Eight Pieces of Empire

by Lawrence Scott Sheets

  His nom de guerre was Commander Avo, although at birth in distant California, his Armenian-American parents had named him Monte, with the family name Melkonian. He was later killed in action at the age of thirty-five in June 1993 outside the Azerbaijani ghost-town city of Agdam, and his funeral was attended by thousands, including the president of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian.

  But all that would happen later.

  Back when the Soviet Union was unraveling, it was natural that Melkonian would find his calling in the Karabakh cause. Within only a few months, he developed a reputation in Karabakh as an extremely disciplined commander. As a nondrinker, he was a rarity among his fighters and had ruffled more than a few feathers by insisting on absolute sobriety among them. When he did find them imbibing a bit of homemade moonshine, he was known to demonstratively pour the contents onto the ground, eliciting rage from his subordinates.

  He also raised many eyebrows among Armenian fighters for a far more serious reason: Those under his command were given strict orders not to harm noncombatants or even Azerbaijani military captives, despite the grisly habit of the locals—on both sides—of senseless, gruesome revenge killings of civilians and soldiers alike. This set of ethics earned him real enemies among his own men, according to a biography about Melkonian’s life written by his brother, Markar. He relates the circumstances about a massacre, in which several dozen captives—including some noncombatants—were tossed in a ditch, stabbed to death, and some burned alive after ethnic Armenian forces took the Azerbaijani-held town of Karadaghlu in 1992:

  By the time Monte came across the ditch on the outskirts of town it was a butcher’s scrap heap. Monte had given strict orders that no captives were to be harmed. The veins in his neck stood out like braided hemp, and he hollered until he was hoarse.… More than 50 Azeri captives had been butchered at Karadaghlu. But it was not the butchery that damaged Monte’s reputation among the Karabakh mountain people. On the contrary, vengeance ran deep in the mountains, and the loudest voices on both sides demanded blood for blood. What damaged Monte’s reputation, rather, was the fact that the butchery at Karadaghlu had taken place against his orders.… Karadaghlu only confirmed what … everyone else seemed to know: Avo, the new Headquarters Chief, was a weakling.

  But whatever his lesser-minded underlings thought about him, Commander Avo was a master tactician. He had spoken months before about the importance of taking Kelbajar, but the idea was regarded as unrealistic. For Monte, Kelbajar was not an end in itself, nor was Karabakh. It was the natural action that would lead to the recovery of what he considered control over “historic Armenian lands.” As Markar writes:

  But why advance into Kelbajar? No Armenians lived there. Monte claimed they “had to take Kelbajar” because Azeri gunners in the area had launched artillery barrages against Armenian villages. But to him, the operation was not purely—nor even primarily—based on security considerations. “This is a historical issue,” he told Baghryan: current demographics and political boundaries notwithstanding, Kelbajar was part of the Armenian homeland. “Of course this is historical Armenia!”

  Monte cited the presence of old Armenian monasteries in Kelbajar as justification for his “historic lands” argument.

  Monte Melkonian’s moment came during early April 1993 when the Azerbaijanis, having been deserted by “commanders” like Surat Huseinov, had collapsed all along the Karabakh front. It was then that he decided to launch a lightning strike from Karabakh into Kelbajar from the east—only to discover that he and his men had been beaten to the prize by another Armenian attacking force under the command of a French Armenian (“Shishko,” or “Fatty”) coming from the west, meaning Armenia itself. It was the tread tracks of Shishko’s armored vehicles that Alexis and I had seen near the border.

  For Melkonian and Shishko, Kelbajar and other soon-to-be “occupied territories” of Azerbaijan were not bargaining chips or even part of a temporary security zone, but part of a once-mighty, now-fragmented ancient Armenian empire that they were reconstructing. Not long after the conquest of Kelbajar, Melkonian pointed out to a British journalist that this was “the first time in a thousand years that Armenians had ‘recaptured’ land,” rather than losing it. The logic was clear.

  IN THE EARLY 1990s of Armenia, one of the most popular, and indeed few, souvenirs on sale was a map illustrating “Armenia, 2104 BC.”

  The cartographical fantasy was one of many indicative of how the aspirations of small, former “empires” can be fueled by the collapse of a giant one like the USSR.

  The map included all of present-day Armenia, Karabakh, much of present-day Turkey and Azerbaijan, and parts of Georgia—a land stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to the Caspian.

  To be fair, in Tbilisi I also saw maps of ancient and medieval Georgia that included lands long since lost to other countries (mainly Turkey and Russia), and in Azerbaijan I had seen maps of that nation that included much of northern Iran (“Southern Azerbaijan”) as well as chunks of today’s Iraq. But in Armenia, the “Greater Armenia” maps seemed to be everywhere, and believed. It was only a matter of time—and faith—until the stolen heritage—what some detractors have called the “Greater Armenia” project—would be restored and ancient glory revived. And Kelbajar was the first step in that direction.

  Indeed, three years later I found myself in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, which by then had been stitched to Armenia from top to bottom after the conquest of additional Azerbaijani lands and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis. There I met an ethnic Armenian fighter who himself hailed from Lebanon, had fought in the Karabakh war, married a local woman, and was now living in an old Soviet-style apartment building in the town.

  He was a gracious host, and jugs full of local wine were consumed as the fighter and his Armenian guests sang songs while he strummed a guitar.

  We began talking about Commander Avo—the late Monte Melkonian—and the official line that the “occupied territories” would be given back to Azerbaijan once Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence was recognized by Baku.

  “Oh, that is naive,” our host said with a warm smirk. “OK, perhaps a few chunks—but nothing strategic.”

  Then he pointed to what, in the dim candlelit apartment, looked to be a faded tintype on the wall.

  “That is what keeps us Armenians going,” he added with another smile, pouring more wine.

  It was an image of the indelible Armenian symbol, Mount Ararat.

  Surely, I interjected, Ararat was an understandably painful symbol, but no one realistically thought present-day Turkey would ever relinquish it.

  “Yes, perhaps you are correct,” he said calmly. “But it is like a beautiful woman you desire. Deep in your heart, you know perhaps that she is totally unobtainable. But you keep fighting for her nonetheless.”

  * I met Tigran Naghdalian many times over the ensuing years, and we eventually became friends. He went on to a stellar if short career, rising to the post of head of Armenia’s state TV network before he was killed in late 2002 by an assassin’s bullet—one in a string of unsolved political murders in the country.

  AZERBAIJAN: THE SHISH KEBAB WAR AND EASTERN DEMOCRACY

  I am sitting on an ancient Baku balcony—a spit of space barely big enough for one along a wide avenue, just down from the shores of the Caspian Sea. The scent of crude oil washing up on the bay from outdated, leaky Soviet oil rigs lingers in the air. Hanim, the henna-haired mother of my cameraman, Adil Bunyatov, serves me never-ending cups of steaming, slightly bitter Azerbaijani tea. (As she and others swear in these arid parts, this is a remarkably effective way to “calibrate” one’s body temperature to the heat and obtain “equilibrium.”) We need it. It’s over one hundred stifling degrees Fahrenheit.

  The street below me looks serene, old men in teahouses gathering to share the latest gossip, groups of teenagers kicking an old soccer ball around.

  Yet Azerbaijan is still at war. Now not only with the Armeni
ans. Azerbaijan is now at war with itself. “The country is falling apart,” says Adil, despairingly.

  The wool-merchant-cum-warlord Surat Huseinov, high on battle fumes from his act of treachery in pulling his troops off the front and practically gift-wrapping territory to the Armenians, is not satisfied. His legion of mutinous, motley “rebels” march toward the capital, meeting little resistance. They quickly force President Elchibey to quit—Huseinov’s original “goal.”

  Not enough for the semiliterate Huseinov, who now smells real blood and riches. Elchibey flees into internal exile. Elchibey “temporarily” brings in Azerbaijan’s former Communist-era strongman, the wily Heydar Aliyev, the onetime Soviet Politburo member. It’s predicted this will lead to some reconciliation with the “rebels.”

  Now it isn’t even clear what Huseinov wants, except some warped form of power. He obviously considers this more important than fighting the Armenians, who are (to no one’s surprise) taking advantage of the chaos in Baku by chopping off ever-greater chunks of Azerbaijan.

  We head for the front, which is wherever Surat’s column of mutinous tanks and APCs have parked for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or just broken down because of low-octane fuel. We flag down a taxi and head north, along the main road between Baku and the old Azerbaijani capital of Shemakhi, four hours north, to see what there is to see.

  Adil Bunyatov had been working as a photojournalist and a TV cameraman for several years, more often than not in the former USSR’s myriad conflict zones. This was pre–oil rush Azerbaijan, and working for foreign media outlets was one of the few ways to make a decent living (aside from government-related corruption). By now, he was frustrated with the “business” of news gathering, which was increasingly coming to mean documenting the descent of his homeland into chaos and comic-opera wars, like Surat Huseinov’s “campaign” to take the capital.

  ALTHOUGH THE MAINSTREAM international press was terming this a “civil war,” most of the action involved Huseinov’s rebels moving their armored vehicles a few kilometers closer to the capital, and then parking again while the government forces pulled back to the next bridge or hedgerow. There seemed to be no thought of taking territory not directly adjacent to the two main roads out of the capital. The “battles” were thus relegated to holding or giving up a chunk of asphalt and then going home for the night. Indeed, in the outdoor cafés of Baku, we sometimes saw the same “government” officers we had seen on the nearby front lines during the day, eating shish kebabs and speaking of the day’s brave deeds. Thus, the Civil War or Internal Conflict or Surat Huseinov Putsch or Elchibey Ouster became known for what it really was, namely, the “Shish Kebab War.”

  Adil waxed cynical as we puttered along the road. If I expected war-bravado talk from him, I was to be disappointed. With the Soviet downfall, “democracy” was an abstract concept, but was embraced as a promise that the USSR only needed to inject a bit of it to find the promised land of justice and easy consumerism. In Azerbaijan, this feeling was even more palpable, given the hopes the country’s untapped oil reserves represented.

  Adil Bunyatov, tweaking his thick black mustache, ceased talking about the war altogether and, completely out of the blue, launched into a missive about doing something “real” instead of covering ceaseless, crazy conflicts.

  “I want to open a ketchup factory,” he said, talking mostly to himself, our car rattling away though the desert.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I want to open a ketchup factory. The problem is, I can’t.”

  The collapse of the Soviet economy and the poor quality of merchandise in the USSR meant that nearly all finished consumer goods in Azerbaijan were imported. In the case of ketchup, this was almost economically insane. The country was a veritable hothouse and tomatoes cheap, tasty, and in great abundance. Salt, vinegar, and bottles were readily available. The problem with the dream project, Adil noted with irritation, was that the country was flooded with ketchup made in Turkey. The reason for this was that the Turkish ketchup, along with everything from German UHT (ultra-high-temperature) milk to cheap Chinese candy bars, was imported, and that meant that the Department of Customs folks were working in consort with the Ministry of Economic Development folks to make sure that no ketchup (or milk or chocolate bars) would be produced in Azerbaijan and were dividing the fat tariffs slapped on the imports between them. By Adil’s calculations, a bottle of ketchup from Turkey cost upward of ten times what he figured he could sell Azerbaijani ketchup for and still make a profit. Perhaps such savings didn’t matter much to the expense-account oil men starting to seep into Baku, but it drove Adil up the wall. The ketchup talk was part of Adil’s broader monologue on “Eastern Democracy.”

  Democracy is what Azerbaijanis were promised. Instead, their country was falling apart, losing territory to the Armenians, getting caught up in comic-opera wars like the one we were covering, corruption, warlords, crime. Therefore, “democracy” was increasingly associated with simple anarchy.

  Adil lamented all of this. He did not believe Communism was a better model for Azerbaijan, and yet neither did he believe that the country was ready for “real” democracy. Ideally, Azerbaijan would have an “Eastern Democracy”—a kind of temporary, benevolent autocracy, headed by a type of “father figure”—similar to those running the new sultan-type states emerging in Central Asia. Most of their leaders were busy building sultanate-type regimes, often based around elaborate if still whimsical cults of personality. As the 1990s progressed, the whimsical part fell off and an overt, heavy sense of dictatorship and repression took over in almost all of them.

  Adil had just returned from Turkmenistan, across the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan. “There is something I would call Eastern Democracy,” said Adil. He gave an example, noting that the quirky leader of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov (who had renamed himself Turkmenbashi, or “Head of All Turkmen”), provided his four million subjects with free natural gas, salt, and other basics. (These were the early “soft” years of Turkmenbashi’s post-Soviet reign; however, later he would evolve into one of the most erratic, repressive leaders in the world.)

  “It is a kind of social contract,” Adil added. He obviously found the sense of order familiar and comforting in a way, compared with the constant battlefield losses to the Armenians and the ongoing, ludicrous “civil war” we were observing in the steppe and desert north of Baku.

  “In Eastern Democracy, the strong man takes care of the needs of the people. There is law and order,” argued Adil. “It is a transitional way to democracy, because we are in a transitional situation. Our people are used to a patriarchic system, to having a ‘big man,’ and that’s what they want now.”

  While Adil’s ketchup monologue continued, we saw the first APCs parked along the road to Shemakhi and a few dozen soldiers. We stopped the car in a dusty clearing at the side of the road and asked which side of the war they were on. These were government soldiers, it turned out. “Where’s the front line? Where are Surat’s people?” asked Adil.

  “Right up there.” One of the government guys pointed to a nearby hill. There were no more than a hundred yards separating the two sides. No trenches. No real fortifications. Nothing but a hundred yards of air.

  There was also a conspicuous lack of any noticeable tension between the sides, at least in this place. Aside from one government type taking a quick peek though some binoculars at the “rebels,” the sides didn’t seem to be paying much attention to each other.

  Having nothing much else to do, the government group decided to show its hospitality by giving us a ride on their APC through the rocky, desertlike terrain so that we could get a look at the lay of the land. We left the roadway and started down an incline. Soon we were cruising down a dusty trail. I sat atop the APC while Adil filmed through a periscope from inside.

  We drove for about three miles before we approached what looked like some sort of old collective farm building. Nearby there was a square, cement-type block structure. It w
as a natural well, used for outdoor bathing. The cement slabs blocked our view, but under the fountain of water pouring from a spigot bobbed a woman’s head—she was taking a shower.

  Our government soldier friends became instantly distracted and began whistling and hollering. Evidently the driver of the APC was not immune to the charms of the lady’s head of hair, for he had apparently taken his eyes off the terrain in front of him.

  There was a gentle jolt, a wiggle of the wheels, and then the right side of the APC gradually began to elevate in a way I knew it should not. As the vehicle started to lurch, I scrambled to get on the high side, grabbing toward one of the wheels now spinning in the air. Then I felt myself falling off, losing consciousness as I hit the ground. When I came to, I could see the APC teetering on its side above me, rocking slowly toward me. The armored vehicle was about to roll over onto my legs.

  At the last second, I felt two hands pulling me by the arms along the rocky ground just as the multi-ton hulk of military metal slowly somersaulted over exactly where I had been lying, its turret digging into the sand. Now on my feet, I embraced the soldier who had saved my life—or at least my legs.

  But the soldiers were less worried about me (or doing battle with the rebel foe) than the reaction of their commanding officer should they return to “base” without their APC.