By Jon Auerbach

GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

CHAKHARLI, Azerbaijan – The truckloads of scared and lost children, the sobbing mothers, the stench of sickness and the sea of blank faces in this mud-covered refugee camp obscure the deeper issue of why tens of thousands of Azeris have fled here. Beneath the tears and suffering in Chakharli is a sharp and unexpected turn of events along Russia’s southern tier. Having grabbed the upper hand in their undeclared war against Azerbaijan, ethnic Armenian forces are striking back with a forcefulness that is shocking even Armenia’s traditional supporters.

“What we see now is a systematic destruction of every village in their way,” said one senior US official. “It’s one of the most disgusting things we’ve seen.”

The seasaw war over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – a kidney-shaped swath of land about the size of Delaware, populated by Christian Armenians but located in Muslim Azerbaijan – has always been nasty, and neither side has missed an opportunity to bear down on the enemy when given the chance. But now the Karabakh Armenian forces are remembering the days and nights spent under fierce Azeri shelling just a few years ago and striking back at the enemy with pent-up, unapologetic anger.

“The sense in Karabakh is, ‘The world didn’t do anything when we were brutalized, so we’re going to seek revenge,’ ” said Paul A. Goble, a senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a telephone interview last week. “Тhеу are definitely angry.”

As in Bosnia, the war in Karabakh has taken on a life of its own, with atrocities being committed, villages being “cleansed” and the world seemingly little interested in what transpires far away from TV cameras that seem to have tired of ethnic bloodshed. But unlike the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the Karabakh situation is a case of underdog-turned-bully. Once seen by the world as a heroic David taking on an army of Goliaths, the Karabakh forces are now being condemned as their virtually unstoppable military machine rolls through the Azeri heartland with impunity, looting and burning villages along the way.

“It’s vandalism,” the US official said. “The idea that there is an aggressive intent is a sound conclusion.”

But both because of the influence of Armenian lobby groups and the overwhelming sense that Karabakh Armenians were fighting for a just cause, such criticism directed toward Armenia was unheard of just a year ago. Now, however, the Armenians of Karabakh are on the wrong side of international opinion, facing condemnation from the United Nations, the United States and a host of other Western powers.

“They’re in the dog house,” Goble said, referring to a slew of recent UN resolutions condemning their activities in Azerbaijan.

This has affected the situation most acutely in mainland Armenia, where residents, once unequivocal in their support for Karabakh, are growing squeamish. Murmurs of discontent can now be heard in the capital, Yerevan, as the landlocked country enters its third winter under an economic stranglehold brought on by the conflict.

“It’s strongly felt here that we are suffering from the appetite of Karabakh,” said Ruben Mangasarian, a Yerevan photographer. “It’s time to end the war.”

While many Armenians in Yerevan tend to agree with such statements, the mood in Karabakh is clearly, in the words of one senior Western diplomat, “pervaded by a sense of conquest.” Since they began the current offensive last March by spilling over the enclave’s borders with an attack on western Azerbaijan’s Kelbajar region, the Karabakh forces have gobbled up dozens of Azeri towns and villages.

A powerful jab into southern Azerbaijan last month gave them control of almost the entire strip of land between Karabakh and Iran, sending an estimated 60,000 refugees fleeing and raising the total Karabakh war gains to almost 30 percent of Azeri territory. The United Nations estimates that there are more than 1 million refugees in Azerbaijan, roughly one-seventh of the former Soviet republic’s entire population. Thousands who fled to neighboring Iran are being slowly repatriated to refugee camps already bursting at the seams. But because of the Karabakh Armenians’ policy of burning villages, relief organizations say there is no hope that the Azeris could return home any time soon.

At Chakharli, about 10 miles from Iran, more than 10,000 refugees are crammed into a makeshift tent city. Aziz Azizova, 33, arrived in the Iranian-run camp about three weeks ago, after she and her five children were forced to flee their home in the village of Buik-Merjan.

“I left my village with nothing, not even my shoes,” she said. “You see how our children are living? Some of them are living right in the mud.”

Azizova, like thousands of others, escaped by fleeing across the Arax River into neighboring Iran. The UN estimates that around 300 Azeris, mainly women and children, drowned in the river’s currents. One of the people who did make it across was Samaz Mamedova, a 40-year-old accountant. Sitting with friends in tent No.566 on a recent day, Mamedova explained how the Armenians seized her village in less than a half-hour, forcing the entire population toward the river in a chaotic scramble for survival.

“If the governments all over the world would stop helping the Armenians, the war would stop,” she sobbed. “Dogs don’t bark when they’re alone.”

UN reports of looting

While Karabakh officials deny their forces are looting and burning Azeri settlements, UN representatives who drove near the front lines a few weeks ago reported seeing dozens of miles of villages up in flames. Karabakh soldiers themselves boast of looting each village for goodies like refrigerators, stereos and anything else they can cart back home. The Karabakh leadership has closed almost the entire enclave to journalists and international organizations in the past few months, allowing most foreigners only as far as the capital, Stepanakert. Defending their actions, the Karabakh Armenians maintain they are seizing the Azeri land for security reasons. They argue the land around Karabakh must be emptied because the Azeri army is using it to launch attacks into the enclave. Specialists on the region, however, say there is more to the issue than just defensive positioning.

Some attribute the Armenian actions at least partly to a vendetta against Turkey, Armenia’s historic enemy. At the turn of the century, the Turks massacred more than a million Armenians, and many Armenians indirectly blame the Azeris, who are ethnically related to the Turks, for the slaughter. Similarly, most analysts believe Karabakh’s offensive is part of a larger plan to seize as much territory as possible to strengthen their hand at the negotiating table. But diplomats and analysts are worried about how uncontrollable the situation seems to have become.

“The tail wagging the dog”

Through the first four years of war, the government in Yerevan was more or less able to steer Karabakh policy. At the time, Karabakh forces were weak, and Yerevan acted not only as a channel for military support but also as a sort of public relations center that kept the plight of the Karabakh Armenians in the world’s eye. Since the Karabakh forces have gone on the offensive, however, that relationship has changed dramatically, diplomats say. Clearly on top, the enclave’s leadership seems to be calling its own shots independent of what Yerevan thinks.

“What we see is the tail wagging the dog,” said one Western diplomat. “You could say that the better things are going in Karabakh, the more difficult it is for Yerevan.”

Yerevan’s problems are compounded by the highly politicized nature of the Karabakh issue. Although officials in the capital privately admit that Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian has worked behind the scenes to get Karabakh to ease up, publicly, at least, he is bound to support their cause. This is because Karabakh, or Artsakh as many Armenians call it, is a symbol of the past size and strength of the Armenian nation. At the turn of the century, towns like Shusha, built into the ragged clifftops of Karabakh, were centers of Armenian intellectual and cultural life, making today’s battle to preserve the enclave’s independence an emotionally charged issue.

“Because Karabakh is fighting for its homeland there’s no way that Yerevan can tell them to stop,” said one Western diplomat. “In a way, it’s Karabakh controlling Armenia now much more than Armenia controlling Karabakh.”

This problem has only been made more acute by a sense among the Karabakh Armenians that the international community – on whom Armenia-proper partly relies – has let them down, first tacitly promising support when they were down and then letting them hang out to dry when they came out on top.

“They have no trust in either international peace efforts or the bigger Western countries,” said one observer in Yerevan. “They’ve taken the whole situation into their own hands.”

While the Karabakh forces continue to rack up territory, the world’s Armenians are left to answer for their aggression, something diplomats and analysts say has already polarized the one million-strong Armenian community in the United States, 45,000 of whom live in the Boston area. In the past, diaspora lobby groups rallied around the Karabakh issue with great success. On Capitol Hill, for instance, their collective weight helped influence Congress to deny Azerbaijan much-needed US aid under the Freedom Support Act 

Changed mood in Washington

But with the recent offensives, the mood in Washington has changed. After Armenian forces first struck outside of the enclave, the State Department issued an unprecedented statement criticizing the offensive. Similarly, the UN Security Council has churned out four resolutions critical of the Karabakh Armenians since last April, including the most recent, Resolution 884, passed on Nov. 11. This, in turn, has prompted a change in attitude among many in the diaspora, who now seem to be distancing themselves from the Karabakh issue, perhaps realizing it could be potentially damaging to the overall Armenian cause.

“I’ve never seen the Armenians in Washington have less influence than they have now,” Goble observed.

Although nationalist Armenian groups like the Athens-based Dashnak organization still openly support Karabakh’s land grab, the idea of a Greater Armenia is no longer as popular among most Armenians as it was even a year ago.

“The offensive . . . makes no sense anymore,” said one Armenian-American living in Yerevan. The Karabakh Armenians “already have enough land. They don’t need any more.”

A tractor full of refugees who fled to Iran arrives in Chakharli. The United Nations estimates that more than a million refugees are in Azerbaijan, roughly one-seventh of its population. (Globe photo / Jon Auerbach)

Publication date 11/21/1993

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform