Flickers of hope brighten shelters

Armenians are strengthened by recent military successes, writes Karl Waldron in Stepanakert, capital of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh

Each evening reconnaissance groups move from the rubble of Nagorno-Karabakh’s devastated capital, Stepanakert, towards the Azeri lines: old men, young men, and women, heavily armed, heading across a tortuous, mountain terrain for unspecified targets. There is an air of suppressed triumph in Stepanakert, buttressed by news of the Armenian capture of Khojali and the bombarding of Adgam. The latter is an Azeri town beyond Nagorno-Karabakh which serves as a military headquarters. Many of the Azeri artillery positions which once bombarded the city from the mountainous hinterland appear to have been withdrawn to defend Azeri lines, increasingly stretched by the Armenian advance.

But any thoughts of Armenian victory are still curtailed by the nightly crump of guns and rockets. The bombardment comes from Shushs, 6 miles to the south. The people of Stepanakert still live in the labyrinthine basements under fallen apartment buildings, still suffer non-existent sanitation, food and water shortages, lack of heat and electricity. But there has been a noticeable mood swing in the shelters, inspired by the recent successes. Where people would once sit sullen and silent, there is the occasional patriotic song, the exchange of a consoling word.

Their militia leaders remain cautious. “This is a temporary victory, a battle is won and not a war,” says Armen Svessosian, referring to Khojali. “We must persuade these people that the war is being won. Give them hope. But without outside assistance, the position is still precarious. We have weaponry and have made advances. But we are not just a besieged city, we are a besieged nation. There has been no land breakthrough, no establishment of a much-needed corridor to Armenia proper. Even with the taking of the airport, no flights have yet been able to enter the capital as all buildings have been destroyed, and the runway is pockmarked with shells, making it impossible for any fixed-winged aircraft to land”.

There are still occasional full-scale ground attacks, but most military casualties result from forays into unspecified territory, where a small group of Armenians might clash with Azeris. Through four years of conflict, such clashes have accounted for a trickle of deaths. The rapid increase in the war’s casualty rate in recent weeks has reflected a toll of civilian lives. Where the first weeks of the year brought the shelling in a brutal stand-off, the weaponry has now been turned on more isolated settlements, where civilians do not have the protection of deep cellars, and whose only chance of survival is to run away.

Casualties have also been increased by the ever more deadly array of weaponry that both sides are acquiring. A month ago, when I was last here, the war was reminiscent of earlier conflicts, of Spain, say, in the 1930s without the air support. There is still little or no air support. But the weaponry has moved on, progressing through the 20th century at the rate of a decade a week. Now both sides possess – and can use – the Soviet Grad missile system, a death machine which lobs 40 rockets over 40 slightly different trajectories and devastates a city block, a village, or a hillside at a time.

Last week an Azeri crowd succeeded in “liberating” a large stock from the Red Army garrison in Agdam. In turn, the Azeris have claimed that weaponry of the 366 Mechanised Division, until this weekend officially confined to barracks and now to be withdrawn, has been taken over and used by Armenian militias. Although this has been denied by the Armenian militias and the former Red Army, their use of several unmarked tanks and artillery pieces, with serial and reference numbers erased, would indicate it as a probable source of supply.

Co-operation between CIS forces and Armenian troops has also been denied, but the shared experience of facing nightly Azeri bombardment seems to have sparked a latent sympathy with the Armenian cause among soldiers in Stepanakert. The soldiers’ pullout presents the danger of increased violence, for although not active participants in the conflict, they comprised an outside force in situ, more numerous and better armed than the antagonists, and could have fulfilled a peace-keeping role had one been mediated elsewhere. It seems increasing unlikely that any short-term mediation attempt on the part of Turkey will enjoy success. Representations made by the Turkish government to the British, French, German and US ambassadors in Ankara at the weekend contained a demand for Armenia to halt its aggression, and thus negated what Armenian fighters see as Turkey’s already tenuous claim to be acting as honest broker.

Yesterday Stepanakert was abuzz with rumours of imminent arrivals, a supposed 100 Maronite reinforcements from the Lebanon who were reputedly in Yerevan. People spoke in hushed tones of their arrival, and of their prowess at fighting, learned in the long years of that civil war.

Troops to pull out of enclave

Reuter in Agdam, Azerbaijan

Dozens of military vehicles roared towards Nagorno-Karabakh yesterday, apparently to organise the withdrawal of former Soviet troops from the disputed enclave after a week of intense fighting. Two large convoys, including one of nearly 100 tanks, armoured vehicles, troop carriers and missile trucks, drove down the main street of Agdam, a town just outside the enclave, towards Stepanakert, capital of the territory claimed by both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Officials in Agdam said the troops would help the 366th Motorised Infantry Regiment of the new Commonwealth of Independent States forces to pull out of Nagorno-Karabakh. “They are going to get the others out of there,” a senior police officer said. “The regiment in Stepanakert is surrounded and Armenians want to seize the army. There is a fight going on between them.”

The CIS commander-in-chief Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov ordered the regiment to withdraw after a week of fighting which produced some of the heaviest casualties in the four-year undeclared war over Nagorno-Karabakh. CIS troops have come under heavy attack in their Stepanakert headquarters. Television pictures showed their base had sustained considerable damage, with many buildings reduced to rubble. Fighting over the enclave intensified during the past week after Armenian fighters overran the town of Khojali.

Azeri refugees forced to trek across snow-covered mountains were still trickling into Agdam yesterday and were treated in a makeshift hospital made up of disused rail cars.

New wounds…An Azeri refugee from the town of Khojali in Nagorno-Karabakh tears her face in grief. Her family was killed in a slaughter which the survivors say was carried out by Armenians. (Photograph: Frederique Lengaigne).

An Azeri refugee from Khojali tends to her wounded son on a military hospital train (Photograph: David Braughli)

Publication date 03/02/1992

Courtesy of Karabagh Truths platform