REMEMBERING SHUSHI: 18 YEARS AFTER LIBERATION
By Suren Musayelyan
ArmeniaNow
May 7, 2010
When the bravest of Armenia’s sons were on standby before launching
an offensive that would mark a turning point in the Karabakh war 18
years ago today, many perhaps had the glory of their World War II
veteran grandfathers on their minds.
In the early hours of May 8, 1992, 47 years after Armenians danced
Kochari in Berlin at the end of World War Two in Europe, elite
Armenian soldiers began to storm Shushi, an Azeri-held strategic
town some ten kilometers south of the Karabakh capital. A day later,
the Azeri stronghold that had turned the lives of civilians in
lower-lying Stepanakert and nearby villages into hell, fell, opening
up opportunities for further Armenian victories in the Karabakh war.
Today, 18 years after that victory, participants of the Shushi
liberation remember those days and their meaning for the future
victories that would come in Karabakh battlefields.
Doctor Aida Serobyan says she went to Karabakh after seeing on TV that
people there were in dire need of doctors. She says the liberation
of Shushi gave the residents of Stepanakert an opportunity to leave
the basements of their homes and walk outside without fearing Azeri
shelling for the first time in two years.
"Babies, who were born in cellars, saw light for the first time after
Shushi’s liberation," says the doctor.
Igor Sargsyan, one of the participants of the Shushi liberation,
fought in the detachment consisting of students. Sargsyan says the
Karabakh war is not over yet and that Armenians should be ready for
renewed hostilities any moment.
Sargsyan says the years of relative peace in Armenia and Karabakh
that followed the 1994 ceasefire have somewhat altered the values as
"heroism, devotion and self-sacrifice have given way to greed and
meanness as virtues."
But both Sargsyan and Serobyan say they will again go and fight for
their homeland should it need their services.
"If not we, then who was supposed to stand for the defense of the
Homeland? Our generation performed its duty," says Sargsyan.