Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic

As a scholar, studying and teaching the history of military conflicts in the Caucasus, I found the book extremely useful. I have visited the region on a number of occasions and listened to the stories told by Chechens, Abkhazians, Armenians, etc. Thomas Goltz's book seems to capture all the pieces of the modern history of Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. I recommended the book to all the students in my classes and if you are doing a research on the first steps of the independent Azerbaijan, "Azerbaijan Diary" is the clear choice.

It is known that no war is just, for every party that is at war thinks that its truth is the only credible one. To put the blame on on of the sides is morally wrong, and the author takes precisely such a wrong position. War crimes have marked the history of the Karabakh conflict, both Azeris and Armenians have commited atrocities. What we desperately need is an objective analysis that would portray Karabakh conflict for what it is. For an American to take a pro-Azeri position means to miss the chance for an objective look at the situation. This book leaves much more to be desired, although one cannot take away the well-written form in which material is presented.

Azerbaijan Diary details in microcosm the difficulties of building a functioning modern nation. The author was a reporter in Azerbaijan during its difficult first years of statehood in the early Nineties and had enough high-level access to give us a personal view of the significant events of its political development, describing the forces at work and the people upon whom they worked. We get vivid descriptions of the problems of pandemic corruption, the temptations of totalitarianism, the difficulties of remaining independent as the nation is wooed by nation after nation with varying interests in Azerbaijan (particularly its rich oilfields), and the poison of ethnic and nationalist strife which leads to a grueling war that could doom the nascent state in its infancy. These pressures make nation-building different everywhere, but Azerbaijan had and advantage over, say, Haiti, in that Azerbaijan has a wealth of natural resources, which gives other nations, potential trading partners, a reason to support it in its quest for stability. This one chance, however, is not necessarily enough to save it from its self-imposed problems, much less the ones visited upon it from without.

Much has been made of the author's pro-Azerbaijan stance on that proto-nation's war with Armenia over the Nagorno Karabakh region. Speaking as someone with no stake in the region, I think Goltz revealed his bias clearly enough to allow us to read his work critically, and I don't know how one might expect someone who lived in Baku, Azerbaijan's capitol, for years not to become partial to his friends. However, accusations that Goltz is a liar, paid spy, collaborator, and propagandist seem unfounded, and the outlandish venom with which they are expressed make it hard for me to take them seriously. Even more disturbing, however, are those who claim that Goltz is doing us a disservice by not engaging in one of those debates about whose ethnic group got to a certain region first and therefore deserves to occupy it for all time. Goltz takes the area as he finds it, explicitly refusing to play the "I got here first" game, which always seems to end up being an exercise in creative history writing and ethnic cleansing. For this I commend him. If more people took this view, problems like Azerbaijan's would be more easily solved - heck, the whole human condition would improve.

Regardless of Goltz's views on Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, he is certainly able to view the heart of the book, Azerbaijan's political development from colony to state, with a detached, even cynical realism. Azerbaijan Diary is a valuable work in itself as a primer on post-Soviet problems and the difficulty of creating order from chaos in the modern world.

I wanted to express my gratitude to the author for telling the truth about Karabakh conflict. I am myself Georgian, but have Azerbaijani and Armenian ancestors too, and I am very ashamed of the inhuman crimes committed by Armenian bandits against Azerbaijani civilians in Karabakh. The value of the book is that it reveals the true face of Armenian propaganda machine which is leading its nation to the great catastrophe. Not only so-called "fathers of nation", "spiritual leaders", and "freedom callers" inspired Armenians to commit the atrocities in Karabakh, but they even tried to blame it on Azerbaijanis themselves, in order to mislead the world community. That is the same if Nazi generals told that Jews killed themselves in Holocaust.

I also admire the bravery of Goltz, who was present at Khojali and Kelbajar tragedies. He very rightly points out the role of Russia in this conflict and how Russia supported Armenia in invading Azerbaijani lands and conducting ethnic cleansing. But he is very far from being biased, and describes the violence from both sides, Azerbaijani and Armenian, and tells the story of this sad war. Unfortunately, the Armenian nationalist press and "historians" still continue to advocate the hatred towards Armenia's neighbors. They lie to yet innocent Armenian youth about "Great Armenia" and "historic rights", distort history and facts, and claim territories from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, everybody who happened to be Armenia's neighbor. As a result, people of Caucasus are dragged into endless conflicts and bloodshed, and still can not gain their true independence from Russian regime.

+AH4-Goltz's book is a fraud, pure and simple. Perhaps, the most detestable fraud created by the Azerbaijani propagandists (with Goltz among them) in recent years is the so-called Hoax of Khojally (Xojalli) Massacre. In late February 1992, when the Armenian self-defense units had to disarm the Azeri military base in the town of Khojally in central Karabakh, gunmen of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan (PFAP) slaughtered some 100 Azeri civilians who were fleeing the embattled town through a land+AH4-+AH4- corridor left for them by the Karabakhi Armenian forces. Later, the PFAP gunmen mixed the bodies of dead Azeris with the killed-in-advance Armenian hostages, which were taken prisoners by them a month earlier. Despite the obvious fact that the Armenian units by no means had any access to and never controlled the territory where the massacre took place, as it was located deep in the Azeri rear, late Azeri agitators accused Armenians in killing Khojally civilians, making a world-wide propaganda+AH4-+AH4- show out of this tragic event.

The reasons of why the PFAP bandits killed Khojally's Azeri civilians remain unclear to date. According to some experts, it happened by mistake (by friendly fire), while in the opinion of the Azeri former president Ayaz Mutalibov it was a deliberate attempt to defame his administration by his rivals from the PFAP. It is notable that after the events in Khojally Mutalibov was forced to resign. Too, the Azeri operator Chingiz Mustafayev, who filmed the dead+AH4-+AH4- bodies and later launched an independent investigation on the Khojaly events, was killed in Azerbaijan under mysterious circumstances, reportedly by PFAP thugs.

At any rate, the Khojally slaughter highlights a key fact that Azeris are still a fragmented nation, parts of which continue maintaining strong regional identities, with tribal self-images sometimes prevailing over the identity as of "the Azeris." Under these circumstances, killing the representatives of a rival clan is not a+AH4-+AH4- totally unimaginable occurrenc+AH4-