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Thomas Goltz: Khodjali tragic episode was a big turning point for me emotionally

07 June 2007 10:21 (UTC +04:00)

â€œAnd as for the situation in ’late’ Azerbaijan being ’not too bad,’ I think I would disagree. There was a high level of political tension between the Mutalibov government, the Popular Front, inside the PF itself, plus the looming war that everyone knew would happen. As for ’challenges,’ there were plenty, starting with the reality that I was in Azerbaijan illegally (no visa) and could not even stay in a hotel. Also, as pointed out in my book, communication was hellishly difficult. Not only was this in the pre-cell phone age, it was the pre-internet/email age as well. Thus, sending information was always a problem. When I was working in Turkey as a reporter, I would collect information on an event, call an editor in New York and confirm that the newspaper wanted the story at such and such a length and with such and such a focus, then I would write it and send it via international fax, which always worked. In Baku in 1991, there was seldom the possibility of consulting with editors about a story because the international (and local) telephone lines were just so bad. Thus, when I would run into a story, I would have to write it first and then spend hours trying to get a decent line out of the country, and usually have to dictate it because the fax was no guarantee. This was all very frustrating.
After awhile, I had stacks and stacks of unpublished stories building up on my computer. Either the editors did not want them or I was unable to file them in a timely manner. One day, I strung them all together in a news-letter format that I sent to some friends which I entitled ’Getting Out The News Blues,’ and realized I had several draft chapters of a book. The original idea was sort of a celebration of the Popular Front over Mutalibov and the ’crocodiles’ (old communists) and I thought I had finished it with Elchibey’s election. Was I wrong! Then the real war started more and more political chaos, then Surat’s putsch and Heydar Aliyev’s return. Once again I thought I had finished a book. Once again I was wrong...it still took several more years of frustration, anguish and reporting.
Thomas Goltz in his â€œAzerbaijan Diaryâ€ described the most important and tragic episodes of Azerbaijan.
â€œKhodjali was a big turning point for me emotionally; while I had covered violence here and there (Turkey, etc), February 25/6 1992 was the first time I had covered a massacre and its aftermath (including world indifference, assaults on my integrity, etc etc). But I think the most dramatic moment for me as a ’war correspondent’ was Kelbajar. In order to stop going crazy with fear, I took the decision that I was already dead until I got out of there. It was and is a very strange moment that will stay with me forever. Following Heydar Aliyev and Abulfaz Elchibey was child’s play in comparisonâ€
The information about Khodjali massacre, which I sent to the Washington Post, appeared in the paper on February 28, 1992 one day after massacre. No one wanted believe then that this massacre happened in Karabakh.
Had I NOT managed to talk my editors at the Post into believing my account of Khodjali, it is likely that the event would have been swept under the carpet and forgotten, or at least become dated news. I recall another massacre--Samashki in Chechnya--that I covered by accident, and news of that human catastrophe was almost immediately diluted by the fact that no major western paper covered it until my video footage (about 1 minute) appeared on ABC TV, and just when the reporters started to gather, all attention shifted to the Oklahoma City bombings of Timothy McVeigh and Samashki was forgotten.â€
Responding to the question that many Armenians sources claim that his book is one sided and bias, Goltz said: â€œ’Read the book’ is what I tell them. I think I captured Azerbaijan, contradictions, warts and all. The nicest compliment I have received from an Armenian reader was the desire for ’a Thomas Goltz to have written such a fair book on Armenia,’ meaning that the reader is sick of all the books on Armenia that only praise and flatter.
The journalist said e has not really ’departed’ from Azerbaijan. â€œFirst, I have not really ’departed.’ I am in constant touch with Azerbaijani friends and travel there at least twice a year. I would say that the most surprising changes occured between 1995-1996, when I did stay away for a full year or more. Now, change is incremental. I notice things are better (services, salaries, etc) or worse (the destruction of the Oil Baron town by the insane construction boom in highrises) but nothing really shocks me any more.
On average, I would say I spend at least two or three month a year in Azerbaijan. In 2000, 2001 and 2002 for example, I organized the so-called ’Oil Odyssey’ motorcycle ride down the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and with the pre- and post trip organization, I was spending upwards of five months in Azerbaijan a year then. More recently, this has diminished because of my teaching duties here at the University of Montana, where I have been a Visiting Scholar teaching on the Caucasus since 2005. And I have several projects related to Azerbaijan right now--the translation of my Azerbaijan Diary into Azerbaijani; a book on the Oil Odyssey, a one hour documentary for TV on the same, and a new project I call ’Mugham Comes To Montana’ about the recent tour of Ghadim Sharq group. You will see this piece soon on Azerbaijani TV as well as Azerbaijani-content friendly cable channels in the USA,â€ the reporter said. /APA/