Eyewitness To Hatred

By JOHN KOHAN MOSCOW

Ask Major General Sergei Kupreyev his position within the Interior Ministry and he explains, with a smile, that he is actually deputy chief of the Higher Academy of Fire Fighters. The affiliation is appropriate: for the past year, he has been putting out symbolic fires in Nagorno-Karabakh, the mostly Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan and the scene of some of the region's worst ( bloodletting. A year ago, the Kremlin dispatched Kupreyev and four other outsiders to assume administrative control of Nagorno-Karabakh. In November the Supreme Soviet returned command of the enclave to the Azerbaijanis. Two weeks ago, Kupreyev, 52, came home.

Kupreyev was struck by how petty some of the conflicts were. "Once," he says, "the Azerbaijanis were offended that their republic's flag had been taken down by the locals from a building in Stepanakert ((the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh)). Put up the flag again, they said, have the Armenians offer a public apology, and we will end our blockade and let supplies through. Then Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh refused to receive food from Azerbaijan. If it was Azerbaijani margarine, they wouldn't take it. They wouldn't accept eggs from Baku. Our chairman finally told them it wasn't the Azerbaijanis who laid eggs, it was hens."

His task was not helped by the fact that the local authorities have been taking sides, supplying both Azerbaijanis and Armenians with weapons like pistols and Kalashnikov assault rifles. "The police say the weapons were stolen from them, but actually they handed the guns over," says Kupreyev. "There are more than enough supplies from Iran too. There have been reports that as many as 40,000 people crossed into Iran in a mass exodus ((on New Year's Eve)). The information is unconfirmed, but there certainly must be some truth in the reports that many people left ((towns all along the border)) empty-handed and returned from Iran with weapons. The rebels also got arms by attacking poorly guarded army depots, which have the most modern weaponry. As for rockets, this is the Caucasus, and they have hailshooters to protect their vineyards. Those missiles are not all that dangerous, since they are armed only with chemical agents for cloud dispersal, but they can destroy a house with a direct hit."

Kupreyev even had to be careful about the ethnic 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 would always defend the Azerbaijanis. We tried to see that boys of Slavic extraction, from Russia, the Ukraine or Belorussia, served in Nagorno-Karabakh. Many former soldiers have taken sides, and some of them have served in Afghanistan. Not only enlisted men but also officers who once held the rank of lieutenant colonel are now fighting for the Armenians and Azerbaijanis. These veterans are as experienced as our soldiers."

Kupreyev discovered that much of the trouble in the region was instigated by black-marketeers, but he was frustrated by the difficulty of obtaining enough evidence to arrest them. "There are people who have everything to gain by keeping the waters troubled as long as possible," he says. "It is easy to carry on theft when a war is on and the police are practically out of action. We noticed just who was leading popular-front movements in the regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh: the director of a lucrative car-servicing center, the head of a local food emporium. They profit by the disorders to carry on their business. If we can't jail them, let's at least intern them in a sanatorium on the Volga River. We have been cutting off the tail without getting at the source."

Though Kupreyev is careful not to blame Moscow for the continuing tensions, he suggests that some of the bloodshed might have been averted. "Had we had more experience in dealing with ethnic unrest, decisions could have been made months ago," he says. "For example, if Moscow had decided early on to elevate the status of Nagorno-Karabakh from an autonomous region to an autonomous republic, as the Armenians had asked, it might have cooled tensions. It would not have pleased the Azerbaijanis, but they might have been persuaded. Now there is no point in even talking about it."

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."