The future of Karabakh

In case the Soviet Republic has autonomous republics, autonomous regions
or any type of similar distinct territories within its borders, referendums
may be conducted separately in each of the autonomies. The people residing
in the autonomies are given a right to independently decide whether
to remain in the Soviet Union or in the seceding Republic as well as
to decide on their state legal status.

Referendum results are to be considered separately
for the territory of a Soviet Republic with a compactly settled ethnic
minority population, which constitutes majority on that particular territory
of the Republic.

      In January and February 1992 the Azerbaijan armed forces launched a full-scale assault on Nagorno-Karabakh including aircraft bombarding of its capital, Stepanakert.

      As from the spring of 1992, the Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces started to counter-attack and they succeeded in opening the "Latchin corridor" between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. Assaults and counter-attacks took place throughout 1992. Since the spring of 1993, the Nagorno-Karabakh troops have won a growing number of military victories.

Noting with alarm the escalation in armed hostilities and, in particular, the latest invasion of the Kelbadjar district of the Republic of Azerbaijan by local Armenian forces,

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Condemns the seizure of the district of Agdam and of all other recently occupied areas of the Azerbaijani Republic;

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Noting with alarm the escalation in armed hostilities as consequence of the violations of the cease-fire and excesses in the use of force in response to those violations, in particular the occupation of the Zangelan district and the city of Goradiz in the Azerbaijani Republic,
Reaffirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Azerbaijani Republic and of all other States in the region,

Article 70

(1) The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is an integral, federal, multinational state formed on the principle of socialist federalism as a result of the free self-determination of nations and the voluntary association of equal Soviet Socialist Republics.
(2) The USSR embodies the state unity of the Soviet people and draws all its nations and nationalities together for the purpose of jointly building communism.

Article 78
The territory of a Union Republic may not be altered without its consent. The boundaries between Union Republics may be altered by mutual agreement of the Republics concerned, subject to ratification by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

On the morning of March 27, I was riding on horseback with my brother Ahad and our friend Hussein, to the funeral of a relative in Chirakli. Suddenly a burst of machinegun fire opened up on us from the direction of Vankli, a neighboring (Karabakh [43]) (page 10) Armenian-held village close to our village. My brother and Hussein managed to escape, but my horse was killed and I had to hide by some rocks. A short time later I could see another group from our village on the way to the funeral. The [Karabakh] Armenians opened up on them too, killing four and wounding one. Yusuf Zeinalov, Habil Nagiyev, Mehman Musayev, and Yusuf Azizov were all killed [44].

     The captives were held in Hoje, during which time Mr. G saw several big trucks enter and rob twelve to fifteen of the sixty houses in Hoje; he could not see the rest of the houses. They were held two days in Tartumaj village of Jebrayil, where the men were beaten but not interrogated. Tartumaj was burned down when they arrived. Only two public buildings used to house the battalion were still standing. The captives were held in a wooden shack like those used to store wine. It had a dirt floor and nothing to sleep on. While in this shack, they were fed once in two days.

 The old man cried as he told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that the two women captives were raped before the eyes of the male captives. The off-duty soldiers and officers [125] came into the room where all the captives were held and raped the women two or three times a day. The attackers didn't pay attention to the shouting or cries of the women, nor to the pleas made on behalf of the young woman, age twenty-two, who had just delivered and then lost her first-born child a few days earlier.

The front was about seven or eight kilometers from us when fighting started on October 23. Initially we heard some firing in the distance, then it became quite. We thought our troops had advanced. But we were wrong. The [Karabakh] Armenians started to shell our village heavily, shells were landing about 200 meters from my house. Some were killed. Houses were burning. I had to crouch on the ground. Around 7:00 P.M. Azeri soldiers passed through our village, retreating. As the shelling continued we all fled to the Araks river, where we spent the night [159].

     All that night, Cherkez and the villagers of Buyuk Merjanli waited in fear by the Araks river. A couple kilometers away they could see their homes burning. When morning broke on October 24, they could see tanks in the village. A panic erupted.

Everybody just plumbed into the water. We had no other choice. (page 42) The bridge was already in [Karabakh] Armenian hands. We were cut off: [Karabakh] Armenians were in Mahmudlu to the south and Horadiz to the north. I took my clothes off and tried to walk along the bottom, but the current was strong. I made it to the other side and safety in Iran, but two high school boys drowned. All that day we went to the river bank on the Iranian side to help people. Another girl drowned crossing, plus a woman. Their bodies were on the bank.

     Iranian authorities on the Iranian side of the Araks distributed food and dry clothes and also assisted people in crossing the river. In the first two days of the offensive, the Tehran newspaper Hamchari reported that 10.000 refugees had crossed the Araks river into Iran [160].

     At the time of the offensive, mountainous Kelbajar province was largely cut off from the rest of Azerbaijan. Armenia lie to the west, the Lachin corridor (captured by Karabakh Armenian forces in June 1992) to the south, Mardakert province (with its vital Terter-Kelbajar road in Karabakh Armenian hands) to the east, and to the north, the Murov mountains reaching heights of over 10.000 feet toward over the province. Because of prior Karabakh Armenian land conquests, the only outlet from Kelbajar to Azerbaijan proper was over the Murov mountains to the north through the Omar pass, a treacherous journey in winter.

     An estimated 60.000 individuals - equally divided among Kurds and Azeris - lived in Kelbajar province before the offensive [40]. In the space of a week 60.000 people were forced to flee their homes. Today all are displaced, and Kelbajar stands empty and looted.

     The swift and short nature of the Kelbajar offensive, the mountainous terrain with few good roads, over which it was fought, and the late winter timing of the attack left the civilian population extremely vulnerable; many were taken hostage or killed by indiscriminate fire, even though most expected a Karabakh Armenian move against Kelbajar, civilians had little or no advance warning of the actual attack and even less time to make their escape after the limited roads still available were closed by advancing Karabakh Armenian forces. The Azerbaijani army put up little resistance often melting away into the civilian population. Main Karabakh Armenian units fired on escaping civilians, sometimes mistaking them for retreating Azerbaijani forces.

By Thursday afternoon, April 1, a fleet of six ME-8 civilian helicopters, designed to carry a maximum load of thirty, managed to extract several thousand women and children by doubling and trebling their loads. The helicopters were forced to swoop through a narrow canyon to reach a tiny, shell-pocked landing pad and then fly over a 4.000 meter mountain range to return to their base in the Azerbaijani city of Yevlakh, about an hour away...even if most of the civilian population is now gone or on its way out the situation in Kelbajar is certainly desperate [57].