Battle of Shusha

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Battle of Shusha
Part of the Nagorno-Karabakh War
The restored T-72 tank memorial commerated to the capture of Shusha.
Date May 8, 1992 – May 9, 1992 Location Shusha, town in Nagorno-Karabakh Result Strategic Armenian victory
Combatants
Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army	Azerbaijani military
Commanders
Gurgen Daribaltayan Arkady Ter-Tatevosyan	Elbrus Orjuev Elkhan Orjuev
Strength
1,000 troops, including the crew members of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and helicopters	Unknown amount of infantry, tanks, complemented by a battery of BM-21 GRAD artillery
Casualties
Over 100 according to Armenian sources	Unknown, AFP puts toll to as high as several hundred

The Battle of Shusha (in Armenian: Շուշիի գրավումը, The Capture of Shushi or Շուշիի ազատագրումը, The Liberation of Shushi) marked the first significant military victory by Armenian forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. The battle was part of a larger territorial land dispute with the predominantly Armenian population in Karabakh who, aided by the neighboring Republic of Armenia, regained independence from the Republic of Azerbaijan. The battle took place in the strategically vital mountain town of Shusha on the evening of May 8, 1992 and fighting swiftly concluded the following day after Armenian forces captured and drove out the defending Azeris. Armenian military commanders based in Nagorno-Karabakh's capital of Stepanakert had been contemplating the seizure of the town after a hail of Azeri military bombardment had begun shelling the city.

The seizure of the town proved decisive: Shusha was the remaining military stronghold that the Azeris held in Nagorno-Karabakh. Its loss would mark the turning point in the war and lead to the series of military victories by Armenian forces in the course the war. As Armenian author Markar Melkonian put it, "the capture of Shusha would go down in the annals of local lore as the most glorious victory" in the first half of the war.^[1]

[edit] Background

In February 1988, Nagorono-Karabakh had been an autonomous oblast for over seventy years inside the borders of the Azerbaijan SSR. Following its government's decision to secede from Azerbaijan and unify with Armenia, the conflict erupted into a larger scale ethnic feud between Armenians and Azeris living in the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Armenians and Azeris vied to take control of Karabakh with full scale battles taking place in the winter of 1992. By then, the enclave had declared its independence and set up an unrecognized, though self-functioning government.

The advanced weaponry of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, fighter jets and helicopter gunships bought and used by both sides illustrated the aftereffects of the free-for-all weapons vacuum created upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union. A large scale population shift had also been in effect since the conflict began with most of the Armenians living in Azerbaijan and Azeris in Armenia trading places. The battle was preceded by the controversial capture of the town and the location of Karabakh's only airport in Khojaly by Armenians in February 1992. With the loss of Khojaly, Azeri commanders had been redirecting artillery fire upon Stepanakert from the ridge on Shusha.

[edit] Stepanakert besieged

The town of Shusha overlooked the capital from the south and was hence a suitable location for shelling the town. The mainstay artillery platform used during the bombardment was the Soviet built BM-21 GRAD multiple rocket launcher, a modern variant of the widely used World War II weapon, the Katyusha. The Grad launcher was similar to the Katyusha in that it did not have a guided missile system and hence the location of where it would hit was difficult to determine. Dubbed "flying telephone poles" due to the shape of the long, shaped charges, the missiles caused devastating damage to buildings. The shelling had began in the late winter of 1992, and by April it was noted that "scarcely a single building [had] escaped damage in Stepanakert."^[2]

Once the region's Communist Party headquarters and largest city with a population of 70,000, the fighting and shelling had drove away nearly 20,000 of its residents and forced the remainder to live underground in basements. By one tally recorded in early April, a total of 157 rockets had landed on the city in a single day.^[3] Many soldiers and civilians were killed or maimed daily by the projectiles as the bombardment was notoriously indiscriminate.

In addition to the shelling, the Azeri military also staged several ground attacks on the outskirts of Stepanakert in hopes of later moving on to capture the city itself. While they were staved off numerous times, the city's leaders complained that military action had to be taken to relieve it from the continuous bombardment. By May, military leaders had finally formulated plans to move in and capture the town.

[edit] The battle

[edit] Preparation

The citadel of Shushi (on the right) whose cliffs Armenian commandos scaled during the ambush

Planning for the military operation began under the auspices of Colonel-General Gurgen Daribaltayan. Due to the strategic position of Shusha, the town could be easily defended and so a direct attack by Armenian forces was not a viable option for Daribaltayan. Instead, in conjunction with the commander who would lead the troops into Shusha, Arkady "Komandos" Ter-Tatevosyan, they devised a strategy of launching several diversionary attacks against the adjacent villages to draw out the defenders of the town. In the meantime, the forces would encircle and cut off the town from further reinforcements.^[4]

Prior to the launch of the offensive against the Shusha citadel, Ter-Tatevosyan's forces had been concentrating an artillery barrage from several directions for several weeks in order to "soften up" the town's defenses.^[5] Since late February, the Azeri military had been reinforcing Shusha's ridge and had been shuttling in helicopters in order to evacuate the town's civilian population. By May 8, Armenian forces had amassed a force of nearly 1,000 fighters to storm Shusha.

[edit] The offensive

From top clockwise: Hollowed out buildings in the town of Shusha after Armenian forces captured it on May 9, 1992; the ridge on top of Shusha which was used by the Azeris to shell Stepanakert, the Armenian Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shusha; the unused ammunition for the BM-21 GRAD rocket launchers stored inside it.

In the twilight hours of May 8, Ter-Tatevosyan directed his forces to assail Shusha from different directions and attack its flanks and its rear so as to avoid the ridge facing Stepanakert which was the town's most easily defendable location. The primary contingent of the attacking force was made up primarily of foot infantry but was complemented by at least four tanks and two attack helicopters. Amongst the Armenians attacking the town was the future President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan. Entrenched in Shusha was the Azeri commander Elbrus Orjuev who commanded a force of several hundred men and tanks. Due to the proximity of the attacking forces, the GRAD launchers were rendered largely useless in their role of defending the town. Despite the numerical inferiority of Orjuev's forces, his troops managed to initially fend off against the Armenians who were already scaling the town's cliffs.

By mid-day, the fighting in Shusha had escalated full-scale as both sides were participating in fierce combat amongst Shusha's battered streets and near its communications tower.^[6] A famous encounter that took place between the two sides was when an Armenian T-72 encountered its Azeri counterpart on the northern approach of the town. As the two exchanged fire the Armenian tank, manned by Gagik Avsharyan, was hit by several rounds by the opposing T-72 and knocked out of commission.^[7] By the evening of May 8, Armenian forces had destroyed three of the GRAD launchers and captured the remainder of the battery. Within several hours, the defenders had been forced to retreat to the town's southernmost tip.

By May 9, Armenian forces were firmly in control of Shusha. At the battle-scarred Ghazanchetsots Cathedral it was discovered that the Azeris had turned the church into a storage area for the GRAD ammunition. Overwhelmed by the immense force, Orjuev ordered his forces to retreat and abandon the citadel. The casualty counts were estimated to have been over a hundred on both sides.

[edit] Aftermath

The capture of Shusha ushered many Armenians living in Stepanakert and elsewhere in Karabakh to supplant the majority Azeri population living there before the battle. Several days following the offensive, Armenian forces launched an attack in the region of Lachin and opened up a five mile corridor connecting the enclave to Armenia proper. The offensive prompted two attacks by Azerbaijan's military. One was concentrated on taking back Shusha on on May 11 and the other was further south in Martuni. Despite earlier claims made by Azerbaijan's defense ministry to having taken back Shusha, the offensive had failed. In the Armenian defended front of Martuni, Armenian forces also turned back a retaliatory Azeri offensive while at the same time inflicting heavy losses.^[8]

On the day of the Armenian victory, Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrossian and then acting Azerbaijani president Yagub Mamedov were present in Tehran, Iran to sign a cease-fire agreement. News of the Armenian offensive led Mamedov to charge that Armenia had already failed to honor the cease-fire. Ter-Petrossian however contested that he was unable to control what the Armenians in Karabakh were planning. The loss of Shusha later led to mass demonstrations in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku against newly reinstated president Ayaz Mütallibov. Charged for failing to defend the cities of Shusha on the 9^th and later Lachin on the 18^th, he was forced to step down. Many Azeris were in a state of affliction due to the loss; the town had been the birthplace for Azeri composers, poets, and musicians.

After the war ended, Avsharyan's T-72 tank was recovered and repaired and currently stands as a monument in Shusha. May 9 is now celebrated in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as the "The Day of the NKR’s Defence Army" and "The Day of Liberation of Shusha."^[9] A commendation medal was also awarded by the government to those Armenians who participated in the battle.

[edit] Turkey's reaction

Armenia's western neighbour, Turkey, personally took umbrage after Armenian troops had captured the town. Süleyman Demirel, Turkey's prime minister said that he was coming under intense pressure by the Turkish people to send military help to Azerbaijan. The two peoples are ethnically and culturally related. Demirel however decided not to heed their calls partly because the commander of the Russian-led CIS forces based in Caucasus, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov had warned that such an incursion would lead to "the verge of a third world war, and that cannot be allowed."^[10] The Armenians' victory in Shusha had many Turkish officials accusing Armenia itself of seeking to invade the Azeri exclave of Nakhichevan.

An even louder proponent for armed action came from Turkey's own president Turgut Özal. While he continuously advocated aiding Azerbaijan and threatened Armenia, his minority political party was unable to materialize the support.

[edit] See also

• Nagorno-Karabakh War
• Shusha

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Medal awarded to Armenian participants of the battle