The enemy was at the gates. By the summer of 1993, a significant part of Azerbaijan’s territories had been bludgeoned into submission by occupying forces. Hundreds of thousands of destitute, internally displaced people flooded into what was left. The armed forces were in disarray.
The economy was in free fall. Baku had no functioning government. Into the breach stepped one man. The entire nation’s fate now rested on the broad shoulders of Heydar Aliyev.
Who could save Karabakh?
Georgia seceded from the Soviet Union on April 9, 1991. Azerbaijan declared its independence on August 30, 1991. Armenia on September 23, 1991. The hard-won struggle for self-determination was supposed to represent a new era.
