Reuters publishes article about Shusha, 'Switzerland of Azerbaijan'

The area around Shusha was once called the "Switzerland of Azerbaijan" for its wooded hills and mild, Reuters said in an article on the Shusha city of Azerbaijan. 

"A year and a half ago, Azerbaijani forces retook the town from the ethnic Armenians who had seized it in 1992 for the Armenian-backed breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, driving out the 15,000 Azerbaijanis who lived there. But the Shusha they recaptured, in Soviet times a tourist resort, was a shadow of its former self. The 4,000 or so ethnic Armenians who had settled there - and called it Shushi - fled, leaving behind an empty town still bearing most of the scars of 1992," the article said. 

According to the article, slowly, though, Azerbaijani construction workers are bringing life to the streets.

"The local council building, the police headquarters and the main post office have been restored, and there is scaffolding around the Govkhar Agha mosque and the Armenian Orthodox Ghazanchetsots Cathedral," the article says. "The building of three hotels allowed Azeri authorities to choose Shusha as the host of the annual Baku Energy Week conference, and announce that the Emirati firm Masdar would build solar and wind plants for Azerbaijan that together will produce 4 gigawatts of power. Three supermarkets are open and, from this month, five buses a week link Shusha to Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, bringing local tourists as well as workers."





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