The crusaders of Shushi – On the evening of May 7, 1992, the Armenian units were moving towards Shushi

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The crusaders of Shushi

May 7, 2020 – Tatul Hakobyan:

This chapter is from Tatul Hakobyan‘s book – GREEN AND BLACK; KARABAKH DIARY

On the evening of May 7, 1992, the Armenian units were moving towards Shushi. Journalist and director Tigran Khzmalyan recalled one episode filmed. “I still get goose bumps. Since the uniforms of the Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers were the same, in order to be identifiable the Armenians marked the back of their uniforms with bandages or whatever was available with lines in the shape of a cross, as a cross is the simplest geometric figure. When the command came and they all stood up, can you picture it: 400 people standing at dusk with crosses drawn on their backs? Those men were going to die. That was a crusade, and the most amazing thing was that it had not been planned deliberately.”

The commanders of NK began developing the Shushi operation immediately after Khojalu. On April 28 the main directions of attack had been decided. The attack was supposed to begin on May 4. However, because of unexpected snow, it was postponed for a few days. On May 7 the NK forces attacked from all four directions at once. The operation was directed by Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan, the Commander of NK’s Self-Defense Forces.

The military post was located near the village of Shosh. It was from Shosh that the attack towards the east began. It was headed by Arkady Karapetyan, the First Commander of NK’s Self-Defense Forces. Valery Chitchyan was the Commander of the northern: Stepanakert-Shushi direction; Serian Ohanyan, the Commander of the northern-western (Janhasan-Kyosalar) direction. Yuri Hovhanissian headed the military operations of the “26” depot battalion base (located near the Krkzhan village close to Stepanakert). Samvel Babayan was the Commander of the southern or Lachin direction.

Babayan insists, “Those who participated in the action, took the fire upon themselves; end of story. In the afternoon of May 8 the Azerbaijanis fled the city and in the morning of May 9 not a single Azerbaijani remained. There was no resistance in the city; there were no battles. The Armenian forces did not see any Azerbaijani soldiers in Shushi. Only those Azerbaijanis hiding in basements, who had no idea what was happening, were taken hostage in Shushi. No Armenian soldier went a single meter further than the tank which you can see when visiting Shushi.”

Each year on May 9 Armenians celebrate the liberation of Shushi. The events begin at the memorial complex in Stepanakert and continue after a short stop in front of the tank-memorial placed on a pedestal adjacent to one of the bends on the road taking to the fortress-city. In 2000, British author Thomas de Waal participated in the celebration.

The relatives of the deceased heroes stood in front of the memorial. Of the three men in tank 442, only Gagik, the commander, had survived. At the rear stood Stella, the widow of Ashot, the driver, and Hovanes, his ten-year-old son. Stella looked pale, forlorn and still absurdly young. The grandmother of Shahen, the gun operator, was wearing a black head scarf and holding a handkerchief in her clenched hand. She began to keen with grief for her lost grandson, wailing and beating the back of the tank with her fists.

Usually the Shushi Liberation Day festivities end with a service conducted at Ghazanchetsots Church, built in 1887. On the morning of May 9, 1992, Armenians entered the city and the footage filmed shows how the soldiers, with faces radiating happiness, removed the Grad missiles from the church, machine guns held up in the air, dancing the round dance.

One of the NK war chroniclers, Samvel Shahmuradyan wrote on May 11 in his diary, “The overall condition of the city if good, but the number of blackened ruins is not small and the smoke from large fires here and there has filled the air. Mud, smoke, the noise of trucks, looting, looting. They carry and carry; with vehicles, carts, on their shoulders, in their hands and even with their donkeys and horses. They carry whatever they find: clothes, furniture, rugs, a television, a fridge, food, lamps, dishes and tubs; a fully loaded vehicle just took a piano. The freedom fighters are proud and happy. They have gathered in and around the church – songs, dances and rifle shots. They are making a sacrifice in the yard of the church: they slaughtered a sheep and with its blood, started drawing crosses on each other’s foreheads. The freedom fighters have won, and the rest are busy looting.”

Tigran Khzmalyan vividly remembers, “Our boys set Shushi on fire. There was fear: they did not believe that it would remain ours and the villagers believed that an Azerbaijani would not live in a burnt house. In other words, they were burning to keep the Azerbaiajnis away. Do you understand? I remember a lieutenant who was running and shouting, ‘You fools. What are you doing? This belongs to you. You are going to come and live here’’’.

Ter-Tadevosyan recounts that after surrounding Shushi it was truly important to start panic amongst those still in the city, so that the Azerbaijanis would leave without any battles. For this reason, firstly the Azerbaiajani settlements near Shushi and Stepanakert had been destroyed, and the fortress city was surrounded, “Before reaching Shushi there was Krkzhan, Malibeylu and Khojalu. In other words, there was a sequence according to which the towns were being liberated.”

Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev moved to NK in the 90’s for the sacred war; jihad. His mojaheds were the last to leave Shushi. In July 2000, in the mountains of Chechnya, Basaev assured an Azerbaijani journalist that Shushi had become surrounded only because there was no order and leadership in the Azerbaijani army.

“There were four mujahidin and there were 11 Azerbaijanis along with them. Almost everyone left, but 15 people held out in defence on their own for one and half days- 15 men. And a 2.800-strong garrison left everything and ran away. That’s it. At that time, if someone escaped the battlefield with armoured hardware, he was a hero because many left the hardware as well. Three of my mujahidin who defended Shushi are still alive. Shushi was just abandoned. About 700 Armenians launched an offensive and it was just a veneer. With such a strong garrison and so many weapons, especially as Shushi itself is in a strategically significant position, one hundred men can hold it for a year easily. There was no organization. Today we can take one specific general or minister, we can just take them and say you betrayed it, you took it, you sold it. It is all talk. There was no single management. No-one was responsible for anything.”

Later Baku circulated a version according to which the Armenian forces did not capture Shushi, but they received it without fighting as a result of the betrayal of the military Command of Azerbaijan and the political authority. The trial of Rahim Ghaziyev, the former defense minister took place within the frameworks of this version. Of course, claims that there were no battles in Shushi and the footage was not filmed in Shushi, but at the outskirts of the, are close to the truth.

During the military operation, 58 people were killed from the Karabakhi side: none of them in Shushi. The Armenians allowed their opponents to leave through the Shushi-Lachin road. Ghaziev, who was blamed for traitorously handing over Shushi, confirmed during the trial that on May 1992, 2500-3000 solders, three T-72 type tanks, one T-55 type tank, 12 armored vehicle, a BM-21 type Grad system with 6000 bombs, three cannons. 4 unit Alazan systems, 30 unit Igla and Strela-2, a zenith-missile complex, 20 unit 82mm mortars, 50 unit hand mortars and more than 5 million military weapons had been located in Shushi and its surrounding.

“Shushi was seized using military tactics and not by brute force. We tried to surround the enemy and when the circle was about to close, the Azerbaijani army and civilians became frightened and panicked. This was the main reason why the enemy left Shushi. The same tactic was also used during the rest of our military operations. We tried to avoid face to face war and tried to use tactical steps instead: we attacked from the direction from which the enemy was not expecting us and tried to make the enemy fear that unless he leave his positions as soon as possible, he will be completely surrounded. As a result we had considerably fewer losses, even though usually the number of deaths on the attacking, freedom fighting side is the greater”, says Babayan.

The military machinery was removed from Shushi in the early hours of May 8. Battalion commander Tarlan Zulfougarov admitted that the military machinery left the city on May 8.On the morning of that same day Elbrus Orujev, whose brigade was responsible for the defense of the city sends two tanks and one armored vehicle in the direction of Zarslu; the machinery was destroyed and its personnel killed, which raised a new wave of alarmed flight from Shushi. In the evening of the same day Orujev, together with two Kamazes loaded with soldiers approached the block-posts and ordered the evacuation of the city. He justifies his order by saying that the Armenians had already entered Shushi and positioned themselves near the city prison. From the statements of a dozen solders it has become clear that some of those have refused to leave the posts.

“I was the last to leave the city together with Orujev and 8 solders. Orujev went round the city and after ascertaining that everybody had gone, ordered me to leave immediately”, admitted Shuqyur Rasulov, an employee at Shushi’s police department.

Rather than considering Shushi’s liberation a victory, Ter-Tedevosyan primarily considers it a success, which had its first faces, “Ashot Ghulyan, Valerie Chitchyan, Yuri Hovhannisyan and Vladimir Balayan. Let me also point out someone else’s name who is still alive and should have received the highest award: Valery Balayan, who was the chairman of the NK’s Parliamentary Committee on defense issues, but also headed the military operations. For example, he liberated Malibeylu. During the liberation of Shushi he played in important role in Babayan’s direction. Zhirayr Sefillyan was with him. We know that Zhirayr is a hero; later, he was put on trial; but no one knows Balayan. We must get to know all of them; only then will we know the truth. Life is brutal; I will never forget a young man called Arsen from Davitashen. He was silent and peaceful. Once we had nothing to eat and he had taken bread and sugar to the hostages: women and children. A man like that can do heroic deeds.”

A banquet in Isfahan

On May 8, the banquet organized for the Armenian President was taking place in Isfahan, in the hotel constructed during the reign of Shah Abas.

Vahan Papazyan, Ter-Petrosyan’s adviser recalls, “Our delegation left for Isfahan. During a banquet, Foreign Minister Ali Abkar Velayeti told me that the Iranian side received a report that the Armenian forces were entering Shushi; it was May 8, 1992. I said that I was unaware of that and could not tell him anything certain. He asked me to call Yerevan. I could not avoid doing that and I spoke with Shahen Karamanukyan [the president’s chief of staff] over the phone. Karamanukyan told me that everything was all right and that there was nothing to worry about. Then I approached Ter-Petrossian and told him the situation. The president took the news very calmly; he had known that the events might coincide. We told the Iranians that the news had taken us by surprise as well and we would find out the details after returning to Yerevan. Seeing off the Armenian delegation was a chilly procedure. This was natural, since the Iranian side had found itself in rather odd situation. It might even be considered a small diplomatic scandal.”

On May 6, the delegation headed by the president of Armenia had left for Tehran. The next day, on Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s mediation, Levon Ter-Petrossian and Yaghub Mamedov, the acting president of Azerbaijan had signed a joint memorandum comprised of 8 points on the resolution of the NK conflict. De facto, from the moment of the signing, the Iranian effort to establish ceasefire was dashed; the Armenians were moving towards Shushi.

Gerard Libaridyan thinks that the occupation of Shushi was the immediate reason for the failure of Iran’s mediation, but a deeper cause was that the warring sides were not ready for negotiations and any kind of mediation would have failed, as events proved later. He finds it difficult to say if Russia and the OSCE were worried about Tehran’s possible success as a mediator, “I do not remember any direct and open opposition to the Iranian mediation. But the diplomatic effort of Russia, Turkey, and US indicated they were unhappy with it, each for their own reasons. Certainly none listed wanted to see Iranian influence increased in the region.”

On May 5, Mario Raffaelli arrived in Yerevan with a 13 member delegation and met with Ter-Petrossian. Manvel Sargsyan, the NK representative in Armenia recalls that the representatives of the Minsk conference expressed their desire to go to Shushi from Yerevan. “I told them that it was dangerous there. On May 7 they were supposed to cross the Aghdam section and move towards Shushi. We hindered them; they turned back from Aghdam and once again returned to Yerevan through Azerbaijan. On the day of the liberation of Shushi I spoke on Armenian TV and said that according to the decision of the Supreme Council of NK, in order to be able to defend Stepanakert, the NK army had taken the city. The issue of Shushi became one of the major arguments between Armenia and Iran. Tehran thinks that it was a Western plot but that is not the truth. We were forced to begin the operation in Shushi on May 7.”

Tehran: Mehrabad airport

On May 8, Iranian President Rafsanjani was waving goodbye to Ter-Petrosyan and Mamedov. The latter learned the news of Shushi’s occupation immediately before leaving for Baku. “Yes, I received the news at the airport. I immediately called Rafsanjani. His mood changed instantly and he promised to talk to Ter-Petrosyan right away in order to clarify the circumstances. After some time, when I once again contacted Rafsanjani, he told me that Ter-Petrosyan was unaware of what was going on and intended to find out what had happened after his return to Yerevan.”

Ara Sahakyan, the vice-speaker of Armenia’s Parliament was a member of the delegation visiting Tehran. When I asked him, “Do you remember Ter-Petrossian’s reaction when he heard the news about Shushi?” Sahakyan said, “For me Rafsanjani’s and Mamedov’s reactions were more important than that of Ter-Petrosyan. Papazyan informed Ter-Petrosyan. He received the news calmly. Mamedov received the apocalypse; they literally had to support him under his armpits so that he could walk towards the airplane. Mamedov was the first to depart. It was also a severe blow for Rafsanjani. He understood that the peacemaking initiative had failed.”

President Ter-Petrosyan’s visit to Tehran, which coincided with Shushi’s operation, later gave some opportunity for assertions that Armenia’s leader was unaware of what was really happening in NK. From an external propaganda point of view those assertions stemmed from Armenia’s national and state interests. From an inter-Armenian point of view Ter-Petrosyan and his supporters, as well as the high ranking military men who participated in the military actions, consider such affirmations to be a dishonest attitude and falsification of history.

When I tried to check how aware the Armenian authorities had been of the operation to liberate Shushi, Georgy Petrosyan, acting chairman of the NK’s Supreme Council, answered, “I did not officially inform Ter-Petrosyan about our plans to liberate Shushi. However, the President of Armenia was receiving information from other sources. The liberation of Shushi and the negotiations in Tehran simply happened to coincided.”

Samvel Babayan says that Ter-Petrosyan was aware of the operation to liberate Shushi. “It was supposed to start in April, but there were issues; for example, the lack of arms and munitions. The issue would not be solved by Shushi alone; the Aghdam and Martakert directions also had to be controlled. For this reason we decided to start the operation only after having enough armaments and ammunition. A few investigative corrections also had to be made. It was necessary to position ourselves on the peak of Mount Kirs and, even though that year it snowed heavily and there were some complications, we managed to position ourselves and encircle it. These were the main obstacles which had postponed the operation and by chance the start of the operations coincided with Ter-Petrosyan’s visit to Tehran.”

Vahan Shirkhanyan, Head of the State Special Programs Department insists that Ter-Petrosyan was literally the President of a country at war. He explains the Shushi operation somewhat differently, “The task was to win the war and that’s what all of us, Vazgen Sargsyan first of all, believed in and strove to do; and winning the war without liberating Shushi was impossible. The best Armenian officers took part in planning and carrying out the operation. It is also true that the Army of NK liberated Shushi. Artsakh could not have been liberated if Shushi had not been liberated. Artsakh could not have been liberated if Lachin had not been liberated.”

Ara Sahakyan knows more, “There is a document which has a signature, which will resolve all the artificially created problems in this issue. I can open one bracket in the issue of liberating Shushi: the Security Council of Armenia formulated the task of liberating Shushi and the opening the Lachin corridor to connect Armenia and NK by land as a political order and gave it to the military. The Soviet-trained Armenian commanders said that this number of soldiers, bombs and machinery is necessary; we will have these losses, etc. According to those calculations we could not have solved the issue with the forces we had at that time. And so, the issue was handed not to the academic military, but the units, the self-defense forces of NK, and Vazgen Sargsyan and the detachments under his command; and they accomplished it with minimal loses.”

During the days of the liberation of Shushi, the NK had neither munitions nor provisions and 200 reserves were waiting for the weapons of their fallen friends so that they would go to war, says Ter-Tadevosyan. “Stepanakert no longer existed; the Grad was bombing each square meter. The city was dying and it made no difference to them is they died today or tomorrow. The liberation of Shushi was a life or death issue for the people of NK. In other words, my subordinates, my commanders, ‘forced’ me to take such a decision. I obeyed Serge Sargsyan’s Defense committee. I asked him, ‘are we going for the capture?’ and he said ‘we are going for the capture.’”

Ter-Tadevosyan stresses that they were not ready to liberate Shushi. “Shushi was not a city; our battlefield was 40km. The enemy had 2500 people and they were strong and well prepared. We had 3500. To tell you the truth they told me from Armenia, they wrote – and I still have that document – that we are not ready and that we should have three times more: the enemy had 2500, we had to have 7500. I agreed. That was the truth, but there was something ulterior to that. I understood that they did not want to occupy Shushi, because the Dashnaktsutyun was leading NK.”

Vahan Papazyan notes that even 15 years after the events, all the secrets cannot be disclosed. “I was aware of the Shushi liberation operation, which had been planned long before. I was not aware of the timing. I was in charge of organizing Ter-Petrosyan’s visit to Tehran and I went to Iran a week before the trilateral [Armenia-Azerbaijan-Iran] meeting. Iran was very serious about its mediatory mission. They believed they could gain prestige through such mediation. And it could have been true if they had succeeded. During the visit a draft agreement on a cease-fire was being worked out when the Shushi events unfolded. Of course, we drove the Iranians into an uneasy situation. It looked like, roughly speaking, the Armenians and the Iranians had conspired against the Azerbaijanis.To a certain degree Armenian-Iranian relations had suffered a setback. But two or three months later a letter from Ter-Petrossian to Rafsanjani was drafted and I went to Tehran with a special mission. I was received by vice-president Hassan Habibi and delivered the president’s letter and thus the diplomatic chill was overcome.”

In the evening of May 8 Ter-Petrosyan had already returned from Tehran. The next day he receives Mario Raffaelli and talks to President Bush and Rafsanjani on the phone and a few days later with Mitterrand, the President of France. On May 9, the President of Armenia sends a letter to the UN Security Council, with a request that an extraordinary session be called. Ter-Petrosyan urges the UN to send peacekeeping forces to NK and “undertake other means to force Azerbaijan to review its economic blockade, and establish peace and security”.

Turkey reacted harshly to the events in Shushi. During an extraordinary meeting of the government, Prime Minister Suleiman Demirel announced that what had happened in Shushi “is the successive terrorism of Armenians against Azerbaijanis.” Demirel qualified Shushi’s occupation as a “real catastrophe” and stressed that Turkey could no longer remain in the role of an outside observer when “the attempt to solve the NK conflict through force is evident”. In order to counter-attack the Armenian forces, former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit speaks in favor of Turkish forces entering Nakhijevan.

Image – Rafsanjani and Ter-Petrosyan, Tehran, 1992

Paperback: 416 pages,
Language: English,
2010, Antelias,
ISBN 978-995301816-4.