ABSTRACT
The slab bore an impression of a man in uniform, but we were driving too fast to identitY the name and Commander Sergei did not want to stop for fear of more snipers. After a relatively quiet 22-year career as a soldier in the OMON, or forces of the Ministry of the Interior of the Soviet Union, the last three years had brought him to nearly all of the ethnic hot-spots that had flared up in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika: the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan, in 1989; Tbilisi, Georgia, later that same year; the Baku riots of 1990; and now, in 1991, the intercommunal violence in Mountainous Karabakh. I
"Step on it, Andrei," Sergei shouted to the BTR driver, and we roared through the outskirts of Stepanakert toward our destination--a hamlet called Imarat Garvant, located North of the Sarsank Reservoir. Suspected Armenian gunmen had torched houses and killed an old lady in the town the night before, and we were to inspect the claims, allegations, and damages.
