An Interview with Tim Straight
Country Director, Norwegian Refugee Council and Honorary Norwegian Consul to Armenia

OK: I first visited those refugees in 1994 and then went back in 1999 to see how the situation was. In five years, nothing had changed. I'm glad that finally, someone got round to doing something.

TS: The refugees from Shahumian really have it together and are not very fond of people from Baku and other places. Almost everyone in those containers is from Shahumian. In Silikyan, we took sixteen families out of public facilities in Yerevan and also built houses for them. However, we didn't realize that there were going to be some integration problems between this ragtag group of people from other places and this large chunk of refugees from Shahumian.

When a journalist spoke to them the other day, there was an old woman who is getting a house from us and when she was asked if she thought there would be a problem living next to these people from Yerevan and Baku she said no, no, no, there won't be any problem at all. We just won't talk to them. Then she gave me a pair of socks that she had knitted herself [laughs].

OK: Have you ever considered trying to implement a program to resolve any problems with integration?

TS: Because the refugees living in Silikyan have expressed the desire for a kindergarten we're working with Mission Armenia to build a kindergarten/community center where everybody can be included. However, I want town meetings and for everyone to work and fight for this so that they can feel responsible for it. Even so, we had penciled in a building on our general plan to be used for this from day one and we also want a playground as well.


OK: You're working with IDPs as well.

TS: We have the IDP survey which will be completed by the end of April. How many IDPs are there in Armenia? The official government number is 72,000 but what we're working with is significantly less than half of that. This isn't necessarily anything the government's done wrong, it's just old information. Many of those displaced from the border have gone back spontaneously so now they're not IDPs, they're returnees.

In this context, you have four categories. You have IDPs who have left and never went back, IDPs that have integrated into wherever they are now, the returnees who had their houses bombed and have been away for a few years but have since moved back to live in the ruins of their house or with relatives, and then you have the "never leftees" as I call them, who got bombed but didn't leave.

I know one eighty year old woman who lives in the basement of her house, which is totally destroyed, since the day it got bombed. All of her sons have said screw this and left, but she has said that she's going to stay there because she wants to die in the basement of her own house. And it's a pretty grubby place, poor lady.


OK: It's worth mentioning that what you're talking about is the border regions in Tavoush, in particular.

TS: Tavoush is the most damaged, I would say.


OK: There is also a strategic importance to rehabilitate the border regions with Azerbaijan and we certainly know that there are problems with the infrastructure. In the autumn I made the journey from Ijevan through Shamsadin to the Azeri border and the roads were absolutely terrible.

TS: When we visit the villages they say the main problems are drinking water and irrigation. There are also problems with no man's land, the trenches and Azeri control of traditional farming land and orchards. Villagers lost about 70-80% of their orchards to barbed wire and mines during the conflict so it's a real challenge.

We have about eleven villages on a list and we're talking to the community action groups that World Vision set up saying that we can do a little bit of infrastructure work, probably drinking water, but mainly we'll be concerned with houses because it’s a shelter project. But then, who gets priority? Almost everyone agrees that it should be those families that have suffered the most damage and particularly those that lost family members during the conflict.


OK: Have you done anything, or are you interested in doing anything, in Chambarak?

TS: We did schools in the old days.


OK: It's still terrible there and they also lost many people during the fighting.

TS: NRC in Azerbaijan is going to be working right across the border from Chambarak so maybe next year we can see if we can go in there as well but we don't know. The most damage to Armenian houses is in villages on the border in Tavoush.


OK: Yet it's strange looking at the map. There are these small enclaves...

TS: Oh yes, Artsvashen, these are the only IDPs -- 4,400 families as far as I can remember -- that can not physically return to their own homes in the whole of Armenia. Then there are a couple of Azeri enclaves down south in Vayots Dzor but Armenia doesn't like to talk about that but what the heck, I'm sure Azerbaijan doesn't like to talk about the Armenian enclaves either.

Anyway, they can't go home to their villages. Everybody else, more or less, can go home. They'll be a house here or a house there in no man's land but we want to find communities that believe in their village and that have the possibility for economic sustainability, who want to live there and already have an identity there. We really want those communities to grow. We're planning to build about 100 houses in total and that's what my staff has been doing for the past three days. They've been away trying to identify a couple of communities. Personally, I like Nerkin-Karmiraghbyur which is the most damaged village from the war. Villages like Aygepar, however, are what I call dying villages.

There used to be a tobacco and wine factory in Aygepar and so they built a village around it. Now, the factories are all shot up and bombed up and there's no farming land. If we go in and build houses what are those people going to live off? Nostalgia? It's a tough decision but we need to make some very tough choices. Probably, we should work in a village that has a chance of survival. If you ask people up there, however, most of them will say help the dying villages because they're really in trouble. However, I'm saying that they're dying for a reason.


OK: That's something that somebody should tell the Armenian Government. This is a strategic area, there's a military base and if it was chosen for a tobacco factory in the soviet era, why not grant it some special economic status to encourage investment in the same areas today?

TS: It can still be quite easily shot at and this weighs in heavily on any economic considerations.


OK: Talking about sustainability, you recently displayed some cushion covers made by refugees in the Artbridge cafe and the Hotel Armenia. How did that go?

TS: We sold sixty pillows in all and we've already started a new series of items with the Armenian alphabet on. Those have turned out to be very popular and we've sold twenty or thirty of them already. We haven't even exhibited them yet so it's all word of mouth and now we're expanding into bedspreads. There's a lot of interest in those and we don't even have a prototype.

What's also happening is that a couple of friends of mine are opening a gift shop on Amirian Street where all of these items can be sold. All of this is just ten women in Silikyan who are knitting everything and we're going to be making cards with the Armenian alphabet on with some other women as well as picture frames, candlesticks and small furniture.

Someone in the United States has his own designs and he's now talking about doing it here. John Hughes put me in touch with this guy who was looking for Armenian knitters in Los Angeles and so I wrote him a letter saying, look, they're not in Los Angeles but they're Armenian. Our big problem is yarn. Most of the yarn comes from Turkey which is politically whatever, but what's available in Yerevan mainly comes from there. Yet, at the same time, we have a huge tel factory in Gyumri.

Tel in Armenian means both thread and yarn so I got all excited and thought we could buy yarn for our knitting project to make everything 100% Armenian but it turned out that it was a thread and not a yarn factory. But then, by coincidence, some Diasporans were in town and they said that they knew somebody in the states who wants to invest in Armenia. My response was that there are hundreds of factories around and that everybody should understand that Armenian women are knitting with yarn imported from Turkey.

That should be enough political motivation for the Diaspora to open up a factory in Armenia. I don't know what will happen but that's what I try to do -- put people in touch with each other.

OK: Have these women formed an NGO yet?

TS: No they haven't. They need more confidence and they need to believe that they can do it. I don't want to go in and tell them to set up an NGO because they have to decide that for themselves and they're not there yet. It's going to take some time for them to get comfortable.

OK: These kinds of ideas have been popular in many countries where there's been the need to provide sustainable incomes for vulnerable sections of the community. Yet, it hasn't really taken off in Armenia or if it has, it's very small scale. However, there's a huge Diaspora out there that could really make a positive contribution to sustaining communities and promote Armenian culture as well. What do you think is needed?

TS: Diasporans with guts who really believe that they can make a difference but that doesn't mean throwing money at something. Spending time is the biggest problem, a little like raising kids. You can throw all the money you want at your kids and they can still turn out bad. The most important thing is to spend time with them instead and it's the same with Armenia.

If the Diaspora really wants to make a difference then they have to get off their couches. Yes, they have to also bring their money and be prepared to live here but they should not get upset and dismayed at the way things are done in transitional countries. Yes, there is corruption and yes, nearly everything is done differently than we're used to, but if you decide that this is want you want to do, you can address those problems when they come up.

Instead of thinking that this is not going to work or expecting that unless everything works on my terms I'm going to pack up and go home, you have to be flexible, you have to be optimistic and you have to work hard. One thing I don't agree with, however, is when people say that you also have to be prepared to expect a lower profit. That one I don't buy. If you're smart, you can make just as much profit on a product made in Armenia as one made in Guatemala.

It's funny you should mention other developing nations, however, because they think that cooperatives are the most natural thing in the world. In Guatemala, Mexico and all over the place in Latin America, they exist but it's not a tradition here. People don't want to work together unless it's me, my friends and family.

OK: Yet, the soviet system was all about things such as collective farms.

TS: And that's probably why they're allergic to it. Cooperation held them back. They weren't allowed to expand, to be creative or to stick their heads up. One thing about not taking responsibility is that you can avoid making decisions which is part of the soviet inheritance that needs to be changed in this new generation.



OK: Talking about friction between refugees and non-refugees and then talking about the Diaspora-Armenia relationship, there also seems to be a significant amount of friction between some Diasporans and locals. In many cases, the two don't seem to understand each other and intransigence exists on both sides. For example, when you talk about making a profit, there's also the tendency for some, but not all, Diasporans to come to Armenia only because they can use their connections to set up a business that pays its workers very little, say the average salary of $50 a month, and make a killing. That isn't right, either.

TS: No, it isn't but I don't know, it depends on the quality of the work and many other things. If someone comes and creates 500 jobs at $50 a month that's going to make a lot of people happy in this country. If someone comes and pays $20 a month then they'll start having problems. $50 a month is a survival salary.

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