From Anatol Lieven in Agdam   

ON EVERY return to Agdam, Armenian bombardments have eroded the town a little further: a building destroyed here, a few windows blown out there. In the past two days, nine civilians have been killed. A constant stream of refugees is pouring out of the town. 

Natik Talibov, the Azerbaijani deputy interior minister, passed through Agdam yesterday on his way to hold talks with Armenian leaders about a truce in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and an exchange of hostages. Also yesterday, Boutros Boutros Ghali, the United Nations secretary-general, announced that Cyrus Vance, the special envoy who arranged a peacekeeping operation in Croatia, is to make a fact-finding mission to the disputed enclave, marking the first direct UN involvement in the four-year conflict. 

Fresh violence between Azerbaijanis and Armenians yesterday shattered a brief ceasefire. Each side accused the former Soviet army, which is starting a pullout from the region, of helping its rival. The ceasefire, supposed to have been in effect since 7 pm on Thursday, was reported to be holding in Stepanakert, regional centre of Nagorno-Karabakh. In Agdam, four Armenian prisoners, two men and a woman with a baby, were being kept at the headquarters of the Popular Front. They had come from Azerbaijani prisons and were being held for exchange of the hundreds of Azerbaijani prisoners from Khojaly being held by the Armenians.

One probable Armenian prisoner will not see home again. Dumped in the grass at a cemetery in Agdam was the hideously burnt body of a man, the lower part of his face blown away by a bullet, his feet tied together by electric cable. The ground around the body was scorched, and there was a pool of blood. Azerbaijanis said that he was an Azerbaijani killed by the Armenians, but, four miles behind the lines, this seems unlikely. He was probably killed in revenge for the massacre by the Armenians of Azerbaijani refugees from Khojaly. 

The mood in Agdam is one of increasing nervousness as the Armenians overcome the last Azerbaijani positions in Nagorno-Karabakh. In an offensive mine miles northwest of Agdam on Thursday, the Armenians captured the villages of Surkhavent, Manikli and Bashkunepaya and two collective farm centers. Majid Agayev, the commander of the local defence force at Surkhavent, said the Armenians had attacked at midday with about 20 armoured vehicles and more than 1,000 infantry in snow camouflage uniforms. He said that he saw Russian soldiers with them through his binoculars. 

In the battle, Armenians lost five armoured vehicles to Azerbaijani mines, while the local force lost two of theirs before abandoning the village. Mr. Agayev said that 20 Azerbaijanis were killed, including two women and three children, ten were missing and five have been taken prisoner. Yusif Abdiev, a lieutenant commanding an armoured personnel carrier guarding Agdam, said his unit had tried to break through to relieve Surkhavent but had been driven back by Armenian fire. 

He and his crew are Lezghins, a Muslim people from the neighboring autonomous republic of Dagestan. Also in Agdam was a man from Chechenia, a rebel region within Russia, and a Tajik from Central Asia. The latter said he had come to Azerbaijan to fight because “all Muslims should defend each other’s land against aggression”. Helping Lieutenant Abdiev’s unit were seven  Russian soldiers, including two officers, from the Soviet paratroop unit stationed at Ganja. He said they were serving “out of sympathy for us”, and not for pay, and that they do not join in the fighting but only repair equipment. Otherwise, he said, “half of our vehicles couldn’t even more”. 

News of Mr. Vance’s mission was in a message from Dr Boutros Ghali to Jiri Dienstbier, the Czech foreign minister and current president of the Conference of Security and Co-operation in Europe, who is trying to mediate an end to the fighting. The Secretary-General emphasised that Mr Vance’s trip was intended to support the CSCE peace effort and welcomed Mr Dienstbier’s plan to visit the enclave himself. 

Publication date 03/14/1992 

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform