Who benefits from the blockade of Armenia? STATEMENTS AND REPORTS in the Soviet press about the situation in the Caucasus over the last month and a half have been very dramatic. For instance, the chair of the special committee set up to run Nagorno-Karabakh, Arkadi Volsky, told the Soviet Communist Party plenum in September that Armenia and Azerbaijan were on the verge of war. Despite all these alarm signals, information about the conflict, especially about the evolution of the political forces involved, remains scarce. GERRY FOLEY and not from above."
Asked specifically about the attitude of the Azeri Front, Ter Petrossian said: "In fact, I have a lot of trouble understanding the position of the Azeri People's Front.... About ten days ago, a delegation from the Karabakh Committee met leaders of the Azeri Pcople's Front in Moscow, thanks to the mediation of a group of progressive deputies in the Congress of Pcople's Deputies.
"This contact was repcated at the end of last week, without any tangible results. They have in fact the same position as the Azerbaijani goverment — no concessions, not even any extension of Karabakh's autonomy. This is in line with an ultra-nationalist policy encouraged for 69 years, which amounts to forcing the Armenians to leave Nagorno-Karabakh."
Pan-Turkist and pan-Islamic slogans raised
The Azeri Front arose in the aftermath
T HE FLAGSHIP of glasnost, the weckly Moskovskie Novosti which appears in several languages, (Moscow News, Nouvelles de Moscou)has offered more information than the old hulks of the Soviet press, such as Pravda (now facing an overhaul). Most of this information has dealt with complex local incidents that leave the desired impression of a purely emotional, irrational conflict. It has, however, also published an interview with a Icader of the Azeri People's Front, Leila Yunusova, which was distinguished by politically blind chauvinism and sovereign disregard for the truth.
Decision for railway strike taken by People's Front
She presented the Front as more militantly anti-Armenian than the Azerbaijan CP and republic leadership: "The decision for the railway strike was taken by the People's Front and not the [Azerbaijan] Supreme Soviet. Our conditions for ending this strike still stand: Armenia must give up its territorial claims on Nagorno-Karabakh. This is not a 'blockade.' We have just stopped delivering to Armenia what we have given it free before -- that is our oil and foodstuffs."
Nouvelles de Moscou noted that the figures of the official body in charge of overseeing supplies to Armenia showed that only 3% to 4% of the freight reaching Armenia before the blockade originated in Azerbaijan. In general, the reporting in Nouvelles de Moscou has put the Azeri Front in a bad light. In its October 20 issue, it noted stories going around in Baku thai the Armenians themselves were attacking trains going lo Armenia. It quoted an Azeri Front leader Khikmet Gadzhi-Zade, who defended this fantastic tale: "It is not so incredible as all that. The Armenians have an interest in appearing ill-treated. They probably wanted the trains stopped and troops sent here."
Blockade gives Moscow pretext for intervention
There is certainly no doubt that quotes from Azeri Front leaders in the recent issues of Nouvelles de Moscou reflect the dimmest sort of chauvinism, as, more importantly, does the blockade of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh mounted by the Front. Gadzhi-Zade himself indicated how fundamentally counterproductive this action is for the Averis, in seeming total unconsciousness. It gives Moscow a perfect pretext for intervening militarily any time it chooses. The Armenian independent Icadership, on the other hand, is quite conscious of this.
Thus, Levon Ter Petrossian, a leader of the Karabakh Committees, in Paris for medical treatment, explained in an interview published in the October 3 Libération: "As for the blockade, if it continues this can only be with the approval of Moscow. The alarmist statements of Volsky, with whom we have been in contact several times, have a real basis. "The situation is in fact very tense...But in talking about an 'imminent civil war, dramatizing things this way, Moscow is pursuing quite specific political aims, that have nothing to do with Azerbaijan. It is trying once again to get Armenia to give up the conception of perestroika that the Armenians were the first to express in the USSR, democratization from below of the mass anti-Armenian demonstrations in November 1988, encouraged by the Azeri and probably Soviet authorities. These demonstrations did get out of hand, from Moscow's point of view. According to the Soviet press, anti-Soviet, nationalist, pan-Turkist and pan-Islamic slogans were raised. Some "ring-leaders," such as Nemet Panakhov, were jailed. But these rallies fostered a chauvinist atmosphere that only a very authoritive and conscious leadership could have gone against.
Apparently the majority at least of the Front leadership chose the easier path of trying to outbid the chauvinism of the Azeri authorities, who have been allied to the conservative wing of the CPSU. The leading conservative figure, Igor Ligachev, has offered unconditional support for the Azerbaijan government position on Nagorno-Karabakh.
Nonetheless, it is' also evident from the reports in the Soviet and international press that there has been real conflict between the Azeri authorities and the Front. The general strike that began in Baku on September 4, called by the Front, was ended when the republic government agreed to grant it legal recognition.
The strike also pressed sovereignty demands similar to those raised by the People's Fronts in the Baltic, greatly disliked by the Ligacher wing of the CP, which were later adopted by the Azeri Supreme Soviet.
In her interview in Nouvelles de Moscou, Yunosova said that at one point in the conflict, the first secretary of the Azeri CP ordered the arrest of Front members in the galleries of the republic Supreme Soviet.
So, it seems clear that there has been a real and sharp conflict between the Front and the Azeri authorities allied with the conservatives. The Front has a lot, perhaps everything, to lose if its disastrous anti-Armenian actions eventually open 15 anti-Armenian actions eventually the way for a centralist crackdown. *