By Ivan Gharibyan

February 26, 1992. The Khojalu tragedy is one of the bloody pages of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Nineteen years have passed, but Azerbaijan has been abusing the fact, making it priority of its anti-Armenian hysteria. The Aliyev clan goes on abusing the Khojalu tragedy to create an image of "inhuman Armenians that committed genocide in Khojalu."

To spite Armenians, the Azeri authorities have for almost two decades tried to prove a "genocide" committed by Armenians. Azerbaijani propagandists` desire to exaggerate and lay the responsibility on Armenians that they got entangled in their lies by showing the public pictures of dead bodies that have nothing to do with the Khojalu tragedy.

Like the Armenian pogroms in Baku and Sumgait, the Khojalu events were largely accounted for by the domestic political situation in Azerbaijan. Specifically, it was the confrontation between the then post-Communist authorities of Azerbaijan led by Ayaz Mutalibov and the Popular Front of Azerbaijan (PFA), which was ready to get power at any cost. It was not a problem for the national-fascist PFA to provoke a massacre of its own nationals. Their main aim was to overthrow the communist Ayaz Mutalibov.

The first president of Azerbaijan has been deported from the country and is now living in Moscow. His name can only be called in the context of "betrayal of national interests."

The incumbent Azeri authorities could not invent anything better. Ayaz Mutalibov made an "unpardonable error" by saying at least part of the truth about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In an interview to Nezavisimaya Gazeta of April 2, 1992, he refuted the Azerbaijani interpretation of the Khojalu events.  

"The Khojalu survivors say that it was orchestrated to get me to resign. A force was discrediting the president. I do not think that Armenians, who expertly deal with such situations, allowed Azerbaijanis to get documents exposing Armenians` fascist actions. Some forces must have bee interested in the pictures being shown at the session of the Supreme Council and the whole responsibility lain on me. If I said it was the Azerbaijani Opposition, they would say I was slandering them. However, the general vein is that Armenian left a corridor for civilians to leave. Why were they to fire? Especially in a territory near Agdam, where there were sufficient forces that could help the people. Or they might have arranged for civilians to leave. It was a practice then," Mutalibov said. Ayaz Mutalibov, who was then President of Azerbaijan, was much better informed of the situation than the "national leader" Heydar Aliyev, who had lived in Moscow for years and later moved to Nakhichevan. Much less so is the "crown prince" Ilham Aliyev.

The very claims about the "Khojalu genocide" made by official Baku can easily be explained. The Aliyev clan had to find a "counterbalance" to the Armenian pogroms in Baku, Sumgait, Kirovabad, as well as ethnic cleansing throughout Azerbaijan.

As a result, the Azeri victims in Khojalu - victims of the Azerbaijan-unleashed war and domestic political struggle - turned into trump for the Aliyev, which long ago broke all the records in distorting historical facts.

Civilians killed in Khojalu on February 26, 1992, were actually victims of the war Azerbaijan unleashed only to lose it. And Baku`s attempts to strengthen the authoritarian regime will not rest their souls.