The Defeat of a Collapsed Management System: Hetq

Hetq writes: "They are no longer here, there is a huge empty void within us that cannot be filled: 4-5 thousand people are no longer here. Today, most people, I don't know why, confidently say that we would have lost this war. First of all, the war could have been avoided, but the authorities were incapable of doing so. They were not ready to retreat an inch from their populism. So, don't look for meaningless justifications. And don’t put everything on the army. We had a 30-year-old army that always fulfilled its assigned tasks. The army was not created in a day; it went through an extremely difficult path. Yes, there were many problems in the army, there was (and is) looting and theft, but that does not mean we did not have an army. You cannot imagine what kind of soldiers and personnel we had in the army. I completely disagree; do not justify today’s authorities, the supreme commander. I am even convinced that the weapons we had were sufficient to stop the enemy, exhaust them, and force them to cease military operations. If the anti-air defense "Tor" systems had been supplied to the army before the attack, the airspace would have been completely closed. Even if new anti-air measures had been brought quickly in the first days (they were brought very late), which, of course, was possible, the war would have had a completely different outcome. But the My Step alliance did not take the many signals regarding the start of the war seriously. There were accumulations on the other side of the border; engineering work was ongoing for months before the attack. But all of this was a thousandth question for those in power.

Today, I am still confident that if we had known the day and hour of the invasion, we would have stopped the enemy in completely different positions. If we had been prepared for the first strike, the war would have had another outcome. Let me give you an example. In the morning of the attack at one of the defensive positions, our air defense shot down three UAVs. Why was the same not the case in other directions? No one even tries to find out. Until now, from my meetings, I have come to this conclusion; they haven’t even analyzed the reasons for our defeat, they have not studied the battles in different sections, the causes of losses and failures in counteroffensive operations. When I am asked what is the reason for our defeat, I immediately answer: ignorance. Due to incompetent and illiterate management, we had so many casualties, injured, and lost Artsakh. There was such chaos in the management system that they couldn’t even deliver the bulletproof vests. The southern front was paralyzed. In different areas along that front, sometimes you couldn’t even discern who was the commander of a given squad, what task the squad of riflemen sent there was supposed to solve. Near Sarushen during the war days, we encountered a squad that was under Samvel Babayan and was there on his orders; there was a squad sent by President Arayik Harutyunyan, and there were conscripts from the NKR Armed Forces. And these three forces had no connection with each other.

It was unclear how the Azerbaijani troops captured Armenian villages one after another without resistance, why the troops there were not providing organized resistance, and you couldn’t understand why the artillery was shelling some area for hours, or why the squad sent there to comb the forest was not provided with night vision equipment for three days. Countless unanswered questions. And until now, no one is trying to answer any questions. No one explains how it was possible to hand over Hadrut, why the troops were taken out of Sghnakh and the road to Shushi was opened. By whose order and why were the troops withdrawn from Karin Tak? And why did Nikol Pashinyan, just hours before signing the well-known document on November 9, write that the battles for Shushi were continuing? When just hours later his caravan laden with lies had to kneel before Aliyev.

And I will never, ever be able to understand why the chief of staff did not visit the troops during the 44 days, why he did not set foot in Artsakh. Thus, without receiving any answers to any question, we destroyed the country's security system, throwing Armenia into the arms of the Russians and Turks. And today we are almost nonexistent as a country."