Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War

"Brilliant."
—Time

"This book is a major milestone in the Western scholarship on Karabakh."
—Armenian Freedom Network

"Some of the most illuminating - and alarming - reading in de Waal's book includes the battle of historians and writers on both sides. They fire polemical missiles at each other through bscure history and literary journals, denigrating and, in some cases, obliterating the history and identity of the other side."
—Eurasianet

"Only rarely does a university press publish such a gripping, poignant book as this. . . . This is an impressive work of careful scholarship and vivid writing."
—Choice

"Admirable, rigorous. De Waal [is] a wise and patient reporter."
—The New York Review

Black Garden is the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, got sucked into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, bringing to an end the Soviet Union, and plaguing a region of great strategic importance. It cuts between a careful reconstruction of the history of Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting on its convoluted aftermath.

Part contemporary history, part travel book, part political analysis, the book is based on six months traveling through the south Caucasus, more than 120 original interviews in the region, Moscow, and Washington, and unique primary sources, such as Politburo archives.

The historical chapters trace how the conflict lay unresolved in the Soviet era; how Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders exacerbated it; how the Politiboro failed to cope with the crisis; how the war began and ended; how the international community failed to sort out the conflict.

What emerges is a complex and subtle portrait of a beautiful and fascinating region, blighted by historical prejudice and conflict.

At the same time, however, the book has single but fundamental flaw. Apparently, in pursue of not being accused of siding with either party of this conflict, the Author obstinately balances the "pro-Armenian" and "pro-Azeri" facts with each other in order to create some facade of neutrality. In most of the cases it is expressed in improper comparisons, putting accents on incomparably important aspects of the conflict and sometimes even bringing about unchecked (if not dubious) information in order to counterbalance the well-known facts. As a result the truth is often obscured, hidden or even compromised. After all, the reality is much more uneven than 50-50 formula adopted in the "Black Garden...".

First of all, one of the greatest misleading simplifications (hopefully, not intentional) is equalization of Turkey-Azerbaijan with the Russia-Armenia ties. Turkey-Armenia relationship can only be wished to be better. Turkey spends millions of dollars every year to deny the fact of 1915 Genocide. It refuses to have any diplomatic relationships with Yerevan; it keeps the land border locked damaging badly Armenian economy, and sometimes even retreats to open bullying of Armenia. Meanwhile Russian-Azerbaijani ties, even at the worst point, included diplomatic, economic and military aspects (e.g. Gabala radar station). Today Russians' attitude to Azeris is hardly less favorable than to Armenians. The Russian president Vladimir Putin in a friendly gesture (rarely ever made to others) is planning to attend Azeri president's birthday party. Russian oil companies have heavy share in developing Azeri oil and Russian language, TV and newspapers are still very popular in Azerbaijan. At the same time, the level of Azeri-Turkish relationship is often expressed as "two countries - one nation" by top officials of both countries.

Perhaps the most astonishing example of the Author's strictly enforced "complimentary policy" is the chapter covering the pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait. Apparently, he considered the section - for obvious reasons - too "pro-Armenian". In order to somehow "neutralize" such impression, he went as far as trying to console Azeris by citing cases of similar atrocities committed by other nations widely recognized as civilized, such as English. As if it wasn't enough to "smooth away the differences" between the sides, the Author, in another part of the book referring to the same timeframe, quotes the "study" made by an Azeri about scores of Azeri victims of pogroms on the territory of Armenia. This information, never confirmed by any independent source, seems highly doubtful since in 1988, under relatively well-organized Soviet Government, it was practically impossible to violently kill 127 people without any trace in official statistics. Although throughout the book the Author seems to be very reluctant to rely on information given exclusively by either side of the conflict, in the above part - evidently to "balance" Azeri pogroms of Armenians - he decided to depart from this logic.

Less significantly, but equally unfair is "matching" of Ziya Buniatov and Zori Balayan. The first "discovered" and propagated a completely bogus (as the Author confirms himself) theory of Karabakh being historically Azeri land belonging centuries ago to "Caucasian Albania" - and consequently Armenians being only guests there. Today this theory is still the moral foundation of Azeri side of the conflict, thus Buniatov's role in instilling the hatred over Armenians is indeed tremendous. In turn, Zori Balayan's biggest sins are cited to be connecting dots between the 1915 Genocide and the pogroms in Sumgait, calling Turks "an enemy" (if they are not, then tell me what "enemy" means) and Arax river "Armenian" (which it may be called as it runs not only on Azerbaijan's border, but also on Armenia's). Sometimes it looks like the facts in the book are really stretched to fit each other...

Many other examples could follow. Most importantly, however, the Author seems to fail recognizing (or at least to properly illustrating in the book) the significant political, demographic and territorial differences between the sides of the conflict. With the history of narrowly escaping the full physical extermination 88 years ago - Armenians still seem to battle with the same dreadful perspective. Less than three millions of Armenians with 80% of their borders blocked by hostile neighbors since the independence are scrambling to survive in today's eventful reality. It takes looking at the map to understand that any potential change in great powers' stance is prone with the deadliest consequences for Armenians (taking into account that Turks are so much stronger, and still never even apologized for the Genocide of 1915 - who would guarantee Armenians' security?). On the other side are eight millions Azeris - with 15+ millions more in Iran - have open access to the sea, plenty of oil (which seem to have hypnotizing effect on Western democracies, too), and with 60 millions Turkey (the second strongest NATO army in the region) as their staunchest ally. The asymmetry is obvious, and it is impossible to understand the history of Karabakh conflict without recognizing it. Not by coincidence, Andrey Sakharov, the prominent Russian scientist and dissident, a person with huge personal moral authority, was quoted to say "Karabakh is a matter of honor for Azeris, but matter of survival for Armenians". It seems, the Author - who spent so much time studying the history of the region - would agree with such statement, but is very unwilling explicitly acknowledging it in the book.

Despite of the above-mentioned weaknesses the book is definitely worth your time and money, especially if you are able to read between the lines, use your judgment and not fall into "all-balancing" trap skillfully set by the Author.


Forced Juxtaposition in the Black Garden   August 26, 2003
David Davidian (Belmont, MA United States)
41 out of 58 found this review helpful

Black Garden attempts to objectively analyze and chronicle events before, during, and after the war between Armenia and the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh on one side, and Azerbaijan, on the other. The conflict was the most severe eruption of ethnic violence during the last days of the Soviet Union. This
truggle of self-determination versus territorial integrity temporarily concluded with a truce in May of 1994.

This book is based on a preponderance of data, much of which, unfortunately, is incomplete. De Waal assumes that no comprehensive non-partisan archive or compilation of events exists, which is why he felt this book was necessary. He uses the forced juxtaposition of seemingly related events to present the illusion of neutrality and moral equivalence. With information not readily available, a generally well-informed reader is lead down a path of comfort in the assumption that someone else has provided facts and analysis. As a result, this book has already beguiled many, as demonstrated by their reviews. De Waal forces a side-to-side comparison of seemingly equivalent events, including war crimes, in the name of "two-sides to any issue". This is a technique employed when one is not willing to take sides, or when further, in-depth research will lead to an inevitable hard conclusion. When events clearly don't lend themselves to such manipulation, de Waal does an admirable job. This is evident in his treatment of facts such as Azerbaijanis cashing in personal items, enhancing Azerbaijan's ability to purchase arms above those agreed to internationally (page 198), and the role of the Russian forces on both sides of this conflict.

The author asks the reader to evaluate his book as a whole with a neutral viewpoint; however, his conclusions are far from neutral. His widespread use of forced juxtaposition is compelling enough to label de Waal partisan. De Waal requires parity for the February 1988 anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait,
Azerbaijan. Upon failing to find any organized pogroms of Azerbaijanis in Armenia, he turns to anti-German violence in East London in 1915, after the sinking of the Lusitania (page 44) as a contrasting event. Once again, further research has shown that in the weeks prior to the Sumgait pogroms, Azerbaijani officials in Sumgait distributed addresses of Armenians to local henchmen. This clearly qualifies these acts as premeditated murder with the connivance of local authorities. The Sumgait events can be evaluated on their own merits. Had he done so, de Waal would be required to actually reach a
conclusion.

De Waal compares the circa 1990 desecration of the Armenian cathedral in Baku by the Azerbaijanis with the subsequent destruction, by Armenians, of a small, unused mosque in Yerevan (pages 79-80). In parallel, this inappropriate comparison is obfuscated by de Waal's discounting Armenia's reconstruction of
Yerevan's Blue Mosque. Having seen both mosques, it is clear that further research would have lead de Waal to either dumping this topic, or reaching the conclusion that his choice of parity in desecration is not appropriate. When de Waal's research on the Azerbaijani historian Ziya Bunyatov concludes that his writing is inflammatory, he chooses to compare this Director of the Oriental Institute of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences and Azerbaijani national hero of the time to a Glasnost-era Armenian journalist Zori Balayan - pointing out they have the same initials. Further investigation would have shown that in the years preceding the conflict, Bunyatov's translation of a number of original texts about the region had systematically removed the noun "Armenian" from the translation, or simply omitted entire sections. Also, De Waal cannot seem to find comparable figure anywhere in dynastic Azerbaijan to equate with the warlord like figure of Samvel Babayan in Nagorno-Karabakh, so he finds the Chechen Samil Basaev - again, two people with the same initials.

Forced juxtaposition is used in the Black Garden various ways depending upon the caliber of the event. If the event is relatively innocuous, parity is presented on the same page or even in the same paragraph. At other times the comparison spans pages or chapters. This is very evident when de Waal characterizes the Turkish genocide of the Armenians as a unilateral Armenian claim (page 75, confirmed in note 5), thus denying it from having any role or basis for actions associated with national survival or self-determination of the Armenians. He contrasts this with an unsubstantiated Azerbaijani genocide counter-claim of 2.5 million people by Armenians over the span of 200 years. This is an interesting technique both; in not taking a position on genocide, and in forcing equivalence with an invalid Azerbaijani claim. Ignoring facts and giving the reader the illusion of neutrality generates a skewed perception of reality. At the end, de Waal takes the unfortunate position that international recognition of the genocide of the Armenians discourages peace (page 277). This clearly partisan stance is finally stated some 200 pages after the issue of the genocide was first introduced.

The process of forced correlation reaches a wasteful level with the entire tenth chapter, which is dedicated to contradictory historical claims, between Azerbaijani and Armenian historians, regarding Caucasian Albanians (no relation to Balkan Albanians), the pre-Islamic inhabitants of areas immediately east of Armenia. De Waal dedicates 13 pages to finally establish that this topic was a non-issue, concluding that it took a New Jersey-based professor to confirm that the Azerbaijani claims are groundless.

De Waal would be much more credible by actually giving the events chronicled the required level of analysis. He heavily implies that the mutilation of the dead or dying is something contemporary Armenians and Azerbaijanis learned from the Armenian guerilla leader Antranik in 1918 (pages 168-169). De Waal's precluded research on the Turkish genocide of the Armenians shows that it was common for the Turkish murderers of Armenian women to cut off their nipples, dead or alive - those with more carried bragging rights. Dehumanizing one's perceived enemy this way has its origins deep in human history, and is not a twentieth century Armenian, Turkish, or Azerbaijani invention.

Avoiding evaluation of events, ideologies, etc., on their own merits assumes there is no right or wrong, only a continuum of events in human relations. The practice of forced parity serves those who are unwilling by choice or unable by circumstance to engage in an in-depth analysis of events. This method allows one not to take a position on the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews by equating it with claims that more Germans died than did Jews during the same general period. Such claims may be true in isolation, but cannot be juxtaposed, nor are they equivalent.

De Waal's utopian proposal (page 283), based on a song from an eighteenth century Armenian troubadour, Sayat Nova, calling for Georgian rule and lingua Azerbaijani as the formula for achieving nirvana in the Caucasus, is taken out of context. A more vigorous study on Sayat Nova chronicles that the Qajar
Prince Agha Mohammed Khan, an Azerbaijani, was responsible for his death in 1795 during an invasion of the region.

Peace can only be achieved through an understanding of events and their causes, not by wishfully granting "parity" to each side. The likely result of de Waal's Black Garden is to stiffen the resolve of the belligerents by obfuscation of
the historical record.


Book by Tom de Waal (Reviewed in April 2003)   December 15, 2003
Emil Sanamyan (Washington, DC)
19 out of 27 found this review helpful

The book is a major milestone in the Western scholarship on Karabakh. It is probably the only serious work that attempts to take a balanced view of the conflict, and it mostly succeeds, occasionally at the expense of accuracy. The book's strength is in the many dozens of interviews de Waal conducted on both sides of the conflict line with politicians, military commanders and regular people affected by the war and its aftermath. He may also be the first to research Politburo archives from the 1980s that have just recently become available. It must have been hard work but it paid off, producing probably the most complete Western narrative of the Karabakh conflict that casts aside many of the popular conspiracies about the conflict and highlights the largely spontaneous nature of history in the Caucasus. De Waal's is also a very readable book and does not merely regurgitate the chronology of events.

In his study of the conflict, De Waal reaches two key conclusions:

- The Karabakh conflict was not engineered by Moscow (as is still widely believed). It started on the ground between Armenians and Azeris, and Soviet leadership tried but failed to contain it. Conflict became possible though in part because USSR conserved nationalism in the republics. On top of mutual acrimony dating to early 20th century and before, Armenia and Azerbaijan remained competitors throughout Soviet history and tensions over Karabakh flared even under Stalin. Both sides had grievances, felt insecure and turned to arms and aggression in what they both saw as self-defense.

- While the Armenian-Azerbaijani war had been nasty and brutal, the conflict can be resolved through confidence building measures, including economic cooperation. One such step could be the opening of Baku-Nakhichevan-Yerevan railway that would benefit both sides. While de Waal keeps his distance and leaves the details of a settlement for the parties to work out, one element of the solution is clear: Nagorno Karabakh cannot be subordinated to Azerbaijan. Heydar Aliyev, the strongman of Azerbaijan now fading from its political scene, appears to have understood this as well, but stumbled in the effort to bring peace to his people.

De Waal's other achievement is identification and dismissal of several erroneous but commonly cited beliefs about the Karabakh war, promoted by Azerbaijan and frequently adopted by mainstream reporters and even some foreign governments.

In the Appendix to the book, he discusses some of them. Azerbaijan claims that 20 percent of its territory is under occupation. De Waal finds, independently of earlier research (see for example http://groong.usc.edu/ro/ro-19970917.html), that in reality less than 14 percent of Soviet Azerbaijani territory is under Armenian control. Of the 14 percent, 5 percent is the territory of Nagorno Karabakh proper and cannot be considered under "occupation." Another Azerbaijani claim is that the war displaced over 1 million Azeris. In reality, around 700,000 Azerbaijanis and over 400,000 Armenians were displaced as a direct result of the conflict.

De Waal also addresses Azerbaijan's official effort to rewrite history of Karabakh and entire Armenia. (An Israeli journalist Yo'av Karny was probably the first Western journalist to discuss this problem in his book "The Highlanders" published in 2000.) The Azerbaijani historiography purports that all of present-day Armenia, including Karabakh, is a "historically Azerbaijani territory" and its Christian monuments belonged to the Caucasian Albanian culture. In reality, the Albanian culture was largely absorbed by Armenians centuries before first Turkic descendants of Azerbaijanis arrived in the Caucasus.

Finally, Azerbaijanis insist that the Armenian victory in the war was a result of Russian assistance. In reality, Russia alternatively helped and put pressure on both sides and de Waal carefully documents that. But Armenians appeared to have greater will to defend their homes and did a better job organizing and harnessing their resources.

With the many successes, the book does have inaccuracies and omissions. In an apparent effort to seek balance in terms of violence done to both sides, de Waal relies heavily on Baku researcher Arif Yunusov for figures on anti-Azeri violence in Armenia and the so-called "Kapan incidents," to juxtapose them to well-documented anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait and Baku. In the late 1980s, Yunusov was charged by the Azerbaijani Communist Party leadership with creating a revisionist narrative justifying the anti-Armenian violence in Azerbaijan. Some of Yunusov's contradictory claims were investigated and proven fraudulent already at that time. But de Waal appears to be blindly endorsing Yunusov's insinuations.

De Waal also overlooks the threats made by Soviet Azeri officials that preceded the anti-Armenian violence in Azerbaijan which suggests their organized or officially instigated nature. Another aspect of the early stages of the conflict is the alleged role played by Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan's Soviet-era leader who was forced to retire from the Politburo in 1987. Aliyev's allies are believed to have instigated some of the worst anti-Armenian violence and subsequently led the Azeri nationalist movement.

De Waal also gives only a passing reference to Azerbaijani efforts to internationalize the war by bringing in a motley crew of Afghan, Chechen, Russian and Turkish mercenaries to join the war, most Azerbaijanis themselves were unwilling to fight.

Speaking on his U.S. book tour earlier this year, de Waal agreed that a resumption of war, as often threatened by Azerbaijani officials, would be devastating. To gain even a few kilometers, thousands of Azerbaijani youths would have to die, he said, but the "factor of stupidity" cannot be ruled out. De Waal urged a renewed push for negotiations, although he conceded that the current environment is not conducive to resolution. In the absence of such an environment, the current peace, which de Waal argues is "bad," may be the best possible arrangement for both parties today.


So far the best book written on "Black Garden"...   May 15, 2003
18 out of 27 found this review helpful

Unlike many previously written texts on the Karabakh conflict, I have to admit that Thomas de Waal has retained a very neutral view of the issue expressing views of both conflicting parties. I am Azerbaijani student in the USA. Thomas has clearly revealed many issues about our so called "enemies" Armenians, their views, beliefs and worries, of which I had only a blurry view. Any foreign author, who considers the Karabakh subject important enough to write a book on it, often ends up with a very biased composition in his hand. Thomas de Waal has managed to do what, not every passionate writer could; stay thrilled by the subject, meanwhile baring a very neutral position with a hint of insignificance.

I had not heard of Sayat-Nova, which the author quoted in the book. Throughout the book there were moments of grief for my own people and for those across the border. As a young son of Azerbaijan, often exploding with nationalistic thoughts like "we will win back our lands", after reading this book, will need to start considering what Sting sang in "Russians":

"There is no such thing as a winnable WAR,
It is a lie we (Europeans) don't believe anymore"


an "A" for journalism, a "C" for analysis   September 18, 2004
Elijah Arakeloff (New York City)
17 out of 32 found this review helpful


There is little doubt that Tom de Waal's "Black Garden" is a worthy journalistic effort. The author traveled extensively in the region and met with a large number of top political and military actors involved in the events. The author generally understands the region's political, economic and cultural dynamics.

The book is a chronological narrative that starts from the beginning of the dispute in 1988 and ends with the present day. Along the discussions of the dispute itself, the text features mini-stories about ordinary people whose lives were affected by the conflict. I think de Waal's chief contribution to understanding of the modern Caucasus is his observation that the Soviet institutions of ethnic federalism, in their own strange way, unintentionally stimulated nationalist politics.

Having said this, it should be noted that, first and foremost, de Waal is a politically-motivated writer and a person who is launching a "peacenik" career. His disproportionably pushy effort to create an impression of symmetry in the conflict ("these guys are bad but those ones aren't good either") is easily detectable. As de Waal stretches and trims facts to fit his "balancing" model, a great number of his arguments sound hypocritical, incoherent or illogical. As a result, various errors of reasoning appear. For example, while the author devoted an entire chapter to the anti-Armenian massacre in Azerbaijan's town of Sumgait (which was Azerbaijan's unexpectedly violent response to secessionist petitions from Nagorno Karabakh), he never bothered to explain why in 1988, in a tightly-controlled police-state like the USSR, the Sumgait events took place at all, and why in some other cases there was no violence. Why, for instance, neighboring Georgians did not touch ethnic Ossetians, living in great numbers in or near Tbilisi, when South Ossetia, somewhat like Nagorno Karabakh, voted to break away from Georgia.

Even worse, when facts do not stretch well enough, de Waal's forces his "balancing" bias on the reader by promoting evidently unreliable rumors. For example, to claim that Armenians, in fact, targeted Azerbaijanis too, de Wall angles to say that there were "unreported" Armenian attacks on Azerbaijanis in Armenia's region of Kapan, as early as in 1988. Despite the abundance of evidence that it was merely a myth invented by Azerbaijan's national security organs as a post-factual excuse for the Sumgait massacre, we find de Waal surprisingly at ease with the fact that he never met any living Azerbaijani who would have experienced these "attacks."

The funniest moments in the book, however, are situations when de Wall appears to suddenly realize that his overzealous enforcement of impartiality, by fabricating "balance" for every single episode of the Karabakh conflict, may actually cost him the loss of the "balance" of the big picture. Here, in a tactical retreat from his methodology, de Waal employs yet another trick: deliberate omissions of well-documented events. The author carefully "forgets" to mention the horrific anti-Armenian massacres in Azerbaijan in the fall/winter of 1988 that provoked first-ever and, fortunately, only episodes of anti-Azerbaijani violence in Armenia (which de Waal, however, didn't forget to bring up).

Now about the book's problem number two: de Waal's intentional attempt not to discuss the Karabakh conflict as a dispute between Muslims and non-Muslims (more specifically, between a Muslim state and a non-Muslim community). This tremendously decreases the analytical value of the text.

While the Karabakh conflict is not a religious or sectarian dispute per se, at least because both warring sides do not define themselves in religious terms or quarrel over religious symbols, the nationalist paradigms of Azerbaijanis are firmly rooted in religion-derived prejudices. In this, the Karabakh conflict shares a lot with other conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims (Indonesia, Malaysia, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Kosovo, Iraq, etc.). The 70 years of the Communism rule could not destroy Azerbaijan's centuries-old Islamic culture of bigotry and loathing, even as Azerbaijanis were transformed into a "secular" Muslim nation. While secularization purged the Azerbaijani chauvinism of Islamic rhetoric, with ethnicity sidelining Allah, Azerbaijan's Islamic hate found a safe refuge inside the ideology of modern nationalism, while their instincts of nomadic Turkish marauders snapped to the filth of racism.

Because of his plan to avoid discussions of the religious aspect of the conflict, the author often asks questions that remain unanswered. For instance, de Waal is surprised by the fact that both Armenians and Azerbaijanis claim Karabakh "as their own land" while denying such right to the other. For those who know Islam, however, it is clear that the denial of title to land both in terms of property and as a right to form self-governed territories is a key characteristic of Islam's relations with non-Muslims. By defining non-Muslims as people who are intrinsically inferior to Muslims, Islam denies them [any] political rights (while, true, preserving some social rights). Islam then encourages the indiscriminate use of violence ("jihad") against the "infidels" if the latter unilaterally question the Islam-imposed statuses or are suspected in conspiring against the state. Hence, the explosive nature of the Sumgait massacre that in 1988 brought back the Azerbaijani tradition of anti-Armenian violence seen in 1905-1906 and 1918-1920 in Baku, Shusha, Nakhichevan, Gjandja, Aresh, Agulis, etc. De Waal chooses to "overlook" the fact that during both the 1905 and 1988 anti-Armenian massacres, "Azerbaijanis" ("Caucasus' Tatars," or whatever they were called back then) rallied under the same banner: "Death To The Armenians!" As Prophet Muhammad said himself: "Kill, kill, the unbelievers wherever you find them."

Indeed, from the early 1900s and to this day the Azerbaijani chauvinism continues serving its historical purpose: consolidation of the Muslim Turkic-speakers of the Southeastern Caucasus into a single "Azerbaijani" group by comparing them to the Caucasus' purportedly unworthy and menacing non-Muslim autochthons. And a key element of this identity-building process is the acts of collective sadism that are programmed to destroy demographic, cultural and political environments which are considered alien to "Azerbaijan," Turkism and Islam.