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But on May 9, the Armenians burst out of the besieged Karabakh capital of Stepanakert and battled their way up a steep hill to capture the nearby town of Shusha, the last significant Azeri stronghold inside the enclave.

From their perch in Shusha, Azeri fighters had been raining thousands of missiles onto Stepanakert for the last six months, damaging nearly every building in the city and driving its 70,000 residents into bomb shelters and basements.

Then, a week ago Sunday and Monday, the Armenians pushed 30 miles farther south and conquered Lachin, a border town just outside Nagorno-Karabakh. With the fall of Lachin, the Armenians managed to punch a narrow, 7-mile-long land corridor connecting southern Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The land bridge meant Armenia could finally break a four-year-long Azeri blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, instituted after its declaration of independence. And Armenia wasted no time.

Scarcely 24 hours after Lachin was conquered, a convoy of 80 trucks laden with desperately needed food, fuel, medicine—and, the Azeris allege, weapons—was on its way from the Armenian capital of Yerevan to Stepanakert.

But few people in either city are confident that the corridor, a bald seizure of undisputed Azeri territory outside Nagorno-Karabakh, will remain open for long—or that the current Armenian dominance of the enclave will stand uncontested.

For one thing, the land route snakes through a chain of narrow mountain passes, which offer ideal hidden firing points for any would-be Azeri attackers. At one river crossing where retreating Azeri soldiers had blown up a bridge, the convoy sat idle for four hours while two Armenian tractors struggled to pull the semi-trailers up the river bank, one at a time.

And Armenian commanders in Karabakh do not expect the Azeris to accept their military humiliation without retaliating. The setbacks sent huge, violent crowds of Azeri demonstrators into the streets of Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, unseating the president and leaving the government in the hands of a hard-line nationalist front committed to pursuing the war.

“We have only taken haek Armenian land; the Azeris haven’t lost any of their land. But they have lost face,” said Martin Ajemian, 33, an Armenian commander. “They will probably come back and try to attack us. But we will respond with force. They will continue fighting until they realize that our land is our land and their land is their land.”

Moreover, fresh fighting flared last week in the Azeri-dominated enclave of Nakhichevan, an isolated mirror-image of the Karabakh territory sandwiched between Armenia, Turkey and Iran. Armenia and Azerbaijan each accused the other of launching the attacks.

Then there is the pressure being brought by Turkey, Armenia’s ancient foe, which is supporting the ethnically related Azeris in the conflict.

Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel, after a two-day visit to Moscow Tuesday, ruled out any Turkish military intervention in the conflict. But the Turks, actively courting influence in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union, are working to isolate Armenia diplomatically.

Above all, there is no evident desire in Stepanakert for a political solution to the war. Bitterness has consumed Karabakh’s political leaders.

“You can’t sit and negotiate with the person who’s choking you. We will continue to fight being choked,” said a visibly angry Georgi Petrosian, 39, Nagorno-Karabakh’s president. “If our activities are considered aggressive, you must understand what’s taken place with us over the last four years. You don’t know what they have done to the corpses of our people.”

Such passions have shrouded most everything connected with the war in a fog of myths, accusations and obfuscations. It’s impossible to verify, for example, whether any of the trucks in last week’s convoy from Yerevan actually carried weapons. Military commanders insisted they did not, but they declined to allow journalists to inspect a number of closed cargoes.

Nor will anyone likely ever know what exactly happened during the fighting for Shusha and Lachin. When the convoy passed through Lachin just a day after the battle, the roads were littered with bundles of clothing, food and personal possessions, apparently dropped by residents as they tried to flee.

Yet Armenian officials insist that there were no civilian casualties, because the Azeris had evacuated all civilians from Lachin before the battle began.

There were no bodies visible in either Lachin or Shusha, despite the evidence of fierce battles in both places. 

Publication date 05/27/1992

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform