Just before the Armistice of Mudros was signed, Andranik Ozanian was on the way from Zangezur to Shusha to control the main city of the Karabakh. In January 1919, with Armenian troops advancing, the British military command asked Andranik back to Zangezur with the assurances that this conflict could be solved with the Paris Peace Conference. Andranik pulled back his units and the British command at Baku gave control to Khosrov bey Sultanov, a native of Karabakh and "ardent pan-Turkist", who was appointed the general-governor of Karabakh and ordered by the British to "squash any unrest in the region".[9] Sultanov ordered attacks on Armenian villages the next day, increased the sizes of Azeri garrisons in Shusha and Khankendi and drew up plans to destroy several Armenian villages to sever the link between Armenians in Karabakh and the region of Zangezur.[10][11]