Word: azerbaijani
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...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 would always defend the Azerbaijanis. We tried to see that boys...
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...
After almost 70 years as a republic of the U.S.S.R., Azerbaijan seemed to peel off its Soviet trappings almost overnight, turning into a foreign country under occupation by invaders. Enraged Azerbaijanis called for guerrilla warfare and swore to "fight to the last drop of blood" to drive the Soviets out. Almost a third of the republic's 380,000 Communist Party members burned their membership cards. Local government offices and police units ignored Moscow and looked to the ten-month-old Azerbaijani Popular Front for leadership. "If Gorbachev wants a second Afghanistan," shouted Ekhtibar Mamedov, the Front's representative...
...Hundreds of Azerbaijani Muslims who had illegally entered into Iran returned home, many of them bearing weapons. Ayatullah Abdul Karim Moussavi Ardebili, a former Iranian Chief Justice, said in Tehran that Communist states are "anti-God" and that Soviet Azerbaijan is now a "great market for the introduction of Islam." Though Iranian officials played down the crisis, perhaps fearing that Iran's Azerbaijani minority might take a lesson from events across the border, Ardebili's speech raised the possibility that Gorbachev should be less worried about Azerbaijan's becoming another Afghanistan than about its turning into another Iran...