We are pleased to publish excerpts from Tatul Hakobyan's upcoming book, with the working title Artsakh Diary , which deals with the tragedies of February 25-26, 1992 in Khojaly and of March 10, 1992 in Maragha, Nagorno Karabakh. “ The first casualty when war comes is truth.” These words said of World War I can be applied to Khojaly and Maragha as well.

As military operations between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan continued, several countries and organizations offered their mediation in settling the conflict, and in working out a truce first of all. Iran was especially active. The OSCE and Russia began showing a serious interest as well.

On February 25, 1992 Yerevan launched a political initiative. President Levon Ter-Petrossian appealed to the heads of 14 states asking to prevent further escalation of the situation which would only lead to a full-scale war. “The heads of states and international organizations should restrain Azerbaijan by consistently condemning the militarization of that country and any actions that might upset the relative balance of powers in the region… as well as influence the leaders of Russia and the CIS to hinder Azerbaijan by all means from obtaining and using CIS armaments.” The Armenian leader stressed that “we view the Nagorno Karabakh issue as an internal political conflict which should be solved exclusively through negotiations between the Azerbaijani government and the newly-elected leadership of Nagorno Karabakh, bearing in mind that Armenia has no territorial claims on Azerbaijan.”

Ter-Petrossian urged the CIS, the OSCE, the UN, the European Union, and other organizations interested in establishing stable peace in the region to expedite the steps aimed at creating an efficient mediation mechanism for the Nagorno Karabakh conflict that would result in designing a comprehensive peace plan supported by all the interested parties. The Armenian leader emphasized that “Turkey should continue to maintain its neutrality and try to alter Azerbaijan's discrepant stance toward Armenia by using its good offices with the Azerbaijani government and political forces.” In exchange “Armenia will use its influence on Nagorno Karabakh to persuade its leadership into unilaterally ceasing military operations for 24 hours effective the moment the Azerbaijani government assumes the obligation to halt military operations in the region for the same period of time.”

Armenian special envoy at the time David Shahnazaryan says that at first the West, and the United States in particular, didn't show serious interest in mediation. “Their policy at the time differed substantially from their present policy. They were not ready or even didn't want to assume any independent or active role. Their mission limited itself to the activity within the Minsk Group. At the time Russia was more active than the OSCE format in two ways – through the ministry of defense and the ministry of foreign affairs,” Shahnazaryan says.

However, the high-level Armenian-Azerbaijani meetings and numerous intermediary missions and visits were unable to prevent bloodshed between the two neighbouring peoples. Moreover, strange as it may sound, the most tragic events would usually take place at times of active international mediation. One such instance was Khojaly; another was Maragha.

“The moment of truth”

"The first casualty when war comes is truth." These words uttered by a US senator following World War I might be also applied to the Karabakh war and, in particular, to Khojaly. What really happened in the second-largest Azerbaijani settlement in Nagorno Karabakh, Khojaly, and the adjacent territories on February 25-26, 1992 when the civilian population fled to Aghdam through the corridor provided by the Karabakh forces remains one of the most debatable and unclarified issues of the Karabakh war. At least two things are clear – the Karabakh forces left a corridor, and the civilian population suffered and a tragedy occurred.

When in 1994 Russian journalist Andrey Karaulov, the host of the TV program The Momemt of Truth asked then-Chairman of the State Defence Committee of Nagorno Karabakh Robert Kocharyan about the Khojaly tragedy, he responded, “I would put next to this tragedy a series of other tragedies that would perhaps surpass the Khojaly tragedy in scale. These are the Sumgait and the Baku massacres, the depopulation of 28 Armenian villages, and the tragedy of the village of Maragha.”

“But, apparently, Khojaly requires a separate explanation. That is to say, this was the village that found itself in the thick of military operations. As I see it, the warring parties should be very careful in using human settlements for military purposes and this is exactly what had happened in Khojaly. There were four GRAD flamethrowers stationed inside the village which were systematically firing upon Stepanakert. And when a place turns into a position for firing GRAD missiles then, naturally, it draws enemy fire. For that reason a situation emerged in Khojaly where heavy battles for the settlement took place and, the fact was, during these battles the civilian population suffered,” Kocharyan said.

When British journalist Thomas de Vaal asked Serge Sargsyan to tell him about the seizure of Khojaly the Armenian minister of defense responded, “We prefer not to talk about that out loud.” As for the number of losses, Sargsyan insisted that many things had been exaggerated and the retreating Azerbaijanis had manifested strong military resistance. “But I think that the principal issue was completely different. Before Khojaly, Azerbaijanis thought that they could trifle with us; they thought Armenians were incapable of raising a hand against a civilian population. We were able to break this stereotype. This is what happened. And also we must take into consideration that among these men there were those who had escaped from the Baku and the Sumgait massacres,” Sargsyan said.

In order to lend credence to assertions that the Karabakh forces had opened frontal fire on the fleeing civilian population and the Azerbaijani special platoon accompanying them from the Armenian village of Nakhichevanik, Thomas de Vaal quoted what Police Major Valery Babayan had told American reporter Paul Quin-Judge. Babayan had expressed the view that the main motive for these events was personal vengeance and that many of the participants of the attack on Khojaly “were from Sumgait and other places like that.”

Samvel Babayan, who was at the center of the events, has a completely different interpretation. “During the Khojaly operation I was in charge of holding the Aghdam front and providing for a secure corridor along the river current so that the civilians could exit, and I accomplished that mission. The corridor was provided, but a strange thing happened. We were attacked from the direction of Aghdam. The population was supposed to pass through our positions and enter Aghdam. Among the Azerbaijani forces in Aghdam, the impression emerged that the Armenians were making a sally. The violence was committed by the Azerbaijani forces, whether wittingly or not, I don't know. We did not attempt at the destruction of the population. Generally, during the war we had always allowed the civilian population to leave. We were in a position to block the roads and annihilate 60,000 people in Kelbajar, but we purposefully postponed military operations and provided free passage. It was the same road that we had taken under our control in one stroke in 1994.”

The assertions that for several successive days the Karabakh forces had warned the civilian population of Khojaly to leave and had provided a corridor to this end have been confirmed by Azerbaijani sources as well.

Khojaly resident Salman Abbasov consequently complained, “A few days before those tragic events the Armenians had warned us many times over the radio that they were planning to seize the city and urged us to leave it. For a long time helicopters had been flying into Khojaly and it was not clear if anyone was concerned about our fate. Virtually, we had not received any help. Moreover, when there was a chance to evacuate the women, children, and the elderly, we were being persuaded not to leave.”

In the early spring of 2005 Azerbaijani reporter Eynulla Fatulayev visited Khojaly. After returning to Baku he wrote in an article entitled “They had time to help the cattle but not the humans,” “A few years ago I met with refugees from Khojaly temporarily sheltered in Naftalan. They openly acknowledged that for a few days before the attack Armenians had continuously warned the population over loudspeakers about the imminent operation and asked civilians to leave the encircled city through a humanitarian corridor along the Karkar River. According to refugees from Khojaly, they used the corridor and the Armenian soldiers on the far bank didn't open fire on them. Some soldiers from the detachments of the Popular Front had for unknown reasons evacuated some of the Khojaly residents toward Nakhichevanik, which was under control of the Askeran Armenian regiment.”

With the help of the local administration of Askeran, the reporter familiarized himself with the locality, walking through the areas that Khojaly residents had passed through. “After familiarizing myself with the geography of the area I can say for sure that the assumptions about the absence of a corridor are groundless. There was, in fact, a corridor, otherwise the residents of Khojaly, completely encircled and cut from the outside world, could not have broken through the circle and gotten out. For unknown reasons some of the Khojaly residents were directed toward Nakhichevanik. It looks like the detachments of the Popular Front aimed not at rescuing the residents of Khojaly but at bloodshed on the path to dethroning Mutalibov,” Fatulayev wrote.

During an interview with Azerbaijani president Ayaz Mutalibov one month after the Khojaly tragedy, Czech reporter Dana Mazalova put the following question to him: “What would you say about the Khojaly events, after which you resigned? At the time, corpses of people from Khojaly were discovered not far from Aghdam. Some one had shot them in the legs beforehand to prevent them from running away. Afterwards they were axed. On February 29 th my colleagues filmed them. When we next filmed on March 2 nd these corpses had been scalped. What kind of strange game was that?” Mutalibov then said, “As the rescued residents of Khojaly say, all that was organized to create grounds for my resignation. I don't think that the Armenians, who had manifested a clear and knowledgeable approach to such situations, would have allowed Azerbaijanis to obtain evidence that tied them to fascist acts.”

“If I declare that it was the fault of the Azerbaijani opposition I could be blamed for slander. But the overall picture of the conclusions is as follows: the Armenians had, in any case, provided a corridor to let the civilians escape. Why then would they shoot? Moreover, in the vicinity of Aghdam where at the time there was sufficient force present to assist people? Or they could have just agreed that the civilians leave… The Aghdam detachment was located nearby and was obliged to seriously follow the development of events. As soon as Khojaly was surrounded by tanks it was necessary to immediately lead the civilians out. Earlier I had given similar orders regarding Shushi – to evacuate women and children and to leave only men in the city. It's one of the laws of war – civilians must be rescued. My conduct was appropriate and unambiguous – I gave such orders, but why they weren't followed in Khojaly is not clear to me,” Mutalibov said.

In succeeding years as well Mutalibov continued to insist, with some corrections, that Armenians had left a corridor for the civilian population to leave.

“In the evening of February 25 th the late Minister of the Interior Tofik Kerimov reported to me on what had happened, but without details. He said that several hundred people had been shot in Khojaly itself. The first thing I did at the time was to telephone the leader of Nagorno Karabakh, a certain Mkrtchyan. I didn't know him, had never seen him but I knew his name. I asked him angrily how it was possible to shoot nearly a thousand civilians in Khojaly. He responded word-for-word as follows: ‘It's nonsense! We didn't shoot anyone in Khojaly. When we took Khojaly, the residents had already left, since we had opened a corridor for them. Some of the residents are still there; they are staying in the building of the vocational school. We feed them, though we too have a shortage of food.' I didn't believe him and asked him to call Armen Isagulov, who was the head of the police department at the time, to the phone. He too told me that they had provided a corridor for the residents. That is why when I gave an interview then I said that I was told that a corridor had been opened for the civilian population. But I didn't assert whether the corridor had in fact been provided or not. I just appealed to the fact of the telephone conversation… By the way, it is written in black and white in the report by the Memorial Human Rights Center that Elman Mamedov had been personally informed of the provision of the corridor,” Mutalibov said later on.

A few days after the tragedy, Khojaly Mayor Elman Mamedov acknowledged, “We knew that the corridor had been provided for the civilian population to leave.”

News of the Khojaly tragedy reached Baku in the evening of February 25, 1992 – that is, before the Karabakh forces started the military operations. Neither Minister of the Interior Kerimov nor Minister of National Security Huseinov was able to identify the source of that disinformation. And on the morning of February 26, Ayaz Mutalibov telephoned the Speaker of the Nagorno Karabakh parliament, Artur Mkrtchyan, and the head of the police department, Armen Isagulov, to find out what had really happened.

On the evening of February 26, realizing that the loss of Khojaly would mean the defeat of Mutalibov, the Ministry of the Interior of Azerbaijan released a statement saying that “the attack by the Armenian guerilla in the direction of Khojaly has been repulsed and the Azerbaijani forces have regained the control of the city.” But this information was immediately refuted by the information center of the Popular Front, which announced that that “two trucks full of bodies of slain residents of Khojaly have arrived to Aghdam.”

British journalist Thomas de Vaal believes that the Khojaly attack began on the night of February 26 - in commemoration of the anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait that had taken place four years earlier in February 1988. “The 366 th regiment of the Soviet Army supported the Armenians with armoured equipment. They surrounded Khojaly on three sides, after which the Armenian soldiers entered the city and suppressed the resistance of the local defenders,” de Vaal wrote.

There seem to be some inaccuracies here. First, would it have been logical for the Karabakh forces to seize Khojaly in the days of remembrance of the Sumgait massacre? Besides, the Sumgait events took place on February 27 and 28, so according to the logic of “taking revenge” the Karabakh forces should have started the attack on Khojaly on the night of February 27. The capture of Khojaly was of invaluable significance for the Karabakh forces and today, years after the cessation of military operations, assumptions regarding the approximate coincidence of certain dates are beside the point. After all, Khojaly and the whole Karabakh conflict was a ruthless war in the harshest sense, and who would have been thinking about historical parallels?

Furthermore, both Azerbaijani and Armenian sources insist that the Karabakh forces had been planning the Khojaly attack for an earlier date but for some reasons had postponed it.

In mid-February on the eve of his visit to Iran, Ayaz Mutalibov ordered the Shushi commandant, Rahim Ghaziyev, to maintain a truce in his absence and not to fire in the direction of Stepanakert. But within hours after his departure to Iran, a fierce bombardment of Stepanakert and, in particular, the 366 th motorized regiment began. In response, the Karabakh forces attacked Khojaly. The exchange of fire lasted for a few days – from February 14 to February 16.

“Shells rained down on us from Stepanakert. It was a nightmare. I gave the order to open fire on Stepanakert from the Grad missile system. Our soldiers could not fire accurately using the coordinates. Four of the Grad barrels were out of order. One of our soldiers climbed up the [Shushi] tower and was telling us whether the shells had fallen on the military camp or not. Suddenly he shouted that several shells had hit the camp. Five of the regiment's armored vehicles were destroyed,” Ghaziyev recalled.

According to Ghaziyev, there was only one Grad system in Shushi at the time that could be used during positional battles. “On February 16 we received information about preparations for an attack on Khojaly. Our forces stationed in Shushi successfully prevented the attack with the help of this very Grad system, which we used to bombard the enemy positions. On February 25 we again received information about another attempt to attack Khojaly. I assure you we didn't have enough ammunition to assist the Khojaly residents and to stop the Armenian attack. We didn't use the Grad system at that time since a thick fog had floated over Shushi… On one of those days I telephoned Mutalibov and informed him of the danger threatening Khojaly. The president said that the minister of the interior, Tofik Kerimov, had assured him that the situation was stable. I realize that a trap was set for Mutalibov in Khojaly. But it's not true that I opened fire on Stepanakert contrary to the president's orders.”

Before Khojaly the Karabakh forces had already had the experience of successful military operations in several other locations. The head of the standing committee on foreign relations of the Nagorno Karabakh parliament, Levon Melik-Shahnazarov, wrote that military successes in Togh and Sarinshen had been followed by victories in Lesnui (Meshali), Malibeylii, and Ashaghi Ghushchular (these operations were planned by Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan; the commander in charge was Valery Babayan) and that heavy fighting had resulted in the liberation of the Stepanakert suburb of Krkzhan.

“It's hard to overestimate the significance of Khojaly for both the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. Khojaly separated the south of Karabakh from the north. Nagorno Karabakh's only airport was located in Khojaly and for the blockaded Artsakh Armenians, it was the sole link to the outside world. And finally, Khojaly was also used for bombarding Stepanakert and other Armenian settlements,” Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote.

The Khojaly operation was planned and headed by the commander of the Karabakh Forces, Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan, known as Commandos. The Karabakh military units were supposed to enter Khojaly from four directions: first from Mehtishen, second from Noragyugh, third from Katuk and fourth from the vicinity of the airport. A corridor for the civilians and the retreating Azerbaijani soldiers was left along the Karkar River.

“Besides, some weeks before the attack the Karabakh side had repeatedly warned Baku and the residents of Khojaly that the city would be attacked. The Karabakh forces employed such tactics throughout the course of the entire war. This had a dual purpose. First, to spread panic among the residents and to make the civilians leave before the military operations began and, second, the absence of the civilian population demoralizes the army, its desire to fight withers and the soldiers think above all about not getting killed and, if possible, running away. Under such circumstances, as the subsequent military operations showed, the Karabakh side suffered unbelievably fewer losses,” Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote.

The Khojaly operation began at 11:00 p.m. on February 25, that is, a few hours after Mutalibov was informed about the massacre of the civilian population of Khojaly. Some two and a half hours later it had become clear from the exchange of radio messages by Azerbaijani radio operators that the military were abandoning the city along with the civilians. Only one unit fortified its position in a five-story building and put up resistance, but by 4:00 a.m. on February 26 some of them had been destroyed and others had surrendered.

Was it possible that reinforcements could have been brought up to Khojaly from Aghdam, which was, at the time, controlled by military units of the Popular Front? In fact, Khojaly was surrounded on four sides and from the military standpoint its defense was vulnerable. The contacts between Khojaly and other settlements in Azerbaijan and Aghdam, in particular, were maintained by means of helicopters. The last flight to Khojaly before the Karabakh forces captured the city took place on February 13. According to various estimates, about 3,000 residents remained in Khojaly as of February 25 and the commander of the airport emergency platoon with its 160 soldiers, Arif Hajiyev, was in charge of the defense of the city.

On the other hand, it is impossible to understand why the civilian population was not withdrawn when the downfall of Khojaly all too obvious to the Azerbaijani side. One of the reasons for this was, perhaps, the internal troubled situation in Azerbaijan. There was no unified military command, although the Azerbaijani forces concentrated in Aghdam could have rendered assistance to the Khojaly defenders. The following is an extract from an interview with Rahim Ghaziyev:

“Why was no assistance was rendered to Khojaly residents in time?”

“As of February 25, there were 12 T-72 tanks, 12 armored vehicles, 4 Grad missile launchers, 40 cannons and 2,500 soldiers in Aghdam. All this could have been directed at the Khojaly defense but no assistance was rendered.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. It was enough to open fire from the Grad system. There was a sniper – Private Inchipirenko. He could have hit any target. Can you imagine that? But it turned out that the Grad system disappeared.”

“If I'm not mistaken, Tamerlan Garayev and Fahmin Hajiyev were in Aghdam at the time…”

“Yes. And Tair Aliyev was the commander in charge of the entire Karabakh front. You say that I was appointed the Shushi military commandant. But I learned about that decree from a TV programs. I had no documents, not a stamp, nor any normative act.”

During the Khojaly operation the minister of defense of Azerbaijan was Tair Aliyev, who had held this position for a very short period of time. In fact, over the course of six months in 1991-1992 there were four ministers of defense in Azerbaijan, which, in itself, is nonsense for a warring state. The first defense minister was Soviet Army General Valeh Barshadly. Soon after he was replaced by Tajeddin Mehtiyev, who was forced to resign after the defeat in Karintak. Mehtiyev was replaced by Tair Aliyev. On March 17, after the Khojaly operation and the resignation of President Mutalibov, Rasim Ghaziyev was appointed defense minister.

“After the capture of Khojaly, our troops found 11 bodies of civilian residents, not counting, of course, the losses among the Azerbaijani military. Another several hundred civilians - more precisely 734 people – some of whom were Meskheti Turks, were brought to Stepanakert. By February 28 all the captive Khojaly residents had been handed over to the Azerbaijani side,” Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote.

The Meskheti Turks had been resettled in Khojaly since 1989. Azerbaijan had gradually resettled about one thousand Meskheti Turks expelled from Uzbekistan in Khojaly, thus artificially increasing the population of the town. If in 1989 there were about 1,600 residents in Khojaly, in 1991 this number had reached 6,300, and that year Khojaly was given a status of a town. Political analyst David Babayan says that according to the 1926 census Khojaly was a completely Armenian village with 888 residents.

“In the 1950s Azerbaijanis began settling in Khojaly and by the early 1960s an Azerbaijani village of Khojaly had emerged next to the Armenian one. By 1977, no one talked about the Armenian Khojaly anymore. By 1989 Khojaly was already a completely Azerbaijani village with 1,661 Azerbaijani residents,” Babayan said.

The greatest human tragedy in the days of the Karabakh war was undoubtedly Khojaly. During no other military operation did so many civilians, including women and children, suffer as in Khojaly. The actual number of the people killed is still debated today—differing figures are put forth and official Baku continues to use the Khojaly tragedy for its own political ends.

How many people were killed in Khojaly? Different numbers have been put forward at different times – from 200 to more than 600. Thomas de Vaal considers the number made public following the investigation conducted by the Azerbaijani parliament, 485 people, to be most realistic. This number includes all the people killed during the Khojaly operation, including those who froze to death during the escape.

A member of the parliamentary commission, Namik Aliyev, told the visiting Helsinki Watch team in April 1992 that 213 residents of Khojaly had been buried in Aghdam. Another official, Aydin Rasulov, assured the same team members that the number of civilians killed exceeded 300 - not counting those who had frozen to death on the way to Aghdam. On February 27, 1992 the imam of the Aghdam mosque showed American journalist Thomas Goltz a list of 477 names of people killed. The same year Azerbaijani newspaper Ordu printed a list of 636 people killed in Khojaly.

On March 4, 1992 the Nagorno Karabakh parliament made the following statement: “The neutralization of weapon installations of the Azerbaijani armed units and the unblocking of Nagorno Karabakh's only airport near the village of Khojaly…have prompted wide reaction from Azerbaijani and foreign mass media. The armed units of the National Army of Azerbaijan stationed in Khojaly had completely blocked the roads connecting the Askeran region of NKR with the capital of the republic, and had periodically bombarded Stepanakert and other Armenian settlements with heavy artillery. It was possible to overcome the famine that had originated as a result of the blockade only by putting the airport into operation. Although the NKR self-defense forces had left a corridor for the residents of Khojaly to leave the zone of military operations, a portion of the civilian population of the village didn't avail itself of this opportunity. All of them – some 200 people - by their own wish and without any precondition were accompanied to the other side of the border. The Presidium of the Supreme Council of NKR once again declares its readiness to settle all the problems between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan exclusively by peaceful means, at a negotiating table.”

What Chingiz Mustafayev filmed

Azerbaijani cameraman Chingiz Mustafayev shot footage in the vicinity of Aghdam first on February 29 th and then on March 2 nd . It was his footage that was shown at the extraordinary session of the Azerbaijani parliament. The locality where Mustafayev had filmed the corpses was under Azerbaijani control, or more precisely, under the control of armed units of the Popular Front – this can be clearly seen from the footage. It is a fact that the corpses had been mutilated before the second time Mustafayev filmed on March 2 nd . Mustafayev informed Mutalibov of this. It was President Mutalibov, incidentally, who had sent him to film the scene. According to certain information, Mutalibov warned: “Chingiz, don't say a word to anyone that something is wrong, or they will kill you.” The area where the corpses were mutilated was at a distance of a few hundred meters from the positions of the Popular Front and was easily controlled by snipers. Mustafayev simply would not have been able to film in those areas if they had they been under the control of the Karabakh forces.

A few months later Mustafayev was killed while doing routine filming inside a sector of military operations controlled by the military units of the Popular Front. Why he was killed is still debated. The Karabakh side insists that Mustafayev was a victim of Khojaly. Both Mutalibov and Mustafayev firmly believed that the Popular Front had tried to come to power by taking advantage of the Khojaly tragedy. This is what happened immediately after Khojaly, and what is more, it was Mustafayev's footage that was used to accuse Mutalibov.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in front of the Azerbaijani parliament building to demand Ayaz Mutalibov's resignation. During the March 5, 1992 extraordinary session of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan, Elmira Kafarova submitted her resignation and the Dean of the Medical Department at Baku University, Yaghub Mamedov, was elected speaker of parliament. The demonstrators kept the parliament building under siege, holding parliament members inside. Mutalibov called the unfolding events a “coup d'etat”. On March 6 th he resigned and Mamedov became the acting president until the presidential election was held.

This is how Mutalibov commented on these events: “My resignation was forced. I had no intention of leaving but when I realized that everything had been scrupulously planned and the left and the right had united against the president I decided not to provoke confrontation.” The retired president believed that following his resignation the Karabakh issue would be speculated on within the internal political struggle and the further spread of war would become irreversible. “The Popular Front blamed us for not being able to solve the Karabakh problem. And now they have to give the people assurances that they are able to solve it. There are two ways: either more resolute actions, since I was blamed for indecision, or a compromise… Suppose, they succeed in uniting all our forces. In that case all this could turn into a large-scale war without any clarity regarding who is going to win, though no one in Azerbaijan wants to fight anymore.”