Black Garden : Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War

part of the same larger design as Husseinov’s rebellion in Ganje. It sug­
gested that Husseinov, supported by his friends in the Russian military, 
may actually have been planning to return Mutalibov to power, but his 
plan was derailed by the improvised alliance between Aliev and the 
parliament. 
The Armenians ruthlessly exploited the crisis, which had left the 
Karabakh front almost undefended. Shortly after Husseinov’s rebel-
lion, they began an offensive against Aghdam. On 27 June, they recap­
tured the town of Martakert and most of the northern part of Karabakh, 
now the most ravaged and plundered part of the whole war zone. On 
23 July, facing almost no resistance, they took the large strategically 
vital city of Aghdam. A month later, they advanced south and captured 
Fizuli and Jebrail. The end result was that in four months, as power 
changed hands in Baku, the Azerbaijanis lost a staggering five regions 
of their country as well as the North of Nagorny Karabakh itself. They 
gave up an area of almost five thousand square kilometers, or nineteen 
hundred square miles. 
The Armenians preceded all their offensives with a crude propa­
ganda campaign, insisting that they were acting in self-defense against 
heavily defended positions. In fact, on most occasions, they walked into 
empty towns and villages after the Azerbaijanis had fled. One jaun­
diced observer called it “military tourism.” Gabil Akhmedov, a villager 
from the Fizuli region said: 
Our men didn’t defend our lands. The Armenians just took their posi­
tions. On 18 August, the Armenians captured twenty kilometers in 
three or four hours. The Lenkoran Brigade did nothing. They just took 
their weapons, their grenade launchers, and left. It’s a flat region, it’s 
easy to fight there, but in our village the soldiers had gone long before. 
It was the civilians who left last.
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The offensive caused one of the biggest refugee exoduses in Europe 
since the end of World War II. Around 350,000 people were expelled 
from their homes. Thomas Goltz saw this human tragedy in motion: 

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J U N E   1 9 9 2 – S E P T E M B E R   1 9 9 3 :  E S C A L AT I O N  
From a distance, they looked like a caravan of Gypsies on the move to 
a rural flea market or county fair. Beat-up cars, piled high with rugs, 
pots and pans, clanking down the road on wheels with no rubber on 
the rims. Smoke-belching crowds overloaded with mattresses and 
steel bed frames, trying to pass tractors pulling wagons designed to 
contain tons of cotton but filled with clothes, dirty children and 
squawking ducks. The rear was usually brought up by men riding 
donkeys or leading mule-drawn carts, while on the shoulder of the 
road, barefoot shepherds were to be seen, dodging in and out of the 
traffic to keep sheep and cows and oxen out of harm’s way.
37 
After them came the Karabakh Armenian forces, systematically burn­
ing, looting, and taking hostage those who had not fled in time. Thou-
sands were driven across the River Araxes into Iran. Many of them 
drowned as they tried to swim for safety. 

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