TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020590/0205006.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 123 lines

                £                                                              WORLD, Page 43

SOVIET UNION

Eyewitness to Hatred


Fresh from the heart of the conflict, a Soviet official tells
how both sides try to exterminate each other

BY JOHN KOHAN/MOSCOW


    Ask Major General Sergei Kupreyev his position within the
Interior Ministry and he explains, with a smile, that he is
actually deputy chief of the Higher Academy of Fire Fighters.
The affiliation is appropriate: for the past year, he has been
putting out symbolic fires in Nagorno-Karabakh, the mostly
Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan and the scene of some of the
region's worst bloodletting. A year ago, the Kremlin dispatched
Kupreyev and four other outsiders to assume administrative
control of Nagorno-Karabakh. In November the Supreme Soviet
returned command of the enclave to the Azerbaijanis. Two weeks
ago, Kupreyev, 52, came home.

    Kupreyev was struck by how petty some of the conflicts were.
"Once," he says, "the Azerbaijanis were offended that their
republic's flag had been taken down by the locals from a
building in Stepanakert [the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh]. Put
up the flag again, they said, have the Armenians offer a public
apology, and we will end our blockade and let supplies through.
Then Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh refused to receive food from
Azerbaijan. If it was Azerbaijani margarine, they wouldn't take
it. They wouldn't accept eggs from Baku. Our chairman finally
told them it wasn't the Azerbaijanis who laid eggs, it was
hens."

    His task was not helped by the fact that the local
authorities have been taking sides, supplying both Azerbaijanis
and Armenians with weapons like pistols and Kalashnikov assault
rifles. "The police say the weapons were stolen from them, but
actually they handed the guns over," says Kupreyev. "There are
more than enough supplies from Iran too. There have been
reports that as many as 40,000 people crossed into Iran in a
mass exodus [on New Year's Eve]. The information is
unconfirmed, but there certainly must be some truth in the
reports that many people left [towns all along the border]
empty-handed and returned from Iran with weapons. The rebels
also got arms by attacking poorly guarded army depots, which
have the most modern weaponry. As for rockets, this is the
Caucasus, and they have hailshooters to protect their
vineyards. Those missiles are not all that dangerous, since
they are armed only with chemical agents for cloud dispersal,
but they can destroy a house with a direct hit."

    Kupreyev even had to be careful about the ethnic background
of the soldiers under his jurisdiction. "A group of mothers
came to me demanding either that their children not be called
up or that they serve in their own territories," he recalls.
"But can you imagine what would happen if there were two
separate army units, one from Armenia and one from Azerbaijan?
Actually there are few Armenians and Azerbaijanis among the
troops there. In Nagorno-Karabakh it wasn't just a question of
not using Azerbaijani soldiers, but Uzbeks, Tadahiks, Chechens

by Armenians, who feared that these soldiers would always
defend the Azerbaijanis. We tried to see that boys of Slavic
extraction, from Russia, the Ukraine or Belorussia, served in
Nagorno-Karabakh. Many former soldiers have taken sides, and
some of them have served in Afghanistan. Not only enlisted men
but also officers who once held the rank of lieutenant colonel
are now fighting for the Armenians and Azerbaijanis. These
veterans are as experienced as our soldiers."

    Kupreyev discovered that much of the trouble in the region
was instigated by black-marketeers, but he was frustrated by
the difficulty of obtaining enough evidence to arrest them.
"There are people who have everything to gain by keeping the
waters troubled as long as possible," he says. "It is easy to
carry on theft when a war is on and the police are practically
out of action. We noticed just who was leading popular-front
movements in the regions surroundNagorno-Karabakh: the director
of a lucrative car-servicing center, the head of a local food
emporium. They profit by the disorders to carry on their
business. If we can't jail them, let's at least intern them in
a sanatorium on the Volga River. We have been cutting off the
tail without getting at the source."

    Though Kupreyev is careful not to blame Moscow for the
continuing tensions, he suggests that some of the bloodshed
might have been averted. "Had we had more experience in dealing
with ethnic unrest, decisions could have been made months ago,"
he says. "For example, if Moscow had decided early on to
elevate the status of Nagorno-Karabakh from an autonomous
region to an autonomous republic, as the Armenians had asked,
it might have cooled tensions. It would not have pleased the
Azerbaijanis, but they might have been persuaded. Now there is
no point in even talking about it."

    Kupreyev also feels that censorship should have been imposed
in the region. "It's not democratic, but the local media are
to blame for inciting people," he contends. "The Azerbaijani
TV station in Shusha [a town in Nagorno-Karabakh] broadcast
interviews with Azerbaijani refugees. I heard one commentator
say, `Don't worry, the time will soon come when we'll give you
a better house in Stepanakert than you used to have.' We said
let's close the station. Soviet television gains nothing from
it, and friendship between peoples will gain. But it didn't
happen.

    "When we left, people wept and asked us to stay," Kupreyev
says. "I wiped away a few tears myself. After all, I became
close to these people, even though the Armenians would accuse
us of being pro- Azerbaijani and the Azerbaijanis accused us of
favoring Armenia. Someone who has not visited Nagorno-Karabakh
cannot understand the situation. You mentioned Northern
Ireland? The situation has been going on there for more than
20 years now. God forbid it will be the same way here."