A dreadful scene awaited 74 year-old Baghish Harutyunyan on the morning of July 10th in the border village of Baghanis, Tavush Marz. At 5:30 am he was preparing to take his animals out to the fields to graze.

He was dumbstruck by what he saw, or more to the point, what he didn’t see. 104 sheep, 40 lambs and 6 goats had magically disappeared from the fenced off animal pen next to the shed.

The only animals who somehow managed to evade the clutches of the thieves were 4 kid-goats in the shed at the time. Most likely, the rustlers failed to look in the shed thinking that no animals would be kept inside, given the summer heat wave. Baghish added that, “Even my two hunting dogs had been drugged and were dozing outside. The police said they had been poisoned.”

It is only three kilometers from the Harutyunyans’ house to the Armenian-Azeri border. An intriguing aside to the story is that the thief, or thieves, left one of the lambs with a broken-foot at the foot of the wall enclosing the military border post, right at the curb of the interstate highway. The lamb is now back in the Harutyunyans’ shed but its chances of survival with the broken leg are slim. The trampled mowed grass shows the footprints of the small horned animals passing through. The Armenian and Azeri border posts are practically a stone’s throw from each other, just a few hundred meters apart. Following the animals’ footprints Hrayr, accompanied by his uncle’s son Boris, approached the border. In his own words - there was only about 300 meters to the border but to go any further would have been risky. The Azeri border guards might open fire as they did recently, wounding Levon Avagyan, a shepherd from Baghanis.

The loss has thrown the six member Harutyunyan family into dire straits. Baghish Harutyunyan has dispatched petitions for assistance to President Serzh Sargsyan and Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.

Two days after this incident in Baghanis, a similar attempt to steal livestock was thwarted in the neighboring village of Voskevan. Nvard Grigoryan from Voskevan relates that, “My husband and I heard the cow bellowing that midnight. We got out of bed to investigate and saw three individuals roaming around in the opposite field with cigarette lighters. Unfortunately, we were late in summoning the police who arrived at 3 am, long after the strangers had melted into the dim of the night. They had to be thieves since no villager goes looking for a stray animal at that late hour.”

On March 31st of this year, in the same village of Voskevan, a cow, calf and a bull calf were stolen from Emma Gevorgyan whose house is on the edge of the village, a few kilometers from the border.

There has been a score of livestock theft incidents in the border region villages of the Noyemberyan district since the 1990’s, with hundreds if not thousands of animals having been stolen. Only a tiny number of the thefts have been solved. In 1997 there was a case of theft in the village of Jujevan. I turns out that the three Azeri thieves weren’t able to make it back across the border, having lost their way in the forest. They were killed by a posse of Jujevan villagers, hot on their trail, and by the Noyemberyan police. The three bodies were later handed over to the Azeri side. Incidents of animal theft drastically decreased after this incident but rose again afterwards. There were no reports of stolen livestock in the border settlements of Noyemberyan from 2005 - 2007. Livestock rustling in Noyemberyan started up again on the night of April 22, 2007 when unidentified individuals stole 9 bull calves from the pens of Hovhannes Hakhverdyan in the border village of Koti. Last year alone there were livestock thefts reported in the border villages of Voskevan and Voskepar in the Noyemberyan district, and in the border villages of Nerkin Tzaghkavan and Berkaber in the Ijevan district. In 2007, five cows belonging to Derenik Papyan of Voskepar were stolen. In order to help their fellow neighbor the villagers of Voskepar, despite facing hard times themselves, organized a fund-raiser and collected enough money to purchase one cow and one bull calf for Derenik.

The theft of livestock has turned into a real calamity for the residents of the Noyemberyan district. The villagers are convinced that the root of the problem lies within Azerbaijan and that this is the reason why the crimes haven’t been solved. They also have their suspicions that the Azeris have accomplices on the Armenian side of the border as well. As the saying goes, “When the thief is from your own home, the ox is whisked away up the chimney.” A certain law-enforcement official, who wished to remain anonymous, offered his own theory regarding the spate of livestock thefts. The Azeri Scholl of Investigation graduates students every spring and fall. According to the official it would seem that crossing the border into Armenia and stealing livestock has become something of a “graduation exercise” for the students.

A few years ago the village of Barekamavan laid mines along the Azeri border to thwart such forays of plunder. Subsequently, a few Azeris were blown-up and the thefts ceased in Barekamavan. Many villagers have taken it upon themselves to nip the problem in the bud by the use of “technology”, however rudimentary. Garik Amirkhanyan, a resident of the village of Dovegh, has installed a school-bell in his livestock shed. A few years back the bell started to loudly ring late one night, raising the alarm that thieves had entered the shed. Roused out of their slumber, the members of the house turned on the lights and the panic-stricken thieves hastily made their escape.

Much of the lands belonging to border villages aren’t cultivated, either because the fields are mined or that they are located in dangerous sites. Livestock thus remains the primary source of income. However, the constant reality of livestock theft has dashed even this last chance at making a living.

The government is obligated to protect the property of its citizens. If it can’t insure its safety then the government should not be disarming villagers along the border by forcibly collecting guns and ammunition left over from the war. Residents of border settlements are fearful that once their livestock has been thinned the thieves will come and kidnap them as well. The alarm bells have been ringing for sometime now. Someone must heed the call and take action.