38 year-old Sasun mostly passes the time by watching TV and playing with his brother’s two young children. “It’s nice that my brother has a family; they help me pass the time of day,” confesses Sasun. You won’t hear him utter any complaints while talking to him. “I have nothing to complain about. Things turned out this way, what can you do, it’s fate. Just as long as there’s no war. Now, I neither help anyone nor am I a burden to anyone. I’ve accepted the slice of life that I have,” states Sasun.

Sasun Aleksanyan is a first-degree disabled Artsakh war veteran who is participating in a new program launched by the Karabakh government. Like other first-degree disabled vets he was allocated a hand-controlled automobile from the government in September, 2008. He now uses the car to visit his parents in their home village. Sasun was born and raised in the Hin Shen village in the sub-district of Berdadzor located in the administrative region of Shoushi. After graduating from high school he was admitted to the Stepanakert agricultural technical college. In 1989 he was conscripted into the Soviet army. However, when the Artsakh movement began just two months later, he returned to his native village and joined up with the Berdadzor self-defense unit. In 1991, when the entire village was forcibly evicted by the Azeris, Sasun’s parents and relatives took up temporary residence in Stepanakert, the capital. Afterwards, fierce military operations broke out. Sasun participated in the liberation of Shoushi and the Lachin corridor, battles in defense of communities in the Martakert region and the liberation of Kelbajar and Ghubatli. It was in the Basharat area of Ghubatli, after a particularly fierce battle, when a short lull in the fighting was called to allow for the safe passage of the local residents, that Sasun was severely wounded by an enemy mortar shell. Sasun received a spinal cord injury and his army buddy next to him was killed. “I only remember the doctor at the Hadrut hospital saying that I wouldn’t make it. They later transferred me to Yerevan by helicopter where I underwent several operations and medical treatments,” he recounts. However, the operations he underwent in Yerevan and Moscow and the subsequent medical care didn’t have the desired effect of getting Sasun to walk on his own power. Today the war vet can only get around in a wheelchair with the aid of his brother. Sasun now lives in the town of Shoushi with his brother’s family in a three room apartment. “Before the war my father always wanted to buy me a car and I’d always tell him to buy a house in town instead,” recounts Sasun. In 2007 the government allocated him a one room flat in a new building on Toumanyan Street in Stepanakert. But he doesn’t live in this apartment since it, as with the other apartments in Stepanakert allotted to disabled individuals, isn’t furnished with the necessary accessories for one to live on his own. As a first-degree disabled veteran, Sasun receives a monthly pension of 60,000 drams (approximately $200) and on holidays the government grants cash awards. “I really don’t need anything else. Let God watch over my parents and relatives. I help out as best I can,” adds Sasun.