Why do the Karabakh Armenians keep going? They already control virtually all of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and a large strip of Azerbaijan that amounts to about 10 percent of their former Soviet neighbor.
Now the Armenians have captured the Azeri town of Agdam, which lies about five kilometers to the east of Karabakh, and are within reach of cutting off another huge chunk of Azeri land to the south, by advancing down to Azerbaijan's border with Iran. Such a move would considerably reduce Armenian defensive lines. The risk is that up to 200, 000 or so Azeris and Kurds living in southwestern Azerbaijan would be trapped, and would have no choice but to flee into northern Iran - creating untold regional instability.
The official reason for the continued offensives out of Karabakh and into Azerbaijan proper is "self-defense". The Karabakh Armenians increasingly view Azeri artillery positions outside the disputed territory as legitimate targets. When I was in Karabakh (or Artsak, the historic Armenian name) in May, the then president of the local parliament, Gregory Petrosyan, was talking about establishing "a security zone of up to 25 kilometers around Artsak".
Coincidentally, any such "security zone" would be part of "historic Armenia", which is coveted vocally by Armenian extremists, and privately by virtually all Armenians. A vivid illustration of "historic Armenia" is to be found on the wall of almost every Armenian home and office. It shows a map which dates from 2107 B. C. and purports to detail a vast kingdom of Armenia reaching from the Black Sea to the Caspian, subsuming northern Iran and more than half of Turkey. Under the map is a 1993 calendar.
The idea that the Armenians have been in the Caucasus for more than 4, 000 years is controversial, to say the least. Consider what Nina Garsoian, professor of Armenian History at Columbia University, in New York, wrote in 1983: "Though the ethnogenesis of the Armenians remains obscure, it is generally held that a tribe speaking an Indo-European language moved into the mountainous plateau of eastern Anatolia sometime in the sixth century B. C.
"These people, known to the Greeks as armenoi, merged with the local Human people to form a new ethno-linguistic community".
The Armenian people are without doubt unique among the myriad nationalities of the Caucasus, and not just because of their slightly elongated view of their own history. The Armenian Apostolic Church has always been the most important determining factor in Armenian nationality. Even when they lost their language, as in the Armenian diaspora community of Polish Lvov in the 17th century, the Armenians never lost their religion, nor therefore, their sense of uniqueness.
Armenians, like Jews, were rarely assimilated into Islamic or other Christian denomination societies and were often persecuted as a result. In some cases persecution degenerated into massacre, as in Turkey in 1915. In that year, about a million Armenians were killed by Turkish troops and Kurdish irregulars. For all Armenians, both in eastern (or Soviet) Armenia and the diaspora communities, the 1915 Genocide is still a gaping wound in the national psyche.
In some respects the conflict over Karabakh represents the Armenians revenging themselves for 1915 on the Azeris, the latest "persecutors of Armenians". On the streets of Yerevan or in the trenches of Karabakh, the Azeris are derisively referred to as "moslems" or "turks".
It is revenge for both lives lost and land occupied. The Armenia of today is an emaciated creature in the eyes of most Armenians. When the Soviet Union began breaking up the Armenian National Movement only took on board the idea of independence after free elections had been held. In neighboring Georgia, independence was the principle guiding motivation of the national movement. The main Armenian long-term goal has always been "Matsum" or reunification.
Even the extremists admit that eastern Turkey (or Turkish Armenia) is out of reach, but a Greater Armenia could still be carved out Armenia's other weak post-Soviet neighbors. The struggle for Karabakh is won and the territories around it are close to being conquered. A spark in the Armenian part of Georgia could start a fire which would bring back more historic Armenian land.
The Azeri enclave of Nakhichevan - between Armenia, Iran and Turkey - would appear to present a harder target. Since the 1921 Kars treaty between Turkey and Russia, Nakhichevan has been a Turkish protectorate. Nevertheless, in the worlds of the late Monty Melkonian, a Californian Armenian military commander, recently killed near Agdam: "There's bound to be a coup d'etat in Turkey sometime in the next 10 years. During the immediate post-coup chaos, we'll take Nakhichevan - easy! "
It is a recipe for regional instability. Realists like the new Armenian foreign minister, Vahan Papazian, say they are determined to stamp out the old mythical thinking, and to usher in a new era of good neighborly relations, especially with the old enemy, Turkey. But then a week before Agdam fell, Papazian assured me that the Karabakh Armenians would never occupy Agdam. The temptation appears to have proven too great. Given that the Azerbaijani army is, for the moment, utterly demoralized, it seems more plausible to believe that as long as the door is ajar, the Armenians will keep pushing on it.
Alexis Rowell reports for the BBC and The Moscow Times from the Caucasus.