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== February 1988: the Karabakh issue revived ==
== February 1988: the Karabakh issue revived ==
{{cquote|''For Azerbaijan the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life or death'' —Soviet dissident and human rights activist [[Andrei Sakharov]]}}
As the new [[general secretary]] of the Soviet Union, [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] came to power in 1985, his plans to reform the Soviet Union were two policies called [[Perestroika]] and [[Glasnost]]. While perestroika had more to do with economic reform, glasnost or openness granted limited freedom to Soviet citizens to express grievances about the Soviet system itself and its leaders. Capitalizing on this, the leaders of National Council of Karabakh decided to vote in favor of unifying the autonomous region with Armenia on [[February 20]], [[1988]]. Karabakh Armenian leaders complained that the region had neither Armenian language textbooks in schools nor in television broadcasting. Azerbaijan's powerful general secretary [[Heidar Aliev]] who was a former [[KGB]] boss and had been in office since [[1969]], had extensively attempted to "[[azerification|Azerify]]" the region and increase the influence and the number of Azeris living in Nagorno-Karabakh while at the same time reducing its Armenian population (In [[1987]], Aliev would step down as general secretary of Azerbaijan's [[Politbureau]]).<ref>Regnum News. [http://www.regnum.ru/english/628362.html Who is at the turn of interests? US, Russia and new reality on the border with Iran] April 4, 2006.</ref>
As the new [[general secretary]] of the Soviet Union, [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] came to power in 1985, his plans to reform the Soviet Union were two policies called [[Perestroika]] and [[Glasnost]]. While perestroika had more to do with economic reform, glasnost or openness granted limited freedom to Soviet citizens to express grievances about the Soviet system itself and its leaders. Capitalizing on this, the leaders of National Council of Karabakh decided to vote in favor of unifying the autonomous region with Armenia on [[February 20]], [[1988]]. Karabakh Armenian leaders complained that the region had neither Armenian language textbooks in schools nor in television broadcasting. Azerbaijan's powerful general secretary [[Heidar Aliev]] who was a former [[KGB]] boss and had been in office since [[1969]], had extensively attempted to "[[azerification|Azerify]]" the region and increase the influence and the number of Azeris living in Nagorno-Karabakh while at the same time reducing its Armenian population (In [[1987]], Aliev would step down as general secretary of Azerbaijan's [[Politbureau]]).<ref>Regnum News. [http://www.regnum.ru/english/628362.html Who is at the turn of interests? US, Russia and new reality on the border with Iran] April 4, 2006.</ref>


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===Sumgait===
===Sumgait===
{{main|Sumgait Massacre}}
{{main|Sumgait Massacre}}

{{cquote|''Congratulations on your earthquake. Nature has spared us the trouble'' —alleged quote cabled by Azerbaijan to Armenians after the [[Leninakan Earthquake]]}}
[[Image:Sumgaitrioting.jpg|thumb|240px|right|Images showing burnt automobiles and marauding rioters on the streets of the industrial city of [[Sumgait]] during the [[Sumgait Massacre|pogrom there]] in February [[1988]].]]
[[Image:Sumgaitrioting.jpg|thumb|240px|right|Images showing burnt automobiles and marauding rioters on the streets of the industrial city of [[Sumgait]] during the [[Sumgait Massacre|pogrom there]] in February [[1988]].]]
Ethnic infighting soon broke out between Armenians and Azerbaijanis living in Karabakh. On [[February 22]] 1988, a direct confrontation between Azerbaijanis and Armenians near Askeran (in Nagorno-Karabakh, on the road Stepanakert - [[Agdam]]) degenerated into a skirmish. During the clashes, which left about 50 Armenians wounded, a local policeman, purportedly by an Armenian, shot dead two Azerbaijanis – Bakhtiyar Guliyev aged 16 and Ali Hajiyev aged 23. On 27 February 1988, while speaking on Baku Central television, the [[USSR]] Deputy Procurator Alexander Katusev mentioned the nationality of those killed. Within hours, a [[pogrom]] against Armenian residents began in the city of Sumgait, 25 kilometers north of Baku, where many Azerbaijani refugees resided, resulting in the deaths of 35 people, according to official Soviet statistics.<ref>Remnick, David. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Soviets Report 31 Killed in Ethnic Rioting] Washington Post. March 5, 1988. pg. A1. The official Soviet statistics on the Sumgait massacre were initially placed much lower but incrementally rose to a final count of 37 dead, most of them Armenian but also including several Azeris who were possibly killed when some Armenians resisted. The Soviet government also reported that several hundred people were injured including [[MVD]] soldiers who were sent to quell the rioting but found themselves without any proper riot gear or weapons. Many Armenians feel the figures by the Soviet media are understated and are in fact much higher. Nearly the entire Armenian population in Sumgait left Azerbaijan after the pogrom.</ref> The manner of which many Armenians were killed reverberated amongst Armenians who felt the pogrom was backed by government officials to intimidate those involved in the Karabakh movement. As the violence escalated, Gorbachev finally decided to send in Soviet Interior troops to Armenia in September 1988. By October 1989, over 100 people were estimated to have been killed since the revived idea of unification with Karabakh in February 1988.<ref>Hofheinz, Paul. [http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,958833,00.html On the Edge of Civil War Visiting Armenia and Azerbaijan, a TIME reporter wonders how much longer the two republics can exist in the same country] Time Magazine October 23, 1989</ref> The issue temporarily absolved as a devastating earthquake hit the Armenian city of [[Leninakan]] on [[December 7]] 1988, killing over 25,000 people.
Ethnic infighting soon broke out between Armenians and Azerbaijanis living in Karabakh. On [[February 22]] 1988, a direct confrontation between Azerbaijanis and Armenians near Askeran (in Nagorno-Karabakh, on the road Stepanakert - [[Agdam]]) degenerated into a skirmish. During the clashes, which left about 50 Armenians wounded, a local policeman, purportedly by an Armenian, shot dead two Azerbaijanis – Bakhtiyar Guliyev aged 16 and Ali Hajiyev aged 23. On 27 February 1988, while speaking on Baku Central television, the [[USSR]] Deputy Procurator Alexander Katusev mentioned the nationality of those killed. Within hours, a [[pogrom]] against Armenian residents began in the city of Sumgait, 25 kilometers north of Baku, where many Azerbaijani refugees resided, resulting in the deaths of 35 people, according to official Soviet statistics.<ref>Remnick, David. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Soviets Report 31 Killed in Ethnic Rioting] Washington Post. March 5, 1988. pg. A1. The official Soviet statistics on the Sumgait massacre were initially placed much lower but incrementally rose to a final count of 37 dead, most of them Armenian but also including several Azeris who were possibly killed when some Armenians resisted. The Soviet government also reported that several hundred people were injured including [[MVD]] soldiers who were sent to quell the rioting but found themselves without any proper riot gear or weapons. Many Armenians feel the figures by the Soviet media are understated and are in fact much higher. Nearly the entire Armenian population in Sumgait left Azerbaijan after the pogrom.</ref> The manner of which many Armenians were killed reverberated amongst Armenians who felt the pogrom was backed by government officials to intimidate those involved in the Karabakh movement. As the violence escalated, Gorbachev finally decided to send in Soviet Interior troops to Armenia in September 1988. By October 1989, over 100 people were estimated to have been killed since the revived idea of unification with Karabakh in February 1988.<ref>Hofheinz, Paul. [http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,958833,00.html On the Edge of Civil War Visiting Armenia and Azerbaijan, a TIME reporter wonders how much longer the two republics can exist in the same country] Time Magazine October 23, 1989</ref> The issue temporarily absolved as a devastating earthquake hit the Armenian city of [[Leninakan]] on [[December 7]] 1988, killing over 25,000 people.

Revision as of 05:09, 4 August 2006

Nagorno-Karabakh War
File:ArmenianFighters1989.jpg
Armenian soldiers fighting against Azeri forces in Karabakh in 1989.
Date19881994
Location
Result

Military victory by Armenian forces.

Cease-fire treaty signed in 1994 by representatives of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabakh (still in effect).
Territorial
changes
Nagorno-Karabakh becomes a de facto republic, but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Peace talks are held between the two nations to decide the future of the disputed territory.
Belligerents

Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, 1

Armenia 2
Azerbaijan
Commanders and leaders
Samvel Babayan,
Hemayag Haroyan,
Monte Melkonian,
Vazgen Sarkisyan,
Arkady Ter-Tatevosyan
Iskander Hamidov,
Suret Huseynov,
Rahim Gaziev
Casualties and losses
~6,000 dead,
20,000 wounded
~17,000 dead,
30,000 wounded[1]

1Unrecognized

2Involvement Disputed.
Nagorno-Karabakh currently is a de facto independent republic in the South Caucasus, but is officially part of the Republic of Azerbaijan and several kilometers away from Armenia.

The Nagorno-Karabakh War was an armed conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994 in the small ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the ethnic Armenian majority in the enclave and the neighboring Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, became enveloped in a protracted, undeclared war as the latter attempted to curb a secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of uniting itself with Armenia and a referendum was held with the vast majority of the Karabakh population voting in favor of independence. The Azeri population of Nagorno-Karabakh boycotted the referendum. The demand to unify with Armenia, which proliferated in the late 1980s, began in a relatively peaceful manner; however in the growing months, as the Soviet Union's disintegration neared, it gradually grew into an increasingly violent conflict between the two ethnic groups.

The war was the most destructive ethnic conflict in both terms of lives and property that emerged after the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991. Interethnic fighting between the two broke out shortly after the parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous oblast in Azerbaijan, voted to unify the region with Armenia on February 20 1988. Along with the secessionist movements in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the succeeding movement characterized and played a large role in bringing the downfall of the Soviet Union. As Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union and removed the powers held by the enclave's government, the Armenian majority voted to secede from Azerbaijan, and in the process proclaiming itself the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Full-scale fighting erupted into a low-intensity conflict in late winter of 1992. International mediation by several groups including Europe's OSCE failed to bring an end resolution that both sides could work with. In the spring of 1993, Armenian forces captured regions outside the enclave itself, threatening the involvement of several countries in the region. By the end of the war in 1994, the Armenians were in full control of not only the mountainous enclave but also held and currently control approximately 14% of Azerbaijan's territory. A Russian-brokered cease fire was signed in May of 1994 and peace talks, mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, have been held ever since by Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Roots of the conflict

The territorial ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh today is still a heavily disputed issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Called Artsakh by Armenians, referring to the name it went by under the rule of Armenian meliks (princes) during the medieval era, its rich history spans several centuries, where it came under the control of several different empires. Controversy nevertheless, is mired mainly in the aftermath of World War I. Shortly before the Ottoman Empire's capitulation in the war, the Russian Empire collapsed in November 1917 and fell into the control of the Bolsheviks. The three nations of the Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, previously under the rule of the Russians, declared their independence to form the Transcaucasian Federation.

Fighting soon broke out between the Democratic Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan in three specific regions: Nakhichevan, Zangezur, and Karabakh itself. Armenia and Azerbaijan quarreled as to where the boundaries would fall in accordance to the three provinces. The Karabakh Armenians attempted to declare their independence but failed to make contact with the Republic of Armenia.

File:Stalin1.jpg
Joseph Stalin was the acting commissar of Nationalities for the Soviet Union during the early 1920s; the branch of which the Kavburo was created under.

The Armenians living in the region were mainly comprised of two groups: those who belonged to the Dashnak political party who sided with unifying with Armenia and Bolsheviks who sought closer ties to Azerbaijan so as to placate the region from hostilities.

Soviet Division

Two months later, the 11th Soviet Red Army invaded the Caucasus and within three years, the Caucasian republics formed the Transcaucasian Republic of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks, thereafter created a seven-member committee, the Caucasian Bureau (also written as Kavburo), which under the supervision of the future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, then the acting Commissar of Nationalities, was tasked to head up matters in the Caucasus. Although the committee voted 4-3 in favor of allocating Karabakh to the newly created Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia, protestations made by Azerbaijani leaders including the Communist Party leader of Azerbaijan Nariman Narimanov and an anti-Soviet rebellion in the Armenian capital Yerevan in 1921 embittered relations between Armenia and Russia. These factors lead the committee to reverse its decision and award Karabakh to Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921, and later into Azerbaijan proper in 1923; leaving it with a population that was 94% Armenian.[2] The capital was moved from Shusha to Khankendi where it was later renamed Stepanakert.

Armenian and Azeri scholars have speculated that this was an attempt by Russia in accordance to the theory of "divide and rule": by enraging the populace of both countries in the future, Russia would then play a "big brother" type role in not only meddling in their affairs but also manipulating one over the other to its favor. This can be seen, for example, by the odd placement of the Nakhichevan exclave which is separated by Armenia but is a part of Azerbaijan.[2] Armenia has always refused to recognize this decision and continued to protest the legality in the ensuing decades under Soviet rule.

February 1988: the Karabakh issue revived

As the new general secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, his plans to reform the Soviet Union were two policies called Perestroika and Glasnost. While perestroika had more to do with economic reform, glasnost or openness granted limited freedom to Soviet citizens to express grievances about the Soviet system itself and its leaders. Capitalizing on this, the leaders of National Council of Karabakh decided to vote in favor of unifying the autonomous region with Armenia on February 20, 1988. Karabakh Armenian leaders complained that the region had neither Armenian language textbooks in schools nor in television broadcasting. Azerbaijan's powerful general secretary Heidar Aliev who was a former KGB boss and had been in office since 1969, had extensively attempted to "Azerify" the region and increase the influence and the number of Azeris living in Nagorno-Karabakh while at the same time reducing its Armenian population (In 1987, Aliev would step down as general secretary of Azerbaijan's Politbureau).[3]

The movement was spearheaded by popular Armenian figures including writer Zori Balayan, economist Igor Muradyan, poet Silva Kaputikyan and also members of the Russian intelligentsia such as dissident and Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov. This aggrandizing sentiment galvanized as Armenians began to protest and stage workers strikes in Yerevan, demanding for a reunification with the enclave. In turn, Azeris launched counter-protests in Baku. In reaction to the protests, Gorbachev firmly proclaimed that the borders between the republics would not change; citing it in accordance to Article 78 of the Soviet constitution which stated "The territory of the Union's republics cannot be changed without their consent." [4] Gorbachev also stated that several other regions in the Soviet Union were also yearning for territorial changes and redrawing the boundaries in Karabakh would thus set a dangerous precedent. Armenians viewed the 1921 Kavburo decision with a great disdain and felt that in their efforts, they were correcting a historical error under the principle of self-determination, a right also granted in the Soviet Constitution. Azeris, on the other hand, found such calls for relenquishing their territory by the Armenians unfathomable and aligned with Gorbachev's (and the Azeri SSR's) position.

Sumgait

Images showing burnt automobiles and marauding rioters on the streets of the industrial city of Sumgait during the pogrom there in February 1988.

Ethnic infighting soon broke out between Armenians and Azerbaijanis living in Karabakh. On February 22 1988, a direct confrontation between Azerbaijanis and Armenians near Askeran (in Nagorno-Karabakh, on the road Stepanakert - Agdam) degenerated into a skirmish. During the clashes, which left about 50 Armenians wounded, a local policeman, purportedly by an Armenian, shot dead two Azerbaijanis – Bakhtiyar Guliyev aged 16 and Ali Hajiyev aged 23. On 27 February 1988, while speaking on Baku Central television, the USSR Deputy Procurator Alexander Katusev mentioned the nationality of those killed. Within hours, a pogrom against Armenian residents began in the city of Sumgait, 25 kilometers north of Baku, where many Azerbaijani refugees resided, resulting in the deaths of 35 people, according to official Soviet statistics.[5] The manner of which many Armenians were killed reverberated amongst Armenians who felt the pogrom was backed by government officials to intimidate those involved in the Karabakh movement. As the violence escalated, Gorbachev finally decided to send in Soviet Interior troops to Armenia in September 1988. By October 1989, over 100 people were estimated to have been killed since the revived idea of unification with Karabakh in February 1988.[6] The issue temporarily absolved as a devastating earthquake hit the Armenian city of Leninakan on December 7 1988, killing over 25,000 people.

Gorbachev's attempts to stabilize the region were to no avail as both sides were equally intransigent. Armenia refused to allow the issue to subside despite concessions made by Gorbachev including a promise of 400 million rubles for the recovery effort in the aftermath of the Leninakan earthquake and the introduction of Armenian language textbooks and television programming in Karabakh. Azerbaijan was unwilling to cede any territory to Armenia. Furthermore, the newly formed Karabakh Defense Committee, which comprised eleven members including the future president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan, were jailed by Moscow officials in the ensuing chaos after the quake. Such actions polarized relations between Armenia and the Kremlin; Armenians lost faith in Gorbachev and despised him even more in his mishandling of the earthquake and his uncompromising stature in regards to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Black January

If Gorbachev wants a second Afghanistan, he will get it in Azerbaijan. —Ekhtibar Mamedov, Azeri representative of the Popular Front in Baku

Interethnic strife began to take a toll on both countries' populations, forcing most of the Armenians in Azerbaijan to flee back to Armenia and most of the Azeris in Armenia to Azerbaijan. In January 1990, another pogrom against Armenians in Baku forced Gorbachev to declare a state of emergency and sent MVD troops to restore order. A curfew was established and violent clashes between the soldiers and the surging Azerbaijan Popular Front were common, in one instance over 120 Azeris and eight MVD soldiers were killed in Baku.[7] During this time, however, Azerbaijan's Communist Party had fallen and that the belated order to send the MVD had more to do with keeping the the Party in power than merely to protect the city's Armenian population.[8] The events, referred to as Black January, also delineated the relations between Azerbaijan and Russia.

Other instances of fighting spread through other cities in Azerbaijan, including in December of that year in Ganja, where eight people were killed, four of them soldiers, when army units attempted to stop attacks directed at Armenians. The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh had grown so out of hand that in January 1989, the Soviet leadership in Moscow temporarily took control of the region, a move welcomed by many Armenians. In the summer of 1989, Popular Front leaders and their ever-increasing supporters managed to pressure the Azeri SSR to instigate a railway and air blockade against Armenia, effectively crippling Armenia's economy as 85% of the cargo and goods arrived through rail traffic.[9] In turn, Armenia closed the railway to Nakhichevan, thereby strangling the exclave's only link to the rest of the Soviet Union.

In the spring of 1991, President Gorbachev held a special countrywide referendum called the Union Treaty which would decide if the Soviet republics would remain together. Newly elected, non-communist leaders had come into place in the Soviet republics including Boris Yeltsin of Russia (Gorbachev remained the president of the Soviet Union proper), Levon Ter-Petrosyan of Armenia and Ayaz Mutalibov of Azerbaijan. Armenia and several other republics boycotted the referendum (Armenia would hold its own referendum and declared its independence from the USSR on September 21 1991) whereas Azerbaijan voted in compliance to the Treaty. As many Armenians and Azeris in Karabakh began an arms build up (by acquiring weaponry located in caches throughout Karabakh) in order to defend themselves, Mutalibov touted support from Gorbachev in launching a joint military operation (in this case, the Azeri paramilitary force called the OMON) in order to disarm Armenian militants in the region. The assault however was perceived by both Soviet officials from the Kremlin and from the Armenian government as a method of intimidating the Armenian populace to giving up their demands for unification.[10]

Operation Ring

Although most media sources commonly refer to the beginning of the war in 1988, full-scale hostilities involving the Armenian, Azeri, and Russian militaries began with Operation Ring since it involved the use of tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters. General Secretary Gorbachev had approved of the operation prior to its commencement and set it to begin on April 10, 1991. Armored vehicles from the predominantly Azeri 23rd Division of the Soviet 4th Army and the Azeri OMON converged towards the towns of Getashen and Martunashen of the Shahumian region populated primarily by Armenians. Soviet Army officers would use loudspeakers and order villagers to abandon their homes and after a given ultimatum, would shell the town with artillery. Initial resistance by the Armenian fedayeen, the Arabic derived name adopted by the irregulars, in the villages was disorganized but proved elusive. Even with the presence of armored vehicles, Armenian militiamen managed to escape capture for several weeks.

Allegations of abuse and maltreatment by the Azeri OMON against the civilian populace began to surface as "the OMON raided and looted houses and attacked many of the inhabitants....many were in their eighties and nineties".[2] Moscow's Pravda news service also described the tactics as brutal and nondiscriminatory, referring to the death of an elderly man who was shot and killed in his bed.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

The commencement of Operation Ring was seen as the main spark that "marked the beginning of the open, armed phase of the Karabakh conflict."[2] Azeri political officials defended the use of force and furthermore justified the deportations, going so far as claiming that they were made on a voluntary basis by the Armenians living in Karabakh and in fact helping to rid the region of the fighters at the behest of the inhabitants. Russian involvement was also said to have been endorsed by the Soviet hardliner leaders, including those who eventually overthrew Gorbachev, who sought to quash the Armenian secessionist movement and keep the tattered country together. Anatoly Shabad, a Russian-Armenian who was one of intervening Soviet parliamentary members however reasoned that launching such an operation was unnecessary and impractical:

Evidently Mutalibov had persuaded Gorbachev that there was a powerful partisan army of fedayeen there and that its actions would lead to the secession of Armenian populated territories from Azerbaijan, that thet were bandits and that they had to be liquidated. And Gorbachev - it was a great stupidity on his part of course - agreed to this operation. He probably understands now that an operation of that sort was doomed, it was impossible.[2]

The events were counter-productive to what the operation had originally sought to accomplish. The initial resistance put up by Armenians managed to recruit more irregulars from Armenia and only reinforced the conclusion to Armenians that the only solution to the Karabakh conflict was through an out-right armed conflict.[2] Monte Melkonian, an Armenian-American who had served in revolutionary groups in the 1980s and would later rise to be perhaps the most famed commander of the war, argued that Karabakh be "liberated" and contended that if it remained in Azeri hands, the region of Zangezur would then be annexed by the Azeris and Armenia itself would follow thereafter, concluding "the loss of Artsakh could be the loss of Armenia."[11] Azerbaijan felt differently: they saw Armenia's desire to unify with Karabakh was part of only an even larger scheme that would not end in Azerbaijan alone but also continue into parts of Turkey and southern Georgia.

Soviet collapse and early weapons acquisition

Here's perestroika for you. The Russians gave us weapons, and they gave the Armenians weapons. And they are guilty. —Alakhverdi Bagirov, commander of Popular Front forces near Askeran

File:366th and Weapons.jpg
From top clockwise: The 366th's barracks on fire after being shelled by Azeri artillery; Armenian officers negotiating with soldiers in the 366th to turn over any vehicles left in their armory; an armored hauler subsequently exiting out of the its motor pool; and artillery being towed thereafter.

As the disintegration of the USSR became a reality for Soviet citizens in the autumn of 1991, both sides sought to acquire weaponry from military caches located throughout Karabakh. The initial advantage tilted in Azerbaijan's favor. During the Cold War, the Soviet military doctrine for defending the Caucasus had outlined a strategy where Armenia would be a combat zone in the case NATO member Turkey invaded from the west. Thus the Armenian SSR had only three divisions and no airfields while the Azeri SSR had a total of five divisions and five military airfields. Furthermore, Armenia had approximately 500 railroad cars of ammunition, dwarfed by the Azeris' 10,000.[12] Sporadic fighting took place in villages such as Bozluk and Karachinar in the Shahumian region.

As MVD forces began pulling out, they bequeathed the Armenians and Azerbaijanis a vast arsenal of ammunition and stored armor vehicles. The government forces initially sent by Gorbachev three years earlier were from other republics of the USSR and many had no wish to remain any longer. Most were poor, young conscripts and many simply sold their weapons for cash or even vodka to either side, some even trying to sell tanks and APC. The Azeris purchased a large quantity of these vehicles as reported by the Azeri Foreign Ministry in November 1993 which said it had acquired 286 tanks, 842 armored vehicles, and 386 artillery pieces from this power vacuum.[2]

Further evidence also showed that Azerbaijan received substantial military aid and provisions from Iran, Israel, Turkey, and numerous Arab countries.[11] Most weaponry was Russian-made or came from the former Eastern bloc countries however some improvisation was made by both sides. The Alazan rocket was one such device used during the Soviet era to spread hail over the collective farms but it was converted by fighters to be used as a weapon. Many of these rockets were dangerous, ineffective and often blew up when fired, causing serious injury or death to the users themselves. Soldiers in the 4th Red Army in Ganja and the 366th Motorized Regiment in Stepanakert also began to help and organize the Azeris and the Armenians. The Armenian Diaspora managed to donate a significant amount of money to be sent to Armenia and even managed to push for legislation in the United States Congress to pass a bill entitled Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act in response to Azerbaijan's blockade against Armenia; restricting a complete ban on military aid from the United States to Azerbaijan in 1992.[13] While Azerbaijan charged that the Russians were initially helping the Armenians, it was said that "the Azeri fighters in the region [were] far better equipped with Soviet military weaponry than their opponents."[14]

The BMP-2 was one of many armored personnel carriers acquired by both sides after the Soviet Union collapsed.

With Gorbachev resigning as General-Secretary on December 26, 1991 the remaining republics including the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia declared their independence and the Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. This dissolution gave way to any barriers that were keeping Armenia and Azerbaijan from waging a full scale war. One month prior, on November 21, the Azerbaijani Parliament rescinded Karabakh's status as an autonomous oblast and renamed it "Xankandi". In response, on December 10 a referendum was held in Karabakh by parliamentary leaders (with the local Azeri community boycotting it) where the Armenians voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence. On January 1992, the region declared its independence from Azerbaijan. In November of 1991 an Azeri helicopter carrying a special delegation made up of Russian and Kazakh officials who had constructed a peace deal, with the backing of President Yeltsin, crashed in the hills of Karabakh while en route to finalize the deal, purportedly shot down by Armenians.[2]

Building Armies

The sporadic battles between Armenians and Azeris that had since intensified after Operation Ring recruited thousands of volunteers into improvised armies from both Armenia and Azerbaijan. In Armenia, a recurrent and popular theme at the time compared and idolized the separatist fighters to the Armenian fedayeen guerilla groups and revered individuals such as Andranik Ozanian and Garegin Njdeh who fought against the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to the government's conscription of males aged 18-45, many Armenians volunteered to fight and formed jokats, or detachments, of about forty men which combined with several others were under the command of a Shtabee Bed, or Chief of Headquarters. Initially, many of these men chose when and where to serve and acted on their own behalf, rarely without any oversight, when attacking or defending areas. Direct insubordination was common as many of the men simply didn't show up, looted the bodies of dead soldiers, and commodities such as diesel oil for armored vehicles disappeared only to be sold in black markets.[11] Much effort was made to curb such problems especially by Melkonian, himself appointed a Shtabee Bed of the Martuni district in 1992, who attempted to set more ethical standards of the men under his command and reserve punishment to those who did fall out of line. Teenagers also volunteered to fight, some driving and manning tanks with little to no training at all. Many women enlisted in the Armenian military however they more often served in auxiliary roles such as providing first-aid and evacuating wounded men from the battlefields than then they did in offensives.

Azerbaijan's military functioned in much the same manner however it was more organized during the beginning years of the war's beginning. The Azeri government also conscripted and many Azeris enthusiastically enlisted for combat in the first months after the Soviet Union collapsed. Azerbaijan's National Army consisted of roughly 30,000 men in addition to nearly 10,000 in its OMON paramilitary force and several thousand made up of volunteers from the Popular Front. Suret Huseynov, a wealthy Azeri also improvised by creating his own military brigade, the 709th Azerbaijani Army, and purchasing many weapons and vehicles from the 23rd division's arsenal. Iskander Hamdiov's bozkurt or Grey Wolves brigade also mobilized for action. The government of Azerbaijan also poured a great deal of money into hiring mercenaries from other countries through the revenue it was making from its oil field assets on and near the Caspian Sea.

In an overall military comparison, the number of men eligible for military service in Armenia, of an age group of 17-32 year olds, was 550,000 while in Azerbaijan it was 1.3 million. Most men from both sides had served in the Soviet Army and so had some form of military experience prior to the conflict. About 60% of Karabakh Armenians had served in the Soviet Army.[15] Most Azeris, while serving in the military were often subject to discrimination and relegated to work in construction battalions rather than fighting corps. Despite the establishment of two officer academies including a naval school in Azerbaijan, the lack of such military experience rendered Azerbaijan unprepared for the war.[16] The estimated amount of manpower and military vehicles each political entity involved in the conflict had in the 1993-1994 time period was:

Political Entity Military Personnel Artillery Tanks Armored personnel carriers Armored fighting vehicles Fighter aircraft
Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh 20,000 16 13 120 N/A N/A
Republic of Armenia 20,000 170 160 240 200 N/A
Republic of Azerbaijan 42,000 330 280 360 480 170 [15]

Spring 1992, Early Armenian Victories

Khojaly Offensive

File:Khojaly Genocide.jpg
The corpse of an Azeri child killed during the Khojaly Massacre

The withdrawal of the Soviet interior forces from Nagorno-Karabakh in the Caucasus region was only temporary. By February 1992, the former Soviet forces, now consolidated as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). While Azerbaijan abstained from joining, Armenia, fearing a possible invasion by Turkey in the escalating conflict, entered the CIS which would have protected it under a "collective security umbrella." In January 1992, the CIS forces then moved in and established a headquarters at Stepanakert and took up a slightly more active role in peacekeeping, incorporating old units including the 366th Motorized Regiment and 4th Army, both which desperately attempted to keep the peace between the warring factions. About 1,400 CIS troops were stationed in the capital of Stepanakert and slated for withdrawal by late February. On February 28, a truce constructed by the government of Iran lasted for a mere three hours until both sides resumed their fighting. At this point, the death toll was estimated to be at or above 1,000 on both sides.[17]

Officially, the newly created Republic of Armenia publicly denied any involvement in providing any weapons, fuel, food, or other logistics to the secessionists in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, this claim turned out to be false as Ter-Petrosian's government later admitted to supplying them with only logistical supplies and paying the salaries of the separatists but denied sending any of its own men to combat. Armenia was facing a debilitating blockade by the now Republic of Azerbaijan as well as pressure coming from all sides, including Turkey, which had begun to build a close relationship with Azerbaijan. The only land connection Armenia had with Karabakh was through the narrow mountainous Lachin corridor which could only be reached by helicopters. The only airport that existed in Karabakh was in the small town of Khojaly, which was about 7 kilometers north of Stepanakert with an estimated population of 6,000-10,000 people. By late February, Khojaly had largely been cut off. On February 26, Armenian forces, with the aid of armored vehicles in the 366th, mounted an offensive to capture Khojaly. While the circumstances of the reason to take the city are lightly disputed, (the town's airport would eventually become a viable link for Armenia and the region) what is mired in greater debate is what entailed after the successful Armenian offensive.

Tragedy at Khojaly

They just shot and shot and shot —Raisa Aslanova, a refugee from Khojaly commenting in an interview to HRW

According to the Azeris and the affirmation of other sources including Human Rights Watch and the Moscow based human rights organization Memorial, after Armenian forces captured Khojaly, they proceeded to massacre several hundred civilians evacuating from the town. Armenian forces had previously stated they would attack the city and leave a land corridor for them to escape through. However, when the attack finally began, an Armenian force of approximately 2,000 fighters easily outnumbered and overwhelmed the defenders who along with the civilians attempted to retreat north to the Azeri held city of Agdam. The airport's runway was found to have been intentionally destroyed, rendering it useless for any aircraft to land upon. The attacking forces then went on to pursue those fleeing through the corridor and opened fire upon them, killing scores of civilians. A video shot several days later showed the corpses of both women and children, some burned, dismembered, and mutilated to unrecognizable degrees.

Visits by foreign correspondents also counted similar fates done to Azeri soldiers.[18] Many more froze or starved to death as they trekked over the snow covered hills towards Agdam. Assad Faradzhev, an aide to the region's Azeri governor, also reported that many "women and children had been scalped". Facing such charges, Armenian government officials denied the occurrence of a massacre and claimed that Khojaly served as an artillery platform used to shell the city of Stepanakert and that the shelling had since stopped. They alleged that the mutilations had been done by the Azeris themselves, citing an interview by Mutalibov who had attempted to exonerate himself, and that the Azeris had been doing the same to Armenians since the conflict began.[19] The Azeri government went so far as charging the Armenian government with outright genocide. The 366th, which after the attack was suspended from withdrawing, also faced scathing criticism and denied participating in the attack. Azerbaijan did attempt to convince, unsuccessfully, the Commonwealth forces to immediately intervene and put a quick end to the conflict. An exact body count was never ascertained but conservative estimates have placed the number to 485.[2]

Subtle admissions of guilt later laid blame on Armenian irregulars: two obscure groups of which identified as the "Aramo" and the "Arabo" detachments from Martuni; both of which were said to have acted at their own initiative. Military commanders also pointed out that many of fighters had been from Baku and Sumgait, the sites of the Azeri pogroms against Armenians.

The aftermath of the attack erupted in Azerbaijan. Mutalibov, was called to step down from his post by many, with perhaps the most vocal being members of the Popular Front. Despite his protestations, he was charged for failing to protect the civilians in Khojaly and forced to resign amid the hail of criticism on March 6.

Siege of Stepanakert and Shusha's capture

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In the ensuing months following the capture of Khojaly, Stepanakert was continuously shelled by Azeri forces in the nearby town of Shusha by the notoriously inaccurate BM-21 GRAD mobile artillery platform, a successor variant to the World War II-era "Katyusha". Referred to as the "flying telephone poles" for their long, tube-shaped projectile charges, these artillery units were able to fire 40 122 mm rockets in near succession. Shusha itself was strategically located seven kilometers south of Nagorno-Karabakh's capital. The indiscriminate shelling took a severe toll on its populace and killed scores of civilians and soldiers daily. Shusha was situated on the top of a ridge that overlooked Stepanakert; the damage done to it was devastating as it left the town without running water, electricity, or telephone services for over three months. By the height of the siege in April 1992 with bombardment, the population of Stepanakert, once 70,000, had declined to 50,000. In the course of the artillery shelling, Armenian forces were said to have repelled back several attacks made by Azeri forces.[14] Shusha had a population of 10,000 before the war; however, most of the civilians had left the town by early May and the remainders fell under the control of the military.

Armenian forces, since their taking of Khojaly, had steadily been making gains into the Karabakh region but had not made any significant progress. On the night of May 8, Armenian commanders, after careful planning by Colonel-General Gurgen Daribaltayan, had finally decided to move in to seize Shusha and bring a halt to the shelling. An artillery bombardment was commenced prior to the assault and, in order to prevent a repeat of another Khojaly, a corridor was left open for evacuating any civilians remaining in the city. Armenian forces encircled and cut off Shusha and attacked the town from several directions. Along with the use of tanks, including T-72s, and military helicopters, Armenian forces fought against the Azeris in an intense battle to capture Shusha. Fierce fighting continued until 3 A.M. on May 9, when Armenian forces had driven out the defenders and asserted full control of the town. A casualty count placed by Armenian media sources estimated that both sides lost about 100 fighters. A large cache of unused GRAD ammunition was also found stored inside the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral.[20] Following the capture, a large influx of Armenian civilians were allowed to move and live in the town.

The fall of Shusha struck a serious strategic and emotional blow to the Azeri public. Shusha once served as the historic capital of the region for the Turkic khanates that ruled it until it was consolidated as a part of the Russian Empire in 1822. Shusha was also the only military position that was still left in Azeri control in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan's new acting president, chairman of the parliament Yagub Mamedov, who had taken over the role after Mutalibov had resigned in March, promised a counterattack to retake the city after its capture. On the same day, a cease-fire agreement brokered by the Iranian leadership in Tehran, Iran and signed by Ter-Petrosian and Mamedov fell apart almost immediately. Both sides charged the other with violating the truce. The capture of the town marked the first significant military success by Armenian forces since the conflict began in 1988. Reports by Azerbaijan's defense ministry that a counterattack launched by Azeri forces had recaptured Shusha on May 11 later turned out to be false. Leila Yunusova, a member of the Azeri parliament did however remark that it would be "harder to recapture [the town] than" to defend it and attributed the loss due to disorganized fighting groups in the Azeri military and political infighting.[21]

The capture of Shusha also resonated loudly in neighboring Turkey. Its relations with Armenia had grown warm after it had declared its independence from the USSR; however they gradually worsened as a result of Armenia's gains in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. A deep resentment towards Turkey by Armenia predated the Soviet era and this enmity stemmed in part from the Armenian Genocide. Many Armenians collectively referred to Azeris as "Turks" since they are ethnically Turkic and have cultural ties to Turkey proper. As news of Shusha's capture reached Turkey, its prime minister, Suleyman Demirel said that he was coming under intense pressure by his people to have his country intervene and aid Azerbaijan. Demirel however, was opposed to such an intervention, saying that Turkey's entrance into the war would trigger an even greater Muslim-Christian conflict (Turks are predominantly Muslims). After Shusha's fall, Azeri government officials accused Armenia of next moving to take Nakhichevan (a claim that was denied by Armenian government officials). Nakhichevan was a region that was made up mostly of Azeris and under a treaty signed by Turkey and the Soviet Union in 1921, the powerful NATO member was oddly given the right to intervene if the exclave's territory was ever threatened. Turkey's president, Turgut Ozal, was the most vocal proponent who continuously advocated armed intervention in the conflict. Demirel ignored such calls but did appeal to United States President George H. W. Bush to have his country help mediate a peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.[22]

Sealing Lachin

The Armenians may have taken Lachin, but they will never take Baku — A Turkish saying after the fall of Lachin, mistakenly referring to Lachin as a Chinese city, instead of town in Azerbaijan.

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Armenian forces in the May 1992 move in to secure the Lachin corridor. The capture of Lachin allowed Armenia to send in supply convoys to aid the Karabakh separatists and also opened up a route for Armenian refugees to evacuate through.

The loss of Shusha led the Azeri parliament to lay the blame on Mamedov which removed him from power and cleared Mutalibov of any responsibility after the loss of Khojaly; reinstating him as President on May 15 1992. Many Azeris saw this act as a coup in addition to the cancellation of the parliamentary elections slated in June of that year. The Azeri parliament at that time was made up of former leaders from the country's communist regime and the losses of Khojaly and Shusha only aggrandized their desires for free elections to be held. Mutalibov declared a state of emergency and an end to all political demonstrations to sort through the disarray. To contribute to the turmoil, an offensive was launched by Armenian forces on May 18 to take the city of Lachin in the narrow corridor separating Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The city itself was poorly guarded and within the next day, Armenian forces took control of the town and cleared any remaining Azeris to open the road that linked the region to Armenia. The taking of the city then allowed an overland route to be connected with Armenia itself; with supply convoys beginning to trek up the mountainous region of Lachin to Karabakh.[23]

The loss of Lachin was the final blow to Mutalibov's regime. Demonstations were held despite Mutalibov's ban and an armed coup was staged by Popular Front activists. Fighting between government forces and Popular Front supporters escalated as the political opposition seized the parliament building in Baku as well as the airport and presidential office. Deaths and injuries were relatively low. On June 16, 1992, Abulfaz Elchibey became Azerbaijan's first democratically elected leader and many political leaders from the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party were elected into the Parliament. The instigators characterized Mutalibov as an undedicated and weak leader in the war in Karabakh. Elchibey, arriving from exile in Iran, was staunchly against receiving any help from the Russians and instead favored closer ties to Turkey and promised that Azerbaijan would never join the CIS.

Escalation of the conflict

Azeri Offensive in June 1992

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Azeri artillery shelling Armenian positions in the onset of the 1992 summer offensive.

On June 12 1992, the Azeri military, along with Huseynov's own brigade, used dozens of tanks, armored personnel carriers and attack helicopters to launch a large three-day offensive from the relatively unguarded region of Shahumian, north of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the process taking back several dozen villages in the Shauhmian region originally held by Armenian forces. Another reason the front collapsed so effortlessly was because it was manned by the same volunteer detachments from Armenia which had abandoned the lines to go back to their country after the capture of Lachin. The offensive prompted the Armenian government to openly threaten Azerbaijan that it would overtly intervene and assist the separatists fighting in Karabakh. Several hundred Armenians were reported to having been killed in this drive towards the region's capital.

The assault forced Armenian forces to retreat south towards Stepanakert where Karabakh commanders contemplated destroying a vital hydroelectric dam in the Martakert region if the offensive was not halted. An estimated 30,000 Armenian refugees were also forced to flee to the capital as the assaulting forces had taken back nearly half of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the thrust made by the Azeris grounded to a halt when their armor were driven off by helicopter gunships. It was also revealed that many of the crew members of the armored units in the Azeri launched assault were Russians from the 104th Division based out of Ganja and ironically enough, so were the units who eventually stopped them. According to an Armenian government official, they were able to persuade Russian military units to bombard and effectively halt the advance within a few days; allowing the Armenian government to recuperate for the losses and reorganize a counteroffensive in order to restore the original lines of the front.[2]

Attempts to mediate peace

In the summer of 1992, the CSCE (later to become the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), created the Minsk Group in Helsinki which was comprised of eleven nations and was co-chaired by France, Russia, and the United States with the purpose of mediating a peace deal with Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, in their annual summit in 1992, the organization failed to address and solve the many new problems that had arisen since the Soviet Union collapsed, much less the Karabakh conflict. The civil war in Yugoslavia, Moldova's war with the breakaway republic of Transnistria, the growing desire for independence from Russia by Chechen separatists, and Georgia's renewed disputes with Russia, Abkhazia and Ossetia were all top agenda issues that involved various ethnic groups fighting each other. The CSCE proposed the use of NATO and CIS peacekeepers to monitor cease-fires and protect shipments of humanitarian aid being sent to displaced refugees. Several cease fires were put into effect after the June offensive but the implementation of a European peacekeeping force, endorsed by Armenia, never came to fruition. The idea of sending 100 international observers to Karabakh was once raised but talks broke down completely between Armenian and Azeri leaders in July. Russia was especially opposed to allowing a multinational peacekeeping force from NATO to entering the Caucasus, seeing it as a move that encroached on its very own "backyard".[24]

Renewed Fighting

The Martuni and Autumn offensives

There will be peace only through our victoryMonte Melkonian in a 1992 television interview

Template:ImageStackLeft In late June, a new, smaller Azeri offensive was planned, this time against the town of Martuni in the southeastern half of Karabakh. The attack force consisted of several dozen tanks and armored fighting vehicles along with a compliment of several infantry companies. Armenian scout units had reconnoitered the Azeris' staging base and had warned commanders of a possible offensive along the Majgalashen and Jardar fronts near Martuni and Krasnyi Bazar. Martuni's regimental commander, Monte Melkonian, referred to by his men as "Avo", ordered the detachments under his command to strengthen the trenches and, due to a lack of armor, to prepare to counter the armored vehicles with rocket propelled grenades. Units were often given the orders to aim to incapacitate armored vehicles "without melting" them in an attempt to allow them to capture, repair, and reuse them for their benefit.[11]

On June 27, the offensive was launched towards the adjacent village of Jardar where Melkonian's fighters had dug in to confront them. The use of anti-tank projectiles decimated the Azeris' armor and allowed the detachments to resist being overrun. The presence of the armored vehicles were also proven to be useless in a close combat environment as they were found to be vulnerable targets where maneuvering space was limited and where the defenders easily picked off vehicles that strayed away from the fighting. Following the next day and subsequent weeks, several more offensives were launched by the Azeris, all of which were staved off and credited to Melkonian's organization and command leadership.[11] The subsequent battles involved the use of hundreds of more men and armored vehicles from both sides; although each sustaining a great deal of casualties, the Azeris' death and injury tolls were disproportionately greater than that of the Armenians'.

In late August 1992, Nagorno-Karabakh's government found itself in a disorderly state and its members resigned on August 17. Power was subsequently assumed by a council called the State Defense Committee which was chaired by Robert Kocharyan, stating it would temporarily govern the enclave until the conflict ended. At this time, Azerbaijan also stepped up on its air strikes, often bombing civilian targets, and notably, significantly damaging Stepanakert's student dormitory and a church in Shusha where Armenian refugees and residential districts were heavily concentrated, and in the process, reportedly killing several civilians. Kocharyan condemned both the "criminal indifference of world opinion" to what he believed were intentional attempts to kill civilians by the Azeris and also to what he alleged was Russia's passive and unconcerned attitude towards allowing its army's weapons stockpiles to be sold or transferred to Azerbaijan.[25] There were also reports, for the first time, of incursions by Azeri militants into villages north of Yerevan and Armenia itself, drawing the ire of government officials into strengthening their support for the Karabakh Armenians. In late August, after a stall in talks hosted by the CSCE in Rome earlier in the month, diplomatic relations between the two countries increased and both nations agreed to a truce signing in Alma-Ata, arranged by Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev, that would be observed from September 1 and be monitored by international observers in the enclave.

The cease fire, like the many others arranged before it, collapsed within a few days as all three sides were drawn back into the conflict. Azerbaijan made several gains in intense fighting between Armenian forces and on September 7, was estimated to be holding 25% of the disputed enclave including the northern region of Mardakert. On September 23, the Azeris opened up a new offensive that attacked from several different directions, intending mainly to close the Lachin Corridor in an operation that killed several hundred Armenian and Azeri soldiers.[26]

On September 24, Russian defense minister Pavel Grachev, met with the defense ministers of Armenian and Azerbaijan in the Russian coastal town of Sochi in an attempt to sign the sixth cease fire between the two groups. Defense ministers Vazgen Sarkisyan of Armenia and Rahim Gaziev of Azerbaijan negotiated for a two month halt in the fighting. The truce specified that if both countries were able to honor the cease-fire, CIS forces and international observers would be sent to maintain the peace. The leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh were largely excluded from these talks and rejected to observe it. However, before the truce was to take place, Azeri forces backed away from the peace accordance which lead Armenian government leaders to announce that they too would in turn refuse to accept it.[27] Attacks were launched by the Azeris and the outlying villages around Martuni were besieged once more; however, Armenian forces were again able to thwart the assaults partly because they were able to utilize small, motorized infantry and tank units and quickly shift them to defend areas that came under attack. Melkonian, who implemented the use of these small fighting groups, launched a counterattack with lightning speed that captured the surrounding Azeri held villages on October 2, and culminated in the capture of the Azeris' headquarters at Kurapatkino, putting an end to the shellings upon Martuni. Armenians, trained by the Russians, downed an estimated twenty Azeri fighter aircraft in this time period with the use of shoulder-fired Strela-4 and Strela-10 Surface-to-air missiles.[11]

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Azeri militia men in Karabakh.

Winter thaw

As the winter of 1992 approached, both sides largely abstained from launching full scale offensives so as to reserve resources such as gas and electricity for domestic use. Despite the opening of an economic highway to the residents living in Karabakh, both Armenia and the enclave suffered a great deal due to the economic blockades imposed by Azerbaijan and while not completely closing it, the material aid sent through Turkey arrived sporadically. Experiencing both food shortages and power, after the close down of the Metsamor nuclear power plant, Armenia's economic outlook appeared bleak: in Georgia a new spout of civil wars against separatists in Abkhazia and Ossetia began, whom raided supply convoys and constantly destroyed the only oil pipeline leading from Russia thatto Armenia. Similar to the winter of 1991-1992, the 1992-1993 winter was especially cold as many families throughout Armenia and Karabakh were left without heating and hot water. Armenia was however able to sustain food commodities for itself through its agricultural farming. Other goods such as grain were more difficult to procure. The Armenian Diaspora living in countries such as France and the United States also raised money and donated supplies to be sent to Armenia. In December, two shipments of 33,000 tons of grain and 150 tons of infant formula arrived from the United States via the Black Sea port of Batumi, Georgia.[28] The European Community (later, the European Union) also began supplying Armenia with humanitarian aid. In February 1993, the organization sent 4.5 million ECUs there.[29] Armenia's southern neighbor Iran, also helped Armenia economically by providing power and electricity, an act many Azeris found unusual. Elchibey's oppositional stance against Iran and his remarks to unify with the country's Azeri minority alienated Azerbaijan from receiving too much aid from that country.

Azeris displaced as internal refugees were also forced to live in makeshift camps provided by both the government and Iran. However, with the government's defense spending accounting for nearly 50% of its overall budget, they were provided inadequate aid for common goods such as soap and running water. The International Red Cross also was distributing blankets to the Azeris but did note that by December, enough food was being allocated for the refugees.[30] Azerbaijan was also struggling to rehabilitate its petroleum industry, the country's chief export. Its oil refineries were not generating at full capacity and production quotas fell well short of estimates. In 1965, the oil fields in Baku were producing 21.5 million tons of oil annually; by 1988, that number had dropped down to almost 3.3 million. Outdated Soviet refinery equipment and reluctance by Western oil companies to invest in a war region where pipelines would routinely be destroyed prevented Azerbaijan from fully exploiting its oil wealth.

Summer 1993, the War Spills Out

Conflicts at home

Despite the grueling winter both countries had suffered, the new year was viewed enthusiastically by both sides. President Elchibey expressed optimism towards bringing an agreeable solution to the conflict with Armenia's Ter-Petrosian. Glimmers of such hope however quickly began to fade as in January 1993, despite the calls for a new cease fire by Yeltsin and Bush, hostilities in the region brewed up once more. Armenian forces began a new bout of offensives that overran villages in northern Karabakh that had been held by the Azeris since the previous autumn. Frustration over these military defeats took a toll in the domestic front in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan's military had grown more disparate and insubordination by defense minister Gaziev and Huseynov's brigade to turn to Russian help ran against Elchibey's policies. Political infighting and arguments on where to shift military units between the country's ministry of the interior, Iskander Hamidov, and Gaziev led to the latters' resignation on February 20. A political shakedown also was occurring in Armenia when Ter-Petrosian dismissed the country's prime minister, Khosrov Arutyunyan and his cabinet for failing to implement a viable economic plan for the country. Protests by Armenians against Ter-Petrosian's leadership were also suppressed and put down.

Kelbajar

We're tank-rich! The Azeris are arming two armies—theirs and ours. May God keep Elchibey in good health —Armenian fighters joking after inheriting the vast amounts of abandoned Azeri weaponry

Situated west of northern Karabakh, out of the boundaries of the region, was the rayon of Kelbajar which bordered alongside Armenia. With a population of about 45,000, the several dozen villages were made up of Azeris and Kurds. In March of 1993, the Armenian held areas near the Sarsang reservoir in Mardakert were reported to having been coming under attack by the Azeris. After successfully defending the Martuni region, Melkonian's fighters were tasked to moving into capture the region of Kelbajar, where the incursions and purported artillery shelling were said to have been coming from. Scant military opposition by the Azeris allowed Melkonian's fighters to quickly gain a foothold in the region and also captured several abandoned armored vehicles and tanks. Nearing the intersection that led towards the town of Kelbajar itself and Azerbaijan's second largest city, Ganje, Melkonian contemplated whether or not it was necessary to take the town at the risk of a causing a massive refugee exodus. After much debate, they agreed to go forward with the operation.[31] As his fighters converged towards the town, the Azeris quickly began shuttling civilians out to Yevlakh with helicopters and most civilians were reported to have been evacuated by April 1. An ultimatum was issued to the governor of Kelbajar, instructing his forces to leave by the morning of April 2. The governor declined the offer and responded back that his forces would not surrender.

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Monte Melkonian, shown above conferring with other commanders, was instrumental in the Armenian military victories of 1992-1993.

At 2:45 P.M. on April 2, Armenian forces from two different directions advanced towards Kelbajar in an attack that quickly struck against Azeri armor and troops entrenched near the Ganje-Kelbjar intersection. Azeri forces were unable to halt advances made by Armenian armor units and nearly all died defending the area. The second attack towards Kelbajar also quickly overran the defenders. On April 3, Armenian forces had captured Kelbajar. With this, Armenian forces had opened a second road connecting to Armenia and secured a 3,000 square kilometer region stretching from Armenia to Karabakh. The military casualties counted over 40 Armenian dead while, again disproportionately, as many as several hundred Azeri soldiers were killed in the offensive. Civilian casualties were also counted to be higher than that of the Azeri soldiers'. In one incident, civilians who had not been flown out, were forced to flee through a cold climate mountain pass on foot where as many as 200 were said to have frozen to death.[32]

The offensive provoked international rancor against the Armenian government, marking the first time Armenian forces had crossed the boundaries of the enclave itself and into Azerbaijan's territory. Vafa Guluzade, Elchibey's chief advisor stated that "The Armenian army is weaker than ours. But as always, it is the Russian army that fights", alleging Russian military involvement in the campaign, a charge that the operation's commander, Colonel-General Daribaltayan refuted and was later found to be untrue.[11] United States secretary of state Warren Christopher and the European Community each issued a condemnation protesting the offensive. On April 30, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 822, co-sponsored by Turkey and Pakistan, affirming Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and demanding that Armenian forces withdraw from Kelbajar.[33] Capturing the region also lead Turkey to cut any diplomatic relations that remained with Armenia; in addition to halting any aid coming through its borders. The political repercussions were also felt in Azerbaijan when Huseynov embarked on what was called his "march to Baku" from his base in Ganje. Frustrated with what he felt was Elchibey's incompetence in dealing with the conflict and demoted from his rank of colonel, his brigade advanced towards Baku to unseat the President in early June. Advancing virtually unopposed, Elchibey stepped down from office on June 18 and power was assumed by now parliamentary member Heidar Aliev, himself returning from exile in Nakhchivan. On July 1, Huseynov was appointed by prime minister of Azerbaijan.[34]

Agdam, Fizuli, and Jebrail

Our men didn't defend our lands. The Armenians just took their positions. —Gabil Akhmedov, an Azeri villager from Fizuli.

Template:ImageStackLeft While the people of Azerbaijan were adjusting to the new political landscape, many Armenians were coping with the recent death of Melkonian who was killed earlier on June 12 in a skirmish near the town of Merzuli. While his death was publicly mourned at a national level in Yerevan, there was no break in the fighting. Azeri forces were driven out of Mardakert in late June, losing their final foothold of the enclave. By July, the Armenian forces were preparing to attack and capture the region of Agdam, another rayon nestled outside of Nagorno-Karabakh. The rationale used by Armenians was again, that they were attempting to bolster a greater security buffer to keep Azeri GRAD artillery out of range of targets in the enclave.

On July 4, an artillery bombardment was commenced by Armenian forces against the region's capital of Agdam, destroying many parts of the town. As the civilians began to evacuate Agdam, so did the soldiers. As house to house fighting took place, the Azeris, conflicted by desertions, undisciplined troops, and low morale, made little effort to defend the town. Within the end of the month, Armenian forces had taken hold of Agdam and an estimated 120,000 civilians had been expelled out of Agdam rayon. On July 29, the second UNSC resolution, 853, was passed condemning the offensive and reaffirming the previous points it had made. Despite calls to halt their advances, the Armenian government said that they had no control over the enclave's military leaders in order to call off the offensive.[35]

Facing a military collapse, Aliev attempted to mediate with the de-facto Karabakh government and Minsk Group officials. A three day truce was agreed upon by both governments beginning on July 26. Within days, as a sight that had become all too familiar for both, the cease fire collapsed and both sides resumed their fighting. In mid-August, Armenians massed a force to take the Azeri regions of Fizuli and Jebrail, south of Nagorno-Karabakh proper. Azerbaijan charged that Armenian forces had already began bombarding the villages while the Armenians denied it, claiming that they were defending the southern border of the enclave from Azeri attacks. In either case, Armenian forces crossed south and advanced south towards the border of Iran towards Fizuli. Supported by heavy armor, they pushed their way through the region as Iran's government issued several warnings on the new offensive but also said it would recommit itself to new peace talks. The region's population was populated by 30-50,000 Azeris, forcing many of them to flee and seek refuge in Iran. By August 20, Fizuli and Jebrail had fallen.[36] In a span of only several months, Azerbaijan had lost a staggering five regions adjacent to Karabakh.

In light of the Armenians' advance into Azerbaijan, Turkey's prime minister Tansu Çiller, raised the level of war rhetoric in consistently warning the Armenian government not to attack Nakhichevan and demanding that Armenians pull out of Azerbaijan's territories. Thousands of Turkish troops were sent to the border between Turkey and Armenia in early September. Russian Federation forces in Armenia countered their movements by increasing troop levels and bolstering defenses in a tense period where war between the two seemed inevitable. Armenia didn't attack Nakhichevan and the presence of Russia's military warded off any possibility that Turkey might play a military role in the conflict.[37]

By early September, Azeri forces were nearly in complete disarray. Much of the heavy weapons they had received and bought by the Russians were either taken out of action or captured by Armenian forces in the battles. An important factor in allowing the Armenians to advance quickly was repairing the very own tanks they took out. Converting a warehouse that was used during the Soviet era to produce harvesters and tractors into an armored vehicle repair facility, at one point, 80% of the vehicles were said to formerly belong to Azerbaijan and 90% of the estimated vehicles would be sent back to action, many still bearing the Azerbaijani flag and emblem.[38] Further signs of Azerbaijan's desperation included the recruitment by Aliev of one thousand Afghan mujahadeen fighters from Afghanistan. Although the Azeri government denied this claim, correspondence and photographs captured by Armenian forces indicated otherwise.[39] Azerbaijan's recruitment of its minority Lezgins was met with stiff resistance. The United States-based petroleum company, MEGA OIL, also hired several American military trainers at the behest of Azerbaijan as a prerequisite for it to acquire drilling rights to the country's oil fields.[40]

1993-1994, final clashes

Recapturing lost land

Template:ImageStackRight In October 1993, Aliev was formally elected as President, winning 99% of the popular vote; promising to revitalize the country's economy and bring social order in addition to recapturing the lost regions. In October, Azerbaijan joined the CIS. The winter season was marked with similar conditions as in the previous year, both sides scavenging for wood and harvesting foodstuffs months in advance. Two subsequent UNSC resolutions were passed, 874 and 884, in October and November and although reemphasizing the same points as the previous two, they acknowledged Nagorno-Karabakh as a party to the conflict. Meanwhile, fighting brewed up once more when in January, the Azeri defense ministry claimed that it had recaptured several parts of Agdam after repulsing an Armenian offensive, purportedly killing 200 Armenian soldiers and destroying several armored vehicles. Karabakh's State Defense Committee disputed the claims however, saying that they had actually made gains into the region at the loss of only five men while killing 90 Azeri troops in the offensive. On January 10, 1994, an offensive was launched by Azerbaijan towards the region of Mardakert in an attempt to recapture the northern section of the enclave. The offensive managed to advance and take back several parts of Karabakh in the north and to the south of but quickly ran out of steam. The Nagorno-Karabakh defense ministry stated that the assault was halted, their forces inflicting heavy casualties on the Azeris including the loss of two attacking units numbering about 350 men each.[41]

Enacting peace proposals and enforcing cease-fires proved just as difficult as before. In mid-February, another Russian-brokered cease-fire was signed by Armenia's and Azerbaijan's defense ministers in the midst of more fighting. Set to begin on March 1, it lasted for only several days before collapsing. Azerbaijan's offensives grew more dire as men as young as 16 with little to no training at all were recruited and sent to take part in ineffective human wave attacks, tactics once employed by Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. The two offensives that took place in the winter cost Azerbaijan as much as 4,000 men; Armenian soldiers in Karabakh claimed that the youths were demoralized and lacked a sense of purpose and commitment to fighting the war: "The difference is in what you do and what you do it for. You know a few miles back is your family, children, women and old people, and therefore you're duty-bound to fight to the death so that those behind you will live", as one Armenian fighter put it.[42] Such claims were illustrated when Armenian troops broke through the Azeri defenses in Agdam in late April 1994, at the cost of 56 men during the offensive, Armenian forces had killed at least 700 Azeri troops.

Final cease-fire

After six years of intensive fighting, both sides were ready for a cease-fire. Azerbaijan, after exhausting nearly all its manpower was relying on a cease-fire to be put forth by either the CSCE or by Russia. Armenian commanders said their forces, if the situation arose, they had an open road to that would lead to the capture of the capital city of Baku. The borders however remained confined to Karabakh and the immediate rayons surrounding it. Diplomatic channels increased between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the month of May. Finally, on May 16, the leaders of the Armenian, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Russia met in Moscow to sign a truce that would establish the following conditions: the cease-fire, troop withdrawals by all factions be at least 3-6 miles, the establishment of 49 observer posts led by the Russians, and 1,800 troops from the CIS to be temporarily stationed between them. In Azerbaijan, the truce was met with both relief and disappointment. Many welcomed the end of hostilities while others felt that the peacekeeping troops should have been a multinational force rather than solely from Russia. President Aliev however greeted it with tired enthusiasm: "Once Baku realized the importance of reconciliation, one can say that we have approached a final solution of this problem." [43] Sporadic fighting continued in some parts of the region but all sides, including Russia, affirmed that they would stay committed to honoring the cease-fire. The six year war had come to an end after several dozen cease-fires and the lives of tens of thousands.

Frozen conflict

Unstable peace

File:AzerirefugeesinIran.jpg
Approximately 250,000 Armenians and 600,000 Azeris were displaced from the fighting. Above, an Iranian built camp housing some of the refugees from Azerbaijan.

Today, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains one of several frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet states along with Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well as Moldova's troubles with Transnistria. Karabakh remains under the jurisdiction of the unrecognized de facto independent Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and its own military, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army. Contrary to media reports which nearly always mentioned the religions of the Armenians and Azeris, the war's religious aspects never gained enough significance as an additional casus belli and remained more or less a territorial debate. Since 1995, the OSCE has been mediating with the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan to settle for a new solution. Numerous proposals have been made which have primarily been based on both sides making several concessions. One such proposal stipulated that as Armenian forces withdrew from the seven regions surrounding Karabakh, Azerbaijan would thereby share some of its economic assets including profits from an oil pipeline that would go from Baku through Armenia to Turkey. Other proposals also included that Azerbaijan would provided the broadest form of autonomy to the enclave next to granting it full independence. Armenia has thus been excluded from major economic projects throughout the region, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

Most proposals however have been rejected however by the Armenians which they consider as a matter that is not negotiable. Likewise, Azerbaijan has refused to let the matter subside. Facing allegations of both a rigged election after the 1996 presidential elections in Armenia and the possibility of making concessions to Azerbaijan in regards to the conflict, Ter-Petrossian stepped down from office in 1998. His office was then assumed by Robert Kocharyan, by then the prime minister of Armenia, being elected formally as President on March 30. Kocharyan, a native of Karabakh himself, rejected nearly all calls for making a deal to resolve the conflict. Meanwhile, in a move that angered Azerbaijan, the enclave's government held its own elections and in 1997, Arkady Ghoukasyan was elected president of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Republic itself maintains its own military force known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army and relies extensively on military support from Armenia. In the midst of negotiations with the OSCE Minsk Group, Aliev consistently vowed that the region would be "liberated". In 2001, Kocharyan and Aliev met at Key West, Florida to discuss the issues and while several Western diplomats expressed optimism and even claimed that nearly 80% of the issues had been addressed at the meeting, mounting opposition against any concessions by both countries thwarted hopes for a peaceful resolution.[44]

Refugees displaced from the fighting account to nearly one million people from both sides. An estimated 250,000 Armenians living in Azerbaijan left to Armenia or Russia and a further 30,000 came from Karabakh. Many of those who left Karabakh arrived back after the war ended.[45] An estimated 528,000 Azeris were displaced from the fighting including those from both Armenia and the enclave. Various other ethnic groups living in Karabakh were also forced to live in refugee camps built by both the Azeri and Iranian governments.[46] Although the issue of amount of territory has often been claimed to be 20% and even as high 40%, the number is believed to be, taking into account the exclave of Nakhichevan, 13.65% or 14%.[2]

In March 2003, Kocharyan was elected into a second term as Armenia's president. While negotiations continued throughout the year, on August 4, 2003, Aliev died from heart problems, leaving his son, Ilham as heir to the presidency. In October, he was formally elected and announced that his country would not accept Karabakh's legitimacy. Ethnic relations between individual Armenians and Azeris remained volatile where in Azerbaijan for example, many describe Armenia's action akin to the Nazis'. The ramifications of the war were said to have played a part in the February 2004 death of Armenian Lieutenant Gurgen Markaryan who hacked to death with an axe by his Azeri counterpart, Ramil Safarov at a NATO training seminar in Budapest, Hungary.

Air war over Karabakh

File:Shilka AA.JPG
A frontal view of the radar-guided, ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" (NATO reporting name "Awl") anti-aircraft system. It had four 23 mm cannons mounted on a swiveling turret above the chassis. This one in use by Armenian forces during the war for defense against air attack.

The air war in Karabakh involved primarily fighter jets and attack helicopters. The primary transport helicopters of the war were the Mi-8 "Hip" and its cousin, the Mi-17 "Hip-H" (NATO reporting names) and were used extensively by both sides. Armenia's active air force consisted of only two Su-25 ground support bombers, one of which was, ironically, accidentally shot down by the Armenians themselves. There were also several Su-22s and Su-17s however these aging craft took a backseat for the duration of the war.

Azerbaijan's air force was composed of forty-five combat aircraft which were often piloted by experienced Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries from the former Soviet military. They flew mission sorties over Karabakh with such sophisticated jets as the Mig-25 and with more archaic Soviet fighter bombers, such as the Mig-21 and Sukhoi Su-24 "Fencer". They were reported to have being paid a monthly salary of over 5,000 rubles and flew bombing campaigns from air force bases in Azerbaijan; often bombing the capital at Stepanakert. The Ghazanchetsots Cathedral was also once bombed by an an Azeri Su-25. These pilots, like the men from the Soviet interior forces in the onset of the conflict, were also poor and took the job in means of supporting their families. Several were shot down over the city by Armenian forces, and according to one of the pilots' commanders, with assistance provided by the Russians. Many of these pilots faced the threat of execution by Armenian forces if they were shot down. The set up of the defense system severely hampered Azerbaijan's ability to carry out and launch more air strikes.[47]

Perhaps the most famous and widely used helicopter gunship used by both the Armenians and Azeris was the Soviet-made Mil Mi-24 Krokodil (NATO Operating Name: "Hind"). The Krokodil had built up its reputation after seeing extensive combat during the 1980s when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Hind was used effectively in a support role for advancing infantry and for softening enemy positions prior to an attack. Many were shot down throughout the duration of the war.

Russia's role

Russia, the largest republic of the former Soviet Union, played a dual and often obfuscated role during the war. Although the hardliner members of the Soviet government supported Azerbaijan in the initial stages of the war, this was the result of keeping the Soviet Union together and Party loyalty rather than having any real distinctive preference to a particular side. Nevertheless, according to Time Magazine, this tilting favoritism was due to the fact that "until the Soviet Union's collapse, the Kremlin tended to favor the Azeris in the conflict, largely because Azerbaijan was the last bastion of communist orthodoxy in the Caucasus."[14] The feelings of breaking away from the Soviet Union were not only prevalent in Armenia but also in Georgia and the Baltic republics and thus, similar containment policies were followed by Kremlin leaders in these countries. Its contingent of troops during the war consisted of a 23,000-man force housed at the 102nd military base near Gyumri. In Azerbaijan, Russian forces sped up the process of withdrawing after the assault on Khojaly and completely withdrew in 1993, one year ahead of schedule. Russian support during the war remained officially neutral. However, despite this stance, both sides accused the Russian military of favoritism. Markar Melkonian, Monte's brother, described the political climate and warring words that both countries traded with one another after successive battles by either side:

Whenever one side, Armenian or Azeri, suffered reversals on the battlefields, orators and ministers in Yerevan or Baku blamed it on Russian support for the other side: after Azeri offensives, Armenians accused Russia of siding with Azerbaijan; and after Armenian offensives, Azeris accused Russia of siding with Armenia.[11]

Although it is well known that Russians among other ethnic groups of the former Soviet Union fought as mercenaries on both sides, official Russian military support relied primarily on the accounts of eyewitnesses. Russian military units were said to have been cooperating with Armenian units when they took Khojaly and similarly with Azerbaijan during its summer 1992 offensive. After the Kelbajar offensive, the Azeris also accused Armenians with receiving help from Russians. Russian and Ukrainian mercenaries contracted to serve in the Azeri air force were captured by Armenian forces. But as Melkonian notes, Russia welcomed the Armenian victories, namely Kelbajar's in 1993:

The Armenian offensive came at a time of escalating military threats to Russia: Washington was eager to push NATO right up to Russia's western doorstep, to set up military bases in Central Asia, and to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Chechnya teetered on the brink of secessionist rebellion in the high Caucasus, while...the newly independent Republic of Georgia, was tearing itself up in civil war. And now Azerbaijan, the former Soviet Republic, once again turned its eyes toward Russia's age-old enemy, Turkey....Only Armenia held any promise as a reliable Russian ally in the southern Caucasus.[11]

In 1997, Russian parliamentary member and chairman of the parliamentary defense committee, Lev Rokhlin released a report detailing Russian arms shipments transferred to Armenia at the worth of $1 billion dollars including 84 T-72 tanks, 50 armored personnel vehicles, 72 howitzers, 24 Scud missile systems and several million rounds of ammunition from 1994-1996.[48] The shipment of the arms were said to have been originally authorized by defense minister Pavel Grachev and purportedly sent during the height of the war in 1992-1994. Azerbaijan demanded that the weapons be returned lest fighting broke out once more (Armenia retained the weapons). Relations with Russia and Azerbaijan have been strained since then as it looked more to the West for support. In 1997, Aliev raised concerns in Russia when it asked then president of the United States, Bill Clinton, if the US would establish a military base in Azerbaijan, the first ever in one of the union republics. Seeking not to hamper relations with Russia, Clinton declined to take up on the offer.

Russia's relations with Armenia have strengthened after the war including the signing of the a 25-year extension of the use of the base at Gyumri in March 1997. During Vladimir Putin's administration, defense minister Sergei Ivanov has credited Armenia as its only ally in the Caucasus.[49] Russia's military currently supports Armenia in defending its border against Turkey.

Human Rights Violations

Could God ever forgive a person who had killed a dog out of revenge?...That depends, was it a four-legged dog or two-legged dog? —An Armenian soldier asking a priest —and receiving the answer— on the consequences of his killing of a Popular Front activist

Recent developments

On February 10, 2006 Aliev and Kocharyan met for a two day summit in Rambouillet, France in a meeting that was widely greeted with "cautious optimism". In a previous meeting in January, both leaders had outlined the course of actions to be taken by both countries. Emerging details soon after the meeting was over later revealed that little headway had been made. In recent months negotiations have largely faltered and Aliev has warned several times that his country's patience has worn thin and is considering a military operation to take back the land. The security buffer zone between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan is heavily mined and in recent years, there have been several deaths in violations of the ceasefire by snipers and artillery from both sides. Armenia's economic isolation has led it to strengthen ties with the Islamic republic in Iran. At the 32nd G8 summit in 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the issue of the "frozen conflicts" would be discussed but the crisis between Lebanon and Israel overshadowed and possibly sidelined it for future talks.

References

  1. ^ The casualties of the war are disputed and exact numbers are unknown due to the fact that exact body counts were never properly ascertained by either side or by international organizations. In the initial years of combat, casualties were reported to be much lower than what was later asserted after the war ended. The numbers here are estimated figures by Azerbaijani parliamentary member Arif Yunusov. Other sources place the numbers much higher. Time Magazine, for example lists the number to at least 35,000 people on both sides [1]. The US State Department [2] and NPR [3] put the numbers slightly lower at around 30,000. Whereas the BBC estimates numbers closer to Yunusov's at around 25,000 [4]. There were and are also subsequent casualties which resulted from numerous land mine accidents which were sometimes tripped by unsuspecting civilians. A numerous amount of cease fire violations on the borders also result in the deaths of several soldiers each year on both sides.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Waal, Thomas. Black garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war. New York: New York University Press, 2003. ISBN 0814719457
  3. ^ Regnum News. Who is at the turn of interests? US, Russia and new reality on the border with Iran April 4, 2006.
  4. ^ Rost, Yuri. The Armenian Tragedy. St. Martin's Press, New York. 1990, p.17. ISBN 0312046111
  5. ^ Remnick, David. Soviets Report 31 Killed in Ethnic Rioting Washington Post. March 5, 1988. pg. A1. The official Soviet statistics on the Sumgait massacre were initially placed much lower but incrementally rose to a final count of 37 dead, most of them Armenian but also including several Azeris who were possibly killed when some Armenians resisted. The Soviet government also reported that several hundred people were injured including MVD soldiers who were sent to quell the rioting but found themselves without any proper riot gear or weapons. Many Armenians feel the figures by the Soviet media are understated and are in fact much higher. Nearly the entire Armenian population in Sumgait left Azerbaijan after the pogrom.
  6. ^ Hofheinz, Paul. On the Edge of Civil War Visiting Armenia and Azerbaijan, a TIME reporter wonders how much longer the two republics can exist in the same country Time Magazine October 23, 1989
  7. ^ Smolowe, Jill. The Killing Zone. Time Magazine. January 29, 1990
  8. ^ Abu-Hamad, Aziz, et al. Playing the "Communal Card": Communal Violence and Human Rights Human Rights Watch.
  9. ^ Keller, Bill. A Gorbachev Deadline on Armenia Issue. The New York Times. September 26, 1989. pg. A3
  10. ^ Dahlburg, John-Thor. Pro-Moscow Troops Seize 3 Armenian Villages. Ethnic unrest: Several atrocities are reported. The Kremlin says it is trying to curb lawlessness. Local officials call it terrorism. Los Angeles Times. May 8, 1991. p.8
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i Melkonian, Markar. My Brother's Road, An American's Fateful Journey to Armenia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1850436355
  12. ^ Petrosian, David. "What Are the Reasons for Armenians' Success in the Military Phase of the Karabakh Conflict?" Noyan Tapan Highlights June 1 2000
  13. ^ Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Humanitarian aid was not explicitly banned but such supplies had to be routed through indirectly to aid organizations. On January 25 2002, President George W. Bush signed a waiver that effectively repealed Section 907; thereby removing any restrictions that were barring the United States from sending military aid to Azerbaijan; however, military parity is maintained towards both sides. For more information, see here [5]. Azerbaijan continues to maintain their road and air blockade against Armenia as does Armenia against Nakhichevan.
  14. ^ a b c Carney, James. Former Soviet Union Carnage in Karabakh Time Magazine. April 13, 1992.
  15. ^ a b Chorbajian, Levon, Patrick Donabedian, and Claude Mutafian. The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Zed Books, London 1994: pp.13-18. The statistics cited by the authors is from data compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies based in London, Great Britain in a report entitled The Military Balance, 1993-1994 that was published in 1993. The 20,000 figure of the Republic Nagorno-Karabakh was slated to include 8,000 volunteers from Armenia itself; Armenia's military in the report was exclusively made up of members in the army; and Azerbaijan's statistics referred to 38,000 members in its army and 1,600 in its air force. Reference to these statistics can be found on pp. 68-69 and 71-73 of the report.
  16. ^ Curtis, Glenn E. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia Country Studies. Federal Research Division Library of Congress: Washington D.C., 1995
  17. ^ USA Today. Truce in Azerbaijan lasts three hours. USA Today. February 28, 1992. pg. 4A
  18. ^ Killen, Brian. Massacre leaves dozens dead in Azeri region Chicago Tribune. Mar. 3, 1992.
  19. ^ Hitherto, the Armenian government denies that a deliberate massacre took place in Khojaly. Through the various accounts that emerged after the attack, the Armenian government initially placed the Azeri casualty count to as little as two. However, as video evidence proved to show dozens of more bodies the number put forth by Armenian authorities rose to 152. However, government officials asserted that the casualty count, though high, was due to the fact the fleeing civilians in Khojaly had mingled with the retreating defenders and when the Azeri troops shot back, Armenian forces fired upon them, killing both soldier and civilian alike. This was corroborated by several witness who testified to Helsinki Watch; itself concluding "that the militia, still in uniform, and some still carrying their guns, were interspersed with the masses of civilians." Human Rights Watch and Memorial, however, found this explanation unconvincing. Ayaz Mutalibov's oft-referred to interview was used by Armenian officials to counter Azeri claims that the massacre had not been done by Armenian soldiers but by Popular Front soldiers who shot civilians escaping through the corridor. The event, according to Mutalibov, was a ploy to denigrate his government. In later interviews, however, Mutalibov would go on to condemn the Armenians for what he said was a misinterpretation of his words. Other theories proposed by the Armenian side were that Azeri Popular Front soldiers had massacred 100 Azeri civilians and also several Armenian hostages. They then proceeded to mix the bodies and lay blame upon the Armenians. Many civilians also froze to death due to the cold conditions in the mountainous regions leading to Agdam. Caroline Cox, a British parliamentary leader whose relief team Christian Solidarity International traveled to Karabakh in 1992, reported that revenge killings by Azeri soldiers against Armenian civilians had taken place two months later in the village of Maragha. Similar acts of mutilation and burning of bodies were said to have been done to them.
  20. ^ Dobbs, Michael. Key Town in Karabakh Seized by Armenians; Azerbaijanis Pledge Swift Counterattack. Washington Post. May 9, 1992. pg. A25
  21. ^ Clark, Bruce. Both sides in Karabakh fighting claim key town; Armenia. The Times. May 11, 1992.
  22. ^ Goldberg, Carey. Turkey warned of 'world war' Toronto Star May 21, 1992. pg. A18. On April 17, 1993, Ozal would die of a heart attack; his aides suggesting that he had exhausted himself shortly after taking a tour of five Turkic former Soviet republics in an effort to raise support for Azerbaijan. Turkey never did actively contribute troops to Azerbaijan but did send a great deal of military aid and advisers, including 150 former military officers, to Azeri commanders. The prospect of a war with superpower Russia and neighboring Iran may also have dissuaded it to join the conflict. In May 1992, the military commander of the CIS forces, Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, issued a warning to Western nations, especially the United States, to not interfere with the conflict in the Caucasus; stating it would "place us [the Commonwealth] on the verge of a third world war, and that cannot be allowed."
  23. ^ Seward, Deborah. Armenia captures key road in Azerbaijan Seattle Times. May 19, 1992. pg. A6
  24. ^ Hitchens, Theresa. CSCE Found No Magic Bullet in Helsinki Wall Street Journal Europe. July 13, 1992. pg.6
  25. ^ Dahlburg, John-Thor. Azerbaijan Accused of Bombing Civilians. Chicago Sun-Times, Aug. 24, 1992. pg.16
  26. ^ The New York Times Company. Azerbaijanis Open a Major Offensive. New York Times. September 23, 1992. pg. A15
  27. ^ Washington Post Company Cease-Fire Ends Between Armenia And Azerbaijan. Washington Post September 27, 1992. pg. A39
  28. ^ Binder, David. U.S. Warns of 'Catastrophe' Facing Armenia. New York Times. Dec. 20, 1992. p. A11
  29. ^ Chrysanthopolous, Leonidas T. Caucasus Chronicles: Nation-building and Diplomacy in Armenia, 1993-1994. Princeton, New Jersey, Gomidas Institute Books, 2002. pg.40
  30. ^ Sammakia, Nejla. Winter Brings Misery to Azerbaijani Refugees. The San Fransisco Chronicle. December 23, 1992. pg. A11
  31. ^ Melkonian was initially reluctant in ordering the capture of a region where no Armenians resided in. He would later reflect on his decision that "The issue is whether or not we want[ed] to [advance]. We'd prefer if the peaceful population gets out of this place safely, and then we'll advance. But it looks like their soldiers won't allow it. So maybe we'll start up again." He continued by reasoning that his decision stemmed not only from halting the bombardment but that also taking Kelbajar was a "historical issue...[a part of] historical Armenia...And we'll vindicate that reality [to the Azeris] with our guns. Unfortunately! It would be nice if the Azeris would understand that reality is reality, agree and say OK, it's yours, and that's that."
  32. ^ Human Rights Watch/Helsinki. Azerbaijan: Seven Years of Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Human Rights Watch, 1995, pp.8-18. Melkonian also referred to an incident in where his fighters encountered a truckload of civilians at a tunnel in Zufulgarli on April 1. A GAZ-52 carrying 25 Azeri and Kurdish civilians were said to have been driving at a high speed and fired upon by his fighters who had mistook it for a troop transport (the soldiers had assumed that all civilians had already left Kelbajar). The driver, his daughter and all civilians were killed, prompting Melkonian to delay his units' advance while a refugee column evacuated through the intersection.
  33. ^ United Nations Security Council Resolution 822 passed on 30 April 1993 Text provided by the US State Department. A total of four UNSC resolutions were passed in regards to the conflict.
  34. ^ The Associated Press. Rebel troops push toward Azeri capital Toronto Star. June 21, 1993, p. A12
  35. ^ Efron, Sonni. Armenians hand Azeris major loss The Montreal Gazette. July 25, 1993. pg. B1
  36. ^ The New York Times Company. Caucasus City Falls to Armenian Forces. New York Times. August 24, 1993. pg. A7
  37. ^ The Associated Press. Turkey orders Armenians to leave Azerbaijan, moves troops to the border. The Salt Lake Tribune. September 4, 1993. pg. A1. During the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, one the coup's leaders against Russian President Yeltsin, Chechen Ruslan Khasbulatov, was reported by the the United States' and France's intelligence agencies to preparing Russian troop withdrawls from Armenia if the coup succeeded. An estimated 23,000 Russian soldiers were stationed in Armenia on the border of Turkey. Çiller was reported by the agencies to be collaborating with Khasbulatov for him to give her tacit support in allowing possible military incursions by Turkey into Armenia under the pretext of pursuing PKK guerillas, an act it had once followed up on earlier same year in northern Iraq. Russian armed forces crushed the coup however, and it subsequently collapsed thereafter.
  38. ^ Hockstader, Lee. Armenians Winning With Creativity, Aid. The Washington Post. September 12, 1993. pg. A36
  39. ^ Sneider, Daniel. Afghans Fought for Azerbaijan, Captured Documents Show. The San Fransisco Chronicle. November 16 1993. pg. A14
  40. ^ Gurdilek, Rasit. Azerbaijanis Rebuild Army with Foreign Help. The Seattle Times. January 30, 1994. pg. A3
  41. ^ The Montreal Gazette. Azerbaijan resumes costly offensive. The Montreal Gazette. January 11, 1994. pg. A5
  42. ^ Goldberg, Carey. David and Goliath in Caucasus: Feisty Karabakh Armenians are defying the odds in a battle to liberate their tiny enclave from Azerbaijan. The key to their success? `This is a war for our existence,' one veteran says. The Los Angeles Times. April 21, 1994. pg.1
  43. ^ Efron, Sonni. Armenia, Azerbaijan agree to ceasefire. The Gazette. May 17, 1994. pg. A7
  44. ^ Peuch, Jean-Christophe. Armenia/Azerbaijan: International Mediators Report Progress On Karabakh Dispute Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. April 10, 2001.
  45. ^ The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. 2001 Country Report of Armenia. USCRI. January 2001.
  46. ^ For more detailed statistics on the status of refugees and the number of internally displaced persons see here.
  47. ^ Loiko, Sergei. L. Ex-Soviet `Top Guns' Shot Down, Face Possible Death as Mercenaries Los Angeles Times. July 19, 1993
  48. ^ Sieff, Martin. Armenia armed by Russia for battles with Azerbaijan; Scandal compared to Iran-Contra. The Washington Times. April 10, 1997. pg. A11
  49. ^ *Goldman, Minton F. Global Studies: Russia, The Eurasian Republics, and Central/Eastern Europe, 10th Edition. McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004

Further reading

Historiography and Overviews
  • Chorbajian, Levon, Patrick Donabedian, and Claude Mutafian. The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geopolitics of Nagorno-Karabagh. Zed Books, London 1994.
  • Cox, Caroline and John Eibner. Ethnic cleansing in progress: War in Nagorno Karabakh. Zürich; Washington: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World, 1993
  • Croissant, Michael P. Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998
  • Curtis, Glenn E. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia Country Studies. Federal Research Division Library of Congress, 1995
  • De Waal, Thomas. Black garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2003
  • Freire, Maria Raquel. Conflict and Security in the Former Soviet Union: The Role of the OSCE. Ashgate Publishing, 2003
  • Goldman, Minton F. Global Studies: Russia, The Eurasian Republics, and Central/Eastern Europe, 10th Edition. McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2004
  • Libaridian, Gerard. The Karabagh file: Documents and facts on the region of Mountainous Karabagh, 1918-1988. Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research & Documentation; 1st ed edition, 1988
  • Human Rights Watch/Helsinki. Azerbaijan: Seven Years of Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Human Rights Watch, 1995
  • Malkasian, Mark. Gha-Ra-Bagh!: The Emergence of the National Democratic Movement in Armenia. Wayne State University Press, 1996
  • Melkonian, Monte. The Right to Struggle: Selected Writings of Monte Melkonian on the Armenian National Question'. Sardarabad Press, 1993
  • Zartman, William I. Peace Versus Justice: Negotiating Forward- and Backward- Looking Outcomes. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005
Specific events and time periods
  • Chrysanthopolous, Leonidas T. Caucasus Chronicles: Nation-building and Diplomacy in Armenia, 1993-1994. Princeton, NJ: Gomidas Institute Books, 2002.
  • Goltz, Thomas. Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic. M.E. Sharpe, 1998
  • Rost, Yuri. The Armenian Tragedy. New York, St. Martin's Press. 1990
  • Shamuratian, Samvel ed. The Sumgait Tragedy: Pogroms Against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan. New York: Zoryan Institute, 1990
Biographies
  • Melkonian, Markar. My Brother's Road, An American's Fateful Journey to Armenia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

See also