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 then fall apart into separate parts 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, in one common rash, against the counter firing but then I got it I’m too much ahead and where are our line, why falling back? on we go! looking back I saw myself, my body’s back, on the ground over there, that’s when I lost consciousness…”

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

“...I got a leave for two days and 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, at the baby squeals I had to yank myself back so that 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 sealed with their bodies the embrasures of bunkers to cover their attacking buddies from the machine gun fire. No. They were thrown into the hole by the common need of the machine-beast to survive, by the collective subconscious.

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 aware of it. 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. 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 put in the spirits-filled three-liter jugs leaned to 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 egalitarian offices asking: 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, regroup its components), and when there comes a seeming respite, the dirt and shit get varnished over, some or other ones get dangling flops and are proclaimed Heroes of Nation, they get inserted into History textbooks so that the secondary education would have what to prepare the next portion of fodder with…

And those who lost the war are announced war criminals and passed over to some or other Hague for a verdict even though they also were fighting for their homeland and saving the world on the whole, 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 guy 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):

"The 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 bands and 366-th Motorized Infantry Regiment or frozen to death fleeing over the mountains..."

Follows graphical descriptions of mutilated bodies of Special Police Officers and just 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 got 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 on my bus trips to Stepanakert 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.

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

“The Political Commander called 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 exchanged by the owners of our one-room flat (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 a distance.)

“...about 1 am. I saw one stalking nearer with a stovepipe, 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 in the attacking forces.

By 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 also the participation of petty officers of 366th Infantry Regiment (!) in the unsuccessful advance from Aghdam 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 advancing tanks, ‘where are your fucking infantry men? Prod those sheep! I am not going to the stovepipes 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 made the decision to resolve the problem of Mountainous Karabakh by means of the military punitive efforts code named 'Ring Operation'.

(Below follows a schematic description of actions pattern in day to day carrying thru 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 also check the passports 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 not disseminating, not in search for who was to start it all and the above quotation is just to visualize the means and ways of war-components production line.

. . . . .

At the end of the humanitarian corridor, about 700 meters from the Azerbaijani city of Aghdam, the crowd of refugees from Khojalu 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 pea-jacket 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 in 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 (citing again the official site about the Khojalu Tragedy) some personnel of 366th Motorized Infantry Regiment were caught attempting to take 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 Political Commander! Although it’s not quite clear which side had paid the confiscated dollars. Were they ripped off the tank men who did not manage to take the Armenian Askeran City? Or those who fired from their armored personnel carrier at Khojalu were 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 in innocent belief he pulls for their side.]

Later on 366th Guards Motorized Infantry Regiment was dissolved… (Which is fucking dishonesty at all! Not fair to deal with guardsmen like that!)

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 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 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 a big farm too, he was awarded 4 sheep and a horse which 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. Yet now he did eat 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 pea-jacket, before dozing off.

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

* * *