Letter: Deceptive calm in Nagorno-Karabakh

Outside the Defense Ministry in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, a dozen teenage conscripts, some barely over 17, are waiting for orders. Laughing and trying to sneak coffee or cigarettes into the base without being caught, they readily confess how lucky they feel.

Intensely wary, like everyone I spoke to in the enclave, they asked for their names to be changed. Sergei knows he's lucky. "We are spending our days guarding the HQ; however, our friends are down at the frontlines. There is shooting everyday down there…you know…the volume goes up and down on the killing."

Sergei translates for some of the other boys. One claims to have seen an Azeri troop build-up through his binoculars; others stress that the enemy is scared of their troops and is wary about attacking.

I ask Sergei how many of the conscripts think there will be war within the next year. Of the group of 12 or so, two shake their heads. When I ask is if war will come "eventually," they all seem in agreement. Sergei tries to explain: "They cannot allow us to live on our land. When that happens what else can you do but fight?"

Across the road from the Defense Ministry, a small building barely bigger than a large post office houses the Foreign Ministry. A senior official who refused to disclose his name gave me a curt briefing on the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

He sits before a map of the Caucasus showing six carefully drawn out states. Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh are all displayed in this cartography as sovereign and equal alongside Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

He begins, "We have been working with the OSCE group since 1994 and are committed to a solution. The other side, however, is still refusing to acknowledge and therefore there can be no movement. What makes this conflict so intractable is that they are Muslims, we are Christian. They are violent by nature."

The conversation turns to recent events in the Caucasus and the official gestures to the map: "We are not like South Ossetia or Abkhazia - we are not a Russian puppet. We are more independent than them. However, this is a tough situation. These are uncertain and serious times."

And then he hisses, "just remember before you start accusing Russia that your country is doing whatever it can to help the Muslims swallow us."

My encounter in the Foreign Ministry brought me face-to-face with what Caucasian expert and historian Tom de Waal has termed the deepening of the "hate-narratives" that simplify and distort the conflict into easily digestible and mutually exclusive world-views.

Most of the other people I encountered in Stepanakert, having lived through the bitter war that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union held this world view close to heart. When I asked a taxi driver what his feelings were toward Azerbaijan, he laughed and asked: "What are your feelings towards cockroaches? They breed fast and you want them out of your house!"

In the same way that the frozen conflict in Georgia began to heat up slowly in 2007 with sporadic shootings and a cranking up of rhetoric that eventually led to war, there have been disturbing signs of a thaw in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In March, during the Armenian election crisis, a small group of Azeri troops tried to pierce the lines near Stepanakert and the resulting fire-fight - the most intense since the unofficial cease-fire came into effect in 1994 - caused deep concern for stability in the region.

Azeri rhetoric continued to rise with calls from Baku that it may be "forced to re-take the region by military means."

However, since the war broke out in Georgia, things have frozen over once more; yet they are far from being resolved. Nothing is certain in this great power game, and this has left the inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh on edge.

In the village of Shushi, 5 kilometers from Stepanakert, local businessman Nelson Ketchurian shared his fears with me.

"I have been trying to make a living here since the Azeris withdrew from Shushi. They used this town as a position to bomb Stepanakert and almost destroyed it. How do I know that will not happen again?

"Right now I think they are scared of us and they will not attack. We don't want war. We are peaceful people. But I think they do - and sooner or later, war will be coming back. Right now we just can't say - and it's hard living like this, never knowing."

In Stepanakert, the streets are tidy and clean and the massive investment made by the Armenian Diaspora has returned economic vitality to the town. But in the midst of an atmosphere of calm and short-term security, almost banality, recent events in the Caucasus have triggered a sense of long-term dread for those living on the fault-lines of this frozen conflict.