The Killing Zone

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On Saturday evening a grim-faced President Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on nationwide TV to defend the crackdown. Noting that two years of negotiations to resolve the conflict between the Azerbaijanis and Armenians had failed, he said flatly, "This had to stop." Yet many Soviets wondered why Gorbachev let the ethnic violence spin out of control last week before sending in troops. At the same time, there was an uneasy feeling that the country's army might find itself bogged down in another Afghanistan, within its own borders, fighting a people just as ferociously dedicated to defeating Moscow. Those fears were illustrated last week when the Kremlin called up army reservists; after a public outcry, the term of service was shortened.

The matchstick that ignited the powder was struck the previous Saturday when a rally, staged in Baku by Azerbaijanis demanding independence from the Soviet Union, gave way to anti-Armenian rioting. Marauding bands of Azerbaijanis armed with guns and makeshift weapons ransacked Armenian homes, beating and sometimes killing the residents. Within days, vigilante groups from both sides were organized and dispatched to assist their ethnic brethren in the contested autonomous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and along the border with Armenia.

Initially Moscow declared a state of emergency in parts of Azerbaijan, banning strike actions, rallies and demonstrations; inexplicably the restrictions did not extend to Baku. Then the Kremlin dispatched 11,000 troops from the army, the navy, the KGB and the Interior Ministry to assist the nearly 6,000 troops already in the region.

Through the week, as Azerbaijanis put up ferocious resistance, blockading roads and railways and sabotaging waterlines, the number of troops and police cadets swelled to 29,000. At first, government forces were told to exercise "maximum restraint." But when Azerbaijani militants turned on the soldiers, troops were instructed to fire in self-defense and to protect army weapons caches. Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov said the conflict was "almost civil war."

Some Azerbaijanis and Armenians snatched whatever they could find to mount their attacks: pitchforks, metal bars, hunting weapons. However, the arsenal quickly expanded to include such armaments as surface-to-surface missiles and rocket launchers after extremists in both republics stormed military depots and police stations to pillage arms. Many of the combatants are veterans of the war in Afghanistan and know how to use sophisticated weaponry. "I fought in Afghanistan," said an army helicopter pilot. "I know what combat experience is, and it looks like those guys have it."

The official press reported that in one incident alone in Armenia's Artashat region, some 3,000 people raided police headquarters and seized 106 automatic weapons, 30 carbines and more than 3,200 cartridges. In the Azerbaijani city of Kirovabad, extremists stormed the local agricultural institute, capturing 80 automatic guns, two machine guns and 27 rifles with bayonets.