Word: karabakh
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Since that February morning when a Soviet-made GRAD missile destroyed part of her home, Babayan, 53, and her family have lived in the cellar, sleeping on a row of cots alongside neighbors. They are hardly alone. Babayan lives in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave fully within the borders of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Populated almost entirely by Armenians, Karabakh has seen more than 1,500 people die since 1988, when Armenians and Azeris, each side claiming the enclave as its own, began their skirmishing with hunting rifles. They have now graduated to modern...
...like to think that, unlike the Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank, the Kurds in the Middle East, the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and the warring street gangs in American inner cities, we who live in the protective Harvard environment have the luxury of being especially charitable to the views and the individual dignity of members of our shared community who differ with...
While the details are disputed, this much is plain: something grim and unconscionable happened in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly two weeks ago. So far, some 200 dead Azerbaijanis, many of them mutilated, have been transported out of the town tucked inside the Armenian-dominated enclave of Nagorno- Karabakh for burial in neighboring Azerbaijan. The total number of dead -- the Azerbaijanis claim 1,324 civilians were slaughtered, most of them women and children -- is unknown. But the facile explanation offered by the attacking Armenians, who insist that no innocents were deliberately killed, is hardly convincing...
...assault represents an alarming escalation in the hostilities that are rapidly pushing Christian Armenia and Muslim Azerbaijan toward all-out war. Over the past four years the two republics have pressed their territorial claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, a 1,700-sq.-mi. piece of turf located within Azerbaijan's boundaries but home mainly to Armenians. Until the breakup of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan held the upper hand, owing to military support from units of the now disintegrating Seventh Army. The embattled Armenians enjoyed sympathy from many of Moscow's liberals and democrats, who disliked the collusion between Azerbaijan and Kremlin...
Although Nagorno-Karabakh is small, the implications of the violence are large. Officials from other republics regard the outcome as a test for the future prospects of the patchwork Commonwealth of Independent States. Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan, warns that the clash may "create a precedent for uncontrolled development of conflicts within the C.I.S." Late last week Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutalibov resigned under criticism for mishandling the crisis. Meanwhile, Russian President Boris Yeltsin called upon the two republics to "show political will and wisdom and start a dialogue." But with the guns sounding so loudly, it is hard to imagine...