In the village of Derge, close to the city of Goris in southern Armenia, armed confrontations occurred in nearby Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenia also asserts ownership over Azerbaijani territory. Here a 106-year-old Armenian woman sits in front of her house guarding it with a rifle against the Nagorno-Karabakh war which displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
Surviving the Hamidian Massacre which lasted 2 years, 1894-1896 about the age of 10, she also survived the second eight-year (1915-1923) killing spree of Armenians by the Ottoman government when she was aged 30.
The Soviet government recognized the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region in the 1920s. The majority of the populace, Armenian, is surrounded by Azerbaijan. The conflicts and fights between the two were under control when the Bolsheviks were in power. However, as the Soviet Union began to fall apart, it lost control of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
And by 1993, Armenia controlled Nagorno-Karabakh and inhabited 20% of the region surrounding Azerbaijan. Russia worked out a ceasefire in 1994 and it has remained the same since. About 230,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan and 800,000 Azerbaijanis from Armenia and Karabakh were unsettled due to the arising conflict.
A few years later, the Armenians were attacked by the Turks. The end resulted in the annexation of Armenia to the Soviet Union. This time had come to an end, old and ready to pass away, Armenia witnessed a bloody war with their neighbouring Azerbaijanis.
In the Nagorno-Karabakh parliament in 1988 passed a motion to join Armenia, not minding the territorial location inside Azerbaijan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the autonomous region officially declared its independence hence, leading to the start of a war in the region between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The war brought about 30,000 casualties and went on to displace hundreds of thousands.
It was here the older Armenian lady was pictured carrying a rifle to defend her home. She was not carrying an AK-47 or AK-74, but an AKM. The gas block for the AKM is slant with the bullet magazine curved to house 7.62x 39mm bullets unlike the smaller sized magazines of the AK-74, it also has a different restraint brake which is only familiar with the AKM-designed rifles.
