by Thomas Goltz

February 26th, 1992 seemed like a regular working day. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati was back in town to finally bestow diplomatic recognition on Azerbaijan, as well as to respond to American Secretary of State James Baker III's recent comments about the growing threat of Iranian influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

It was not the Islamic Republic of Iran that posed any threat to the region, intoned the wiry Iranian emissary, but the United States America. In addition to being the country responsible for the continued bloodshed throughout the world, it was America that was actively fomenting conflict in Karabakh. The Islamic Republic, in contrast, was a country interested in peace between nations and peoples. To that end, Dr. Velayati had brought a peace plan for the increasingly bloody and senseless conflict in Karabakh-and one both Armenia and Azerbaijan had agreed to sign. He himself planned to visit Karabakh the next day.

This was newsworthy, and I was getting ready to file a story on the subject to the Washington Post when Hicran came rushing into my work room. She had been on the telephone with the information section of the Popular Front, and had some very distressing news: sources in Agdam were reporting a stream of Azeri refugees from Karabakh filling the streets of the city, fleeing a massive attack. There had been many exaggerated reports about the conflict germinated from both sides, and perhaps this was just another, but I thought it best to start working the phone. Strangely, no one in government answered. Perhaps they were all at the Gulistan complex, having dinner with the Iranian delegation. So I waited for a while, and then started calling people at home. Around midnight, I got through to Vafa Gulizade.

"Sorry for calling so late," I apologized. "But what about this rumor ?" "I can't talk about it," said Vafa, cutting me off and hanging up.

A sense of unease filled my gut. Vafa was usually polite to a fault. Perhaps he was sleeping? I decided to call again anyway, but the number stayed busy for the next half hour. Maybe he left it off the hook, I thought, and made one last effort and the call rang through.

"Vafa," I said, apologizing again. "What is going on?"

"Something very terrible has happened," he groaned.

"What?" I demanded.

"There has been a massacre," he said.

"Where?"

"In Karabakh, a town called Xodjali," he said, and then he hung up the phone again.

Xodjali.

I had been there before. Twice, in fact. The first time was in September, when we had staked out the airport waiting for Boris Yeltsin to come through. The last time had been a month before, in January, 1992. By then the only way to get to Xodjali was by helicopter because the Armenians had severed the road link to Agdam. I remembered that little adventure all too well. Doubting the many reports from the Armenian side that the Azeris were massively armed and that their helicopters were 'buzzing' Armenian villages in the territory for fun and terror, I had traveled out to Agdam with Hugh Pope of the (London) Independent to chat with refugees about their situation.

Refugees were easy to find at Agdam. They were all over the place. The heaviest concentration was at the local airfield for the simple reason that many of the refugees didn't want to be refugees anymore: they were going back to their homes in Xodjali. Their pride had silenced their better sense. One was a 35-year old mother of four by the name of Zumrut Ezova. When I asked why she was returning, she said it was better 'to die in Karabakh' than beg in the streets of Agdam.

"Why can't the government open the road?" shouted Zumrut in my ear over the roar of the nearby chopper's engines, "Why are they making us fly in like ducks, ready to get shot?"

I didn't have an answer.

Then someone was lurching toward me from across the airfield. It was Alef Khadjiev, the commander of airport security at Xodjali and the gentleman who had saved us from the Agdam drunks during the Yeltsin visit three months before. He had been pretty chipper then, but despite his broad smile for me, he was no longer fun and games. I asked him what the situation was in his hometown.

"Come on," said Khadjiev. "Let's go to Xodjali--then you can see for yourself, and write the truth if you dare."

Behind him stood a MI-8 helicopter, its blades slowly turning. A mass of refugees were clawing their way aboard. The chopper was already dangerously overloaded with humanity and food-stuff, and waiting on the tarmac was even more luggage, including a rusted, 70mm cannon and diverse boxes of ammunition.

"I'm not going," said Pope, "I've got a wife and kids."

The rotor began to twirl faster, and I had to decide quickly.

"See you later," I said, wondering if I ever would.

I got aboard, one of more than 50 people on a craft designed for 24, in addition to the various munitions and provisions. I thought to myself: this is insane; there is still time to get off. Then it was too late. With a lurch, we lifted off the ground and my stomach smashed through my ears. I could see Pope waving at me while walking away from the field, and wished I was with him on terra firma. The MI-8 cork-screwed up to its flight altitude of 3500 feet-high enough to sail over the Askeron Gap to Xodjali and avoid Armenian ground fire. Two dozen helicopters had been hit over the past two months, including the crash/kill not only the one filled with officials in November, but another 'bird' a week before. The machine we were flying in had picked up a round through the fuel tank the week before, the flight engineer told me. It was lucky that fuel was low and the bullet came in high. This was all very reassuring to learn as we plugged on through the Askeron Gap, bucking into head-winds and sleet.

Through breaks in the cloud cover I could see trucks and automobiles driving the roads below-Armenian machines, fueled by gas and diesel brought in via their own air-bridge from Armenia (or purchased from Azeri war profiteers).

Finally and mercifully, after a trip that seemed to take hours but really only lasted maybe 20 minutes, we began our corkscrew descent to the Xodjali airfield. No-one who has not been aboard such a flight can appreciate what I felt when the wheels touched ground.

I am alive! I wanted to shout, but thought it most appropriate to stay cool and act like I did such things twice a day.

"How do you feel?" Alef Khadjiev asked me.

"Normalno," I lied in Russian, cool as cake.

Meanwhile, the chopper was mobbed by residents-some coming to greet loved ones who had returned; others trying to be the first aboard the helicopter when it went back up and out. All were there to get the most recent news from the rest of Azerbaijan: newspapers, gossip, rumors.

The reason for the excitement was pretty obvious: there were no working phones in Xodjali, no working anything: no electricity, no heating oil and no running water. The only link with the outside world was the helicopter-and those were under threat with each run. The isolation of the place became all too apparent as night fell. I joined Khadjiev and some of his men in the make-shift mess hall of the tiny garrison, and while we dined on Soviet army SPAM with raw onions and stale bread to flickering candle light, he gave me what might be called a front-line briefing.

The situation was bad and getting worse, a depressed Khadjiev told me. The Armenians had taken all the outlying villages, one by one, over the past three months. Only two towns remained in Azeri hands: Xodjali and Shusha, and the road between them was cut. While I knew the situation was deteriorating, I had no idea it was so bad.

"It is because you believe what they say in Baku," Alef chortled. "We are being sold-out, utterly."

Baku could open the road to Agdam in a day if the government wanted to, he said. He now believed the government actually wanted the Karabakh business to simmer on to distract public attention while the elite continued to plunder the country.

"If you write that and attribute it to me, I'll deny it," he said. "But it's true."

The 60 odd men under his command lacked both the weapons and training to defend the straggling perimeter. The only Azeri soldiers worth their salt were four veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan who had volunteered to try and bring some discipline into the ranks of the defenders. The rest were green-horns-if the Armenians shot off one round, they would answer with a barrage of fire and waste half their precious ammunition. So it was that night: around two AM, I was awoken from my sleep by a distant burst of fire coming from the direction of a neighboring Armenian town called Laraguk, about 500 yards away from a part of Xodjali called, ironically enough, 'Helsinki Houses.' The Armenian sniper fire was returned with at least 100 rounds from the Azeri side, including bursts of cannon fire from an old BTR, newly acquired from some Russian deserter. It was the only mechanized weaponry I saw in the hands of the Azeris. The fire-fight continued sporadically until dawn, making it impossible to sleep. No-one knew when the Armenians would make their final push to take the town; everyone knew that some night they would. Xodjali controlled the Stepanakert airport and was clearly a major objective for the Armenians. They had to take it. I thought to myself: I would, if I were them. With that thought came another that filled me with unease: what would the residents do when they did?

In the morning, people were just standing around-literally. There was not a single tea shop or restaurant to idle away the time, so people just stood in small knots in the mud and gravel streets, waiting. The only person I saw actually do something was a very fat girl who worked as a sales clerk in the fabric shop where there was nothing to sell. I first saw her rapidly waddling to work at nine in the morning; the intensity of purpose was unique, so I followed her into her shop. I next saw in a video, lying dead on the ground with a pile of others-but that was later. The rest just waited around, waiting for the ax to fall. I just prayed that it wouldn't be while I was there.

We wasted the morning away around the airport; a photographer from an Azeri news agency happened to be around, so the military boys put on a good show, rolling out of their bunkers and running behind the old BTR, guns blazing. 'Let's do it again, but this time, let me take pictures from the front," the cameraman asked.

I felt sick and refused to have anything to do with the theatrics. 'These guys are going to die,' I said to myself. 'And I do not want to die with them just because they are so stupid to be shooting at shadows that shoot back.' Alef Khadjiev seemed to agree. We sat together in silence, watching his men pose for the camera, running hither and yon with brave looks carved on their physiognomies.

'Let's try that one again!' crowed the photographer.

There was not much else to say.

Finally, around noon, I heard the tell-tale whine of a chopper moving high over the Gap. Thank God! crowed, but tried to look indifferent. Then I made my way toward the airfield, and just in time to see the overloaded bird disgorge its cargo of food, weapons and returning refugees. One kid got off with a canary in a cage, or maybe he was getting on. I think it was the former, but honestly, I cannot say for sure. There were a lot of people at the airport, trying to get on and off that lone bird, and I was merely one of them.

When those getting on seemed to be more than those getting off, I tried to get on myself. I didn't care that the chopper was carrying twice or three times its weight limit, nor did I mind that part of that weight was a corpse-one of Khadjiev's boys picked off by a sniper the night before. I wondered if we had had Soviet-style SPAM dinner together, but thought it impolite to pull back the death-sheet and stare. The engines gunned and whined, and we lifted with a lurch-but this time I was not afraid of the flight. I just wanted out. We climbed and climbed, cork-screwing high into the sky and blowing over the Askeron Gap at 3500 feet with tail-winds. Maybe we took ground fire; I do not know. But this I did: I would never go back to Xodjali again.

There were no need for vows.

The last helicopter flight into the surrounded town was on February 13th.

The last food, save for locally grown potatoes, ran out on the 21st.

The clock was ticking quickly toward doom.

It struck on the night of February 26--the anniversary of the massacre of Armenians at Sumgait in 1988. Only this time, vengeance would demand not an eye for an eye, but whole human heads.

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