall was built near the entrance to the kindergarten, which stands just 600 meters from Azerbaijani military positions. Both the kindergarten and school bear the scars of shelling.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThey can see us very well,\u201d elaborates Parandzem Aghasyan, the kindergarten\u2019s principal. \u201cThat\u2019s why we never take children out to play in the kindergarten\u2019s yard. From 9am till 5pm, we keep them inside . . . \u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The kindergarten has both an indoor and outdoor safe room for its 21 pupils. The windows of its nap room have been closed up with blocks of tufa. Similar precautions have been taken in other border villages, too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cWhen there\u2019s shooting, we turn on loud music to deafen the gunfire or we take the children to the safe room,\u201d continues Aghasyan. Teachers awake sleeping children without telling them the cause, she adds.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">No schoolchild has ever died in one of these attacks. But the gunfire, nonetheless, has an effect.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThere is war even in their games; they shoot, they dig positions and hide in trenches,\u201d Aghasyan says of her charges. \u201cThey always make tanks and other war items out of putty during class.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Chinari\u2019s deputy head of government, 28-year-old Gevorg Petrosyan, believes that the Karabakh war haunts his children\u2019s generation like it did his own.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cMy three sons can already differentiate between what kinds of weapon the enemy is shooting,\u201d Petrosyan says. He has taken care to make plain that this is not a game.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Thirty kilometers down an unpaved road to the northwest of Chinari, the village of Movses grapples with a similar situation. The settlement of about 2,000 people lies in a gorgenot far from three Azerbaijani villages and within direct range of Azerbaijani guns.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">If a house or other village location is hit, word travels quickly. The village school bell tells students when it\u2019s time to head to a safe room.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cDirectly after the shooting, the children start to tell each other, analyze, which side shot more, which side less and from what kind of weapons,\u201d says kindergarten principal Arevik Avalyan.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">War, she says, runs through these children\u2019s stories \u201clike a red line.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But even as they seek to shield them, adults believe that children need to understand the reality of this war and to be able to respond. As elsewhere in Armenia, a education-ministry program teaches teenagers in border villages how to fire, disassemble and clean an AK-74, a Russian assault rifle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cLet\u2019s imagine that the adversary enters the village and there is an unexpected situation. Shouldn\u2019t a person of that age be able to use a gun? \u201c asks Sargis Arakelyan, the firearms instructor for Movses\u2019 School #116.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">During the trainings, students fire at enemy soldiers depicted on a screen. A computer calculates how many shots were fired accurately and announces the results.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ke79vx-XPRA?ecver=1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sixteen-year-old Movses student Diana Atabekyan says that she has come to see the AK-74 as a means of self-defense.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cOne thing I remember very wellfrom my childhood &#8212; the voices of my parents saying \u2018Go into the house. There\u2019s shooting!\u2019\u201d she recollects. \u201cOnly later did I understand that the adversary lives directly in front of us and that the shooting could be fatal for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cOur adversary cares neither about the school, nor the kindergarten or civilians,\u201d comments Chinari\u2019s military-training instructor, Makaryan. \u201cThey shoot whenever they want. We need to be stronger than them, well positioned and be restraining.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Others might add that showing concern for the larger community should be part of the strategy as well. When the gunfire stops, villagers start to call each other to see if anyone was hurt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe most important thing is not to have a loss of human life,\u201d underlines Arevik Avalyan, the Movses kindergarten principal. \u201cWe don\u2019t care about material losses. We\u2019ve already gotten used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>By GAYANE MRZOYAN and GAYANE MKRTCHYAN Chai Khana Fourteen-year old Tigran Gharakhanyan walks to school in a crouch, flattening himself up against buildings on his <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=2853\" title=\"Growing Up in Armenia\u2019s Border Villages\">[more &gt;&gt;&gt;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covcasbulletin.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Covcas-Armenia-Chinari-school-photo-Chai-Khana.jpg?fit=1500%2C1000&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2855,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions\/2855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}