Amidst all the publicity this weekend to mark the 20th anniversary of the February 25, 1992 slaughter of ethnic Azeris in the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Khojaly , one interesting bit of fresh information related to those events may easily have been overlooked.
On February 24, the Washington, DC-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released the full transcript (in Russian) of a 2000 interview conducted by current senior associate Thomas de Waal with then Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sargsyan.
In 1992, Sargsyan was the commander of breakaway Nagorno Karabakh's military forces, and, if anyone got the lowdown on what Armenian fighters did or did not do at Khojaly, he is, arguably, the man.
Some of his comments already have appeared in de Waal's 2003 book on the Karabakh conflict, "Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War." But what was left out provides insightful reading -- not only about the details of the war, but also about the psychology of one of its main protagonists.
Asked about the slaughter at Khojaly, Sargsyan does not mince his words: " [W]hen a shell is flying through the air, it doesn't distinguish between a civilian resident and a soldier; it doesn't have eyes. If the civilian population stays there, even though there was a perfect opportunity to leave, that means that they also are taking part in military operations . . . "
Sargsyan concedes that "some form of ethnic cleansing" took place in Karabakh, adding that "It's not possible otherwise."
"But we didn't think up this method. They thought this up," he said in reference to the Azerbaijanis. "when, with the help of their militia, they kicked our people out of the Hadrut and Shusha regions" of Karabakh.
Granted, this interview is just one take on the story. Nonetheless, for those readers trying to get a better grasp on the complexities of the Karabakh conflict, it provides a valuable tool.
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