Word: armenia
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...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 -- any of the Muslim peoples. They were viewed with mistrust by Armenians, who feared that these soldiers...
...Baku, resulting in an official death count of 32, most of them Armenians. Over the next two years, more than 220,000 Armenians fled Azerbaijan. Those who remained behind in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh have lived under a virtual state of siege, relying on supplies airlifted from Armenia. Last month the Supreme Soviet voted to return administrative control over the region to the Azerbaijanis. Enraged, the Armenian parliament voted two weeks ago to include Nagorno-Karabakh in its next five-year economic plan, a move that may have prompted Azerbaijanis to seize government buildings in the Caspian...
...most of the 220,000 Armenians living in Baku fled after the 1988 pogrom in Sumgait, up to 20,000 Armenians still remained. But even as their numbers shrank, Azerbaijani refugees flooded the city. Most of them were unemployed farmers and goatherds who claimed they had been chased from Armenia. These 130,000 new Azerbaijani settlers transformed the once cosmopolitan capital into a city ringed with slums and squatter districts. Their simmering rage against the Armenians triggered the riots that led to last week's battles...
Moscow gave the impression that it had been caught unawares, but it might be more accurate to say that officials turned a blind eye. Last August, for instance, the Central Committee responded to peaceful protests in the Baltics with stern warnings. But the simultaneous railroad blockade of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijanis met with official silence. Armenian activists in Moscow claim that in the weeks leading up to the crisis, they bombarded Gorbachev, the KGB and the Interior Ministry with telegrams and letters warning of an imminent...
...Caucasus the roots of the violence reach back centuries, to the time when the Ottoman Empire conquered the area. In 1920 Armenia, after a brief period of independence following the Bolshevik Revolution, sought protection from its Muslim neighbors and chose to become a Soviet republic...