LAND OF MANY PEOPLES

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5282, 19 December 1946, Page 7

LAND OF MANY PEOPLES

♦ AZERBMJAN PROVINCE NO RECON CILIN G OF DIFFERENT SECTS. ' The United N&tions Security Council has discussed Asia'd Azenbaijan lohg and heatedly. And this is not the first time the motley Azerbaijans have occupied the attention of the world's diplomats, writes R. H. Markham, a staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor. They stand astride a distant, half-inacecssible border, but border nations often are in the centre of the world stag-e. From one point of view, there is no "Azerbaijanian nation," for the land is inhabited by many different peoples. Perhaps, even, tfhere's no Azenbaijan, In any case, the area bearing that name is divided into two equal parts, one of which lies in Soviet Russia, the other in Iran. Each part is about the size of South Carolina; both together, of Michig*an. Both parts skirt the Caspian Sea, and rise from stifling coastal zones below sea level to heights thatcare among the grandest I in the world. Five times daily Moslem priests in both areas call the people to prayer, though in a few towns and villages church bells also are heard. 'In both regions are Kurds, Armenians, some Syi'ians and a few Turks, with many Tatars in the Soviet nort'h, a few Persians in the Persian south. After centuries of contact, the groups remain unmerged and unreconci'led. A large population in the north, under Soviet direction, has built a modern industrial settlement about the rich oilfields of Baku. Most of the rest of the 3,000,000 Azerbaijanians in Russia and of the 2,000,000 in Iran live in a patriarchal manner. They raise sheep with enormous fat tails, herd small cattle in the motmtains, cultivate colourflul gardens, tend orchards bearinlg rich fruit, and sickle meagre grain 'harvests from thin hillside fields. On the Russian side, some modern improvements have been introduced by the Soviets. In the south, primeval conditions prevail. Political and social conditions are deplorable. Roads largely are lacking. Horsps and foot power are the main means of locomotion. Essentials are made by hand in little shops. Clothes are woven at home from yarn spun by women as tfhey rock cradles, walk to and from fields, or tend s'heep on the ranges. Half a dozen worlds jostle each other, all narrow, exclusive and bristling. The people in them eat diffdrent foods, sing different songs, say different prayers, wear different clothes, and build different 'homes. Each world clinlgs to old traditions, seeks security and privacy, observing .its own taboos, cherishing its own fetishes. They meet one another casually on the road or in the street, but each maintains his own iron curtain. The wild, dashing haugihty Kurd still lives as a mountain horseman. The Armenian trader, a man of the wide world, of all the continents and all the ages, feels above his more primitive neighbours. The Tatar, united with the Kurd by religion, opposed to the Armenian by religion and race, carries with him the unrestraint of Asiatic deserts and of irrepressible, world-shatterinlg ancestors. The Persian still basks in the ineffable world of Xerxes, King of Kings, and the mighty ^Russian magnanimously looks down on all the little peoples as museum relics or unruly backwoodsmen. These little peoples, living a few hundred miles from the place where human history dawned, always have been pawns of empires, and still are. Moscow could unite the two Azerbaijans; and the Azerbaijanians might profit. But that wouM affect world equilibrium. Those little peoples, each in his •little world, are the wards and waifs of more stupendous worlds that clash. Their mutual hatreds are utilised rather than their potential mutual loyalties. Only "One World" can 'bring them harmony and decent living.