the advantage of choosing this particular area was threefold : it was rugged terrain , identical to that of iran ; it was sparsely populated ; and the people here knew him because he 'd made more than a dozen runs for dimitri maslov and then semion icoupov , trading semi-automatic rifles , grenades , rocket launchers , and so forth to the armenian tribal leaders who were waging a continuous guerrilla war against the azerbaijani regime , just as they had against the soviets until the fall of the soviet empire .