Humans and war do not go together. You won’t find man there, in war. Battling, man goes beyond oneself, becomes another entity, possessed, non compos, both I and you and any other one are fused into a new, unprecedented, unclassified organism chained together by one and the same aim – to kill. To kill and survive by dint of it, and only after that to fall apart into separate individuals, which a moment back were not humans but spare parts of a… machine? a beast?. Well... of something beyond classification. Something which had been running, shooting, hollering, not feeling oneself, being impersonal ueber-individuum…

“...we ran to attack, shooting, in a united rush, but they shot back real hard and then I got it I’m somewhat overmuch ahead and where are ours? why falling back? forward we go! attacking! and I looked back and saw myself, my body dropped behind, on the ground over there, that’s when I lost consciousness…”

They pulled him out, he stayed alive, became a human...

“...it was a leave for two days, I came home, our apartment on the third floor, not destroyed, my wife was there, our two-month-old son, but all the same I couldn't just relax, too uptight all the time, the baby start squealing and I hardly keep myself back not to grab and smash it against something, anything, and drop from the balcony…”

He did manage to keep himself under control, it’s his baby after all. And were it not his?.

Alexander Matrosov, Unan Avetisian and many others, who repeated their deed, posthumous Heroes of the Soviet Union, they did not plug with their bodies the bullet spitting embrasures of bunkers to save their attacking buddies from being mowed down by the machine gun fire. No. They were thrown into the hole by the mutual need of the rushing machine-beast to survive, used by the collective subconscious they were.

There is no individual human in war but components in the war composition.

There are no atheists in the trenches where every one is at god’s disposal and knows it too well. It’s not the god they teach about at madrasah or seminaries, who they kindle smelly substances for, offer prayers to, sing up in their hymns. This god is bigger than any of religions. This god is mightier, more merciless and senseless than them all. There is no use to pray to him, no way to understand, even less to avoid. This god is Chance.

Were I asked if Armenians had perpetrated beastly atrocities, my answer is: but they were not Armenians then!.

Were I asked if Azerbaijanis had perpetrated beastly atrocities, my answer is: but not Azerbaijanis were they then!.

Non-humans from both sides, just war-components.

Azerbaijanis were the passengers burning inside the petrol torch of a bus, Armenians were whose torn-out hearts were stuck into the spirits-filled three-liter jugs and put by the tombstones in Baku cemeteries.

And lots of other things I know of, which I have no wish to ever know yet still know and this knowledge chokes me. Mercy please! Finish me off! I know too much, much more than I am capable of carrying on!.

I disseminate this here ethnic strife? It was disseminated and fanned up long before me and go on and on and on because war-components are not only those carrying assault rifles.

I don't care for knowing who was to start the fire. I am for the Zero Option canvassed for by Popkov who came in summer 1992 to Baku and later, over Yerevan, to Stepanakert to wander about the elitist offices, pleading: let’s start from zero, let’s try at being humans.

 Who did hark him, that god’s fool, unshaven, uncombed, in a bum’s raincoat and no necktie?

There are no sacred wars, any war is dirty and when it is over (that’s a lie, it is never over but withdraws for tactical considerations, regrouping its components), and when there comes a seeming respite, the dirt and shit get varnished over, some or other spare parts get dangling flops and are proclaimed Heroes of Nation, they get inserted into History textbooks so that the secondary education would have tools for preproccessing the next portion of cannon fodder with…

And those who lost the war are announced war criminals and passed over to some or other Hague to be sentenced, even though they also were fighting for their Homeland and saving the world at large, and if in the process there happened some crimes against humanity then you just can't have one without the other, there is no medal of just one side, ask any order awarded warrior if in doubt...

People! Be vigilant! I love you! People! Hey!

Damn! The parents missed baptizing me properly, John-Desert-Crier would suit me better or at least Johnny-Who-Hoots…

(Abridged content from Link 1 at the current bottle bottom):

"Khojalu City and its two suburbs were populated by 7000 civilians, hundreds of whom were killed at the storming on the night 25 to 26 February 1992 by hands of Armenian bandits and the 366-th Motorized Infantry Regiment personnel or frozen to death fleeing over the mountains..."

Then follow graphical descriptions of mutilated bodies of Special Police Officers and simply shot and killed civilians;

- testimonies of foreign (predominantly Russian) mass-media correspondents;

- a lengthy discussion whether there was a humanitarian corridor left for the exodus of civilians before the battle;

- details of the case of an Azerbaijani journalist pledging that such a corridor existed, and 15 years later sentenced for 8 years of imprisonment for that erroneous opinion, yet after 4 years of incarceration he was granted amnesty;

- samples of the appropriate reaction by the international community to the genocide in hand;

- list of fiction and other kinds of works based on the events;

- presentation of the selected viewpoints from both sides to the conflict.)

. . . . . .

[The following is an aside commentary by me, who was not an eyewitness and construed the events on the basis of the basements’ rumors though not just on them.]

Starting 1987, I regularly passed Khojalu Village on my bus trips to Stepanakert City and back watching a village of about 400 cottages, and three 3-story apartment blocks of 2 sections each, two more same-sized buildings were underway, plus two nearby hamlets of a score of cottage-hut-barn.

The 366-th Infantry Guards Motorized Regiment was pulled out from Stepanakert a month before the storm of Khojalu, having left a handful of petty officers at the regiment quarters.

“The Regiment Commander Political Deputy called us to his office and said, 'I can’t give you a direct order but you have to stay...'”

(The statement was heard not in the basement but on the 2nd floor of the house traded by the owners of our one-room flat (located on the 1st floor) for their house in Baku in the aftermath of the Sumgait tragedy. At the dinner table was seated (among the others) a mercenary, whose armored personnel carrier had not entered Khojalu yet supported the storm with his machine gun fire from outside the village limits.)

“...about 1 am. I saw one stalking nearer with a 'stovepipe' (MPATS), he did not know I had a night vision gizmo...”

The humanitarian corridor certainly existed which practice was employed throughout that war because it allowed to exponentially decrease casualties born by the attacking force.

According to independent Azerbaijani sources (on the Net), the proposed humanitarian corridor was used 24 hours before the storm for driving to Aghdam (the nearest Azerbaijani city) herds of cattle and sheep to their owners, who had already been evacuated to Aghdam (and this is absolutely beyond any comprehension! Spies and spies everywhere! However, working for the wealthy owners only).

The official site dedicated to the Khojalu Tragedy mentions curtly the participation of petty officers of the 366th Infantry Regiment (!) in the unsuccessful advance from the Azerbaijani Aghdam City against the Armenian Askeran City.

[Aside: some ubiquitous regiment indeed, battling on all sides against all sides. Were it them shouting back over the radio from their tanks advancing to Askeran city, ‘Where are your fucking infantry men? Prod those sheep! I am not going to the MPATS burrows without your fighters!’?

Because a tank attack against a well-trenched forces is a raw suicide.]

(Abridged content of Link 2 at the current bottle bottom):

"A year before the storm of Khojalu the Soviet leadership arrived at a decision to resolve the problem of Mountainous Karabakh by means of military punitive efforts code-named 'Ring Operation'.

(Below follows a schematic description of actions pattern in day to day carrying out the operation, as presented in the wiki site dedicated to the “Ring Operation”.)

“Early in the morning a village would be surrounded by soldiers of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. Then the blockaded village was entered by Azerbaijani Troops of Special Police to start searches for weaponry and terrorists, and check the IDs of the villagers', (which actions were) accompanied by beatings, rape and robbery. At times, together with the Troops of Special Police the villages were also entered by Azerbaijani civilians for marauding. The local inhabitants were presented with the ultimatum to leave the village forever. As a rule, this actions were repeated for two or three days before the actual deportation.

The execution of “Ring Operation” resulted in plunder and destruction of 19 Armenian villages, murder of more than 100 civilians (for the most part kids, women and senior citizens), 600 people were wounded, hundreds missing...”

No I am neither disseminating nor in search for who was to start it all and the above quotation is just to visualize the means and ways of a war-components production line process.

 . . . . .

At the end of the humanitarian corridor, about 700 meters from the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam, the crowd of refugees from Khojalu Village were hit by a volley of GRAD missiles.

 Phedais did not use that military equipment yet, all the attackers were equipped with were assault rifles and white bandage fastened over the khaki trench coat sleeve.

Those rockets burst far away from the Khojalu battle. That night the fleeing civilians from Khojalu walked 20 km, there remained just 700 m to the city of hope, security, life... It was a full discharge of missiles from a GRAD installation which did not participated in the storm of Khojalu. It was a bloody dawn.

In a couple of hours mass-media correspondents were brought to the spot of the tragedy, on a helicopter.

Some inhuman war-spare-parts did not want at all to let the conflict die out...

"When leaving Azerbaijan (another quote from the official Azerbaijani site about the Khojalu Tragedy) some servicemen from the 366th Motorized Infantry Regiment attempted at taking outside the Republic big undeclared sums in foreign currency..."

[And again, in the best traditions of the Soviet Army, the personnel got fucked up by the Commander Political Deputy! Although it’s not quite clear which side had paid the confiscated dollars. Were they ripped off the tank men who failed to capture the Armenian Askeran City? Or the money was on those who fired from their armored personnel carrier at Khojalu? Were the petty officers not smart enough to get out of the region via Yerevan? Why to come to Azerbaijan with Armenian bribes on them?

 In a nutshell, some complete lunacy in the style of post-reconstructional absurdity, where no Thomas de Vaal will ever find any ends in or out.

Although the guy was nobody’s fool in his a within-limits-red scuff, when he came to collect material for his book. I noted it back in 2002, a Holland family name and a job at the BBC, both at once. And the work was produced in so streamlined manner of statements that both sides quote him at their sites now in innocent belief he pulls for their side.]

Later on, the 366th Guards Motorized Infantry Regiment was dissolved… (Which is fucking dishonesty at all! Not fair way to treat guardsmen!)

The storm was started at midnight sharp, as planned. Valyo the Phedai, when forcing the river in the western outskirts of the Khojalu Village, slipped off a boulder and fell. The end-February-mountain-river water felt dead cold but he got up and ran after his comrades-in-arms.

 As a component to the current war-machine he ran and fired and hollered although being drenched thru and thru.

At about 1.20 am, in a village lane he was lucky to come across a burning house which fire gave him an opportunity to dry up his sides. An hour later, in a deserted house at some other place in the village still echoing with stubborn shooting out, he found a casserole of hot barmy borshch. He ate it, not all but until got warmed inside.

His mother, of course, wouldn’t approve of the action. All her 4 children were born in Baku where she worked at a factory, packing baby perambulators, while her husband wandered about the USSR as a seasonal construction worker.

In 1989, so as to stay alive, they moved from Baku to Stepanakert.

Next year Valyo finished School 9 there and a year later he was already a full-fledged phedai in the group fighting in Krkjan. When in the storm of Malubalu besides the nasty mortar battery they captured also a big farm, he was awarded 4 sheep and a horse, all of which prize he brought home.

‘No’, said his mother, ’take them all back, we don’t own the animals’. If you ever try to drive 4 sheep and a horse from the School 9 neighborhood to Malubalu you would understand Valyo’s frustration, but he did it, he always was an obedient son. However, on that tragic night, he ate that borshch not cooked by his mother because he was too cold.

At 4.40 am, he caught a hostage (not a special police officer). He felt swoony and sat on a bench with his back to the hedge, and demanded of his prisoner to behave (which that promised) yet, just in case, he took the clip from his AK and shoved it in the inner pocket of his trench coat, before dozing off.

His sleep was disturbed with an AK barrel prodding at his forehead, he pushed it away and said, ‘Stop it, moron!’.

In response, the iron barrel hit hard and he awoke to see the stardust lover Gavo from Yerevan lying on the ground, and his buddy Syamo standing over Gavo whom he had just knocked out.

"It’s Valyo! He’s ours! Can’t you see the bandage, you fool!" shouted Syamo.

"He talked Azerbaijani, not Armenian!", whined the comer from Yerevan...

Valyo and his group stayed quartered in Khojalu. His hostage together with 5-6 other ones were kept in the same house (but in the room with a grated window). The prisoners were made to feather the fouls caught in the village to make the noodles tastier. In a month the Red Cross took them away…

But it was a flash forward, so back to February 26 –

From Khojalu they brought a pregnant woman to Stepanakert. Both the hospital and the maternity hospital was then in the city's safest basement – under the previous Regional Committee of the CPSU.

The woman gave birth to two babies. I never asked if they both were boys or girls, or just twins. Too late we grow wise enough to inquire about the most important…

______

List of links:

1. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A5%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%8F

2. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F_%C2%AB%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%86%D0%BE%C2%BB_(1991)

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