Bloody conflict drags up bitter grudges from past ethnic war
IN A war with no shortage of random shelling, it was one shot that was unmistakably on target. The Azerbaijani missile plunged straight into the roof of a cultural centre in the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Shushi, just as Armenian forces were sheltering inside.
“We have lost at least six or seven men, with many more injured,” one officer said, fighting back tears as he pulled dead comrades from the building’s wreckage this week.
The missile salvo was just one of hundreds that Azerbaijan has exchanged with Armenia during the latest fight over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which broke away from Azerbaijan after a war from 1988-94.
With both sides nursing memories of those six years of ethnic bloodletting, there is no shortage of scores to settle. But the town of Shushi, which sits on a hilltop overlooking the Nagorno-Karabakh capital, Stepanakert, is where the grudges are bitterest.
In Soviet times, when Nagorno-Karabakh was under Azerbaijani rule, Shushi was a mix of Armenians and Azeris, whose differences were suppressed under communism. All that changed when the Soviet empire collapsed, making Shushi centre stage for a battle laden with ethnic and religious symbolism.
First it was held by the Azerbaijanis, who used the town’s Holy Saviour cathedral as a launch point for raining artillery down on Armenian-held Stepanakert. Then, in a battle that Armenians still hail as their greatest victory in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian forces laid siege to Shushi, fighting their way up its steep slopes to retake it in 1992.
“Operation Wedding in the Mountains”, as the Armenians called it, was a turning point in the war, as it reclaimed the road that links Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia proper.
Today, the only reminders of the Azeri presence in Shushi are two mosques, both of which have been restored.
Yet even now, Azeris still see Shushi – known to them as Shusha – as their traditional stronghold in Nagorno-Karabakh, remembering it as centre for Azeri music and poetry.
Hence their anger last month when Arayik Harutyunyan, a war veteran who has just become Nagorno-Karabakh’s new president, announced that the enclave’s national assembly would be moving from Stepanakert to Shushi.
It was viewed as an outright provocation to Azerbaijan. At the outset of hostilities last week, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliev, also lashed out at Mr Harutyunyan for choosing Shushi as the venue for his swearing-in ceremony in May. “They held the so-called swearing-in ceremony for the so-called leader of the criminal Nagorno-Karabakh regime in Shusha, an ancient pearl of Azerbaijani culture,” Mr Aliev fumed. “These are deliberate attempts to drag us into conflict.”
While both sides have blamed each other for restarting the conflict, Mr Aliev has warned that Armenian forces will be chased “like dogs” out of Nagorno-Karabakh unless they make concessions.
He points out that the territory is still recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan, and says Azeris who fled towns like Shushi should be allowed to re-settle.
But with Shushi now under Azeri bombardment, the prospect of the two communities returning to Soviet-style brotherly love seems remote.
“In the Soviet era, yes, everyone was supposed to be friends, and I knew many Azeris,” said Ashot Gulyan (55). “But after all that has happened, I don’t think it would be easy for us to welcome in Azeris again – even if they came in peace.” (© Daily Telegraph, London)