A further 16,000 are in two camps run by Turkish and Arabic charities. Perhaps the worst conditions are experienced by 5,000 refugees living in earth dugouts for the past six years in Agcabedi, east of the occupied city of Agdam and by 67,000 living in a variety of make-shift accommodations near Barda. The 24 square meter houses, of which over 2,000 have been built in the last three years, can be dismantled, transported and re-assembled elsewhere or else sold once the refugees and IDPs are allowed to return to their homes, many of which are currently little more than burned out shells. But the inhabitants of this five year-old refugee camp on rails on the abandoned line that once linked Azerbaijan with Iran and Armenia, are not likely to go anywhere. They can only hope of being chosen to live in one of the newly built settlements of limestone huts that have been built on barren land nearby.
Women sit by the tracks making lavash, a large, flat pancake-like bread.
Water supply is sporadic with none available for days at a time. One woman, Telle Hashimova, says no sanitary facilities are available beyond a single toilet for 140 families. I can not say this is good. This is not life. But with nearly total unemployment, no money even for heating fuel, an attitude that it is someone else's duty to find them work and improve their existence, a sense of weariness and indifference among adults and undernourishment among the undersized children, it is questionable whether these refugees will ever be in position to reclaim their lands by force.