The Khojaly incident in no way matches the atrocities committed by Azeri authorities in Baku and Sumgait. Some casualties happened during a war February 25-26, 1992, when the Armenian forces had laid siege to Khojaly, where the airport was located. Azeri forces, using the facilities at Khojaly, had taken Stepanakert under their guns and had paralyzed the entire region, choking the Armenian population to eventual death. After laying siege to the city, the Armenian forces opened a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of the Azeri civilian population. The reluctance of the Azeri forces to stop the evacuation, betrayed a palace intrigue back home in Baku. A plot was being hatched to overthrow Azeri president, Ayaz Mutalibov, who a month after his resignation, gave an interview to the Czech journalist Dana Mazalova (Nezavisimaya Gazeta) stating, “According to the Khojaly inhabitants who escaped, all this was organized to dismiss me. Some forces acted to discredit the president. I don’t think that the Armenians, who act very skillfully and accurately in similar situations, could let the Azerbaijanis gain any documents exposing them in fascist actions. …. The general reasoning is that a corridor for the people to escape was really left by the Armenians.”

Ten years later, again referring to the Khojaly story in Novoye Vermya magazine, he repeated his statement that “the massacre of Khojaly inhabitants was organized by somebody for achieving a coup d’état in Azerbaijan.”

But who was that “somebody?” Certainly a person who benefitted from the outcome of the situation. It was Heydar Aliyev, who was waiting in the wings to establish the Aliyev petro-dynasty in the country. It was reported by the Bilik Dunyasi Agency that in 1992, Heydar Aliyev, the late father of the current Azeri president, Ilham Aliyev, made the following cynical statement: “We will benefit from the bloodshed. We shouldn’t interfere in the course of events.”

It is ironic that the Aliyev clan, which ultimately benefitted from the Khojaly incident would turn the story upside down, to blame Armenian forces.

Azerbaijan is investing its resources to gain political points in its fight against Armenia. Yerevan certainly cannot match that caviar diplomacy, but the nation’s leaders need to pull their heads out of the sand to see that in reality. The oligarchs, functionaries and their dependents are all benefitting from the government resources yet they do no invest any of their ill-begotten gains from the state to benefit the country. Armenia needs to set up an effective multilingual media system to reach the outside world to tell the its side of the story, especially to the Turks or Azeris in their own languages. The message needs to be as persistent as their opponents and as compelling. The apparatchiks in the government have been convincing their superiors that they have been supplying stories to diasporan papers, as if the UN General Secretary or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for that matter, are eager readers of the poor community publications.

Instead of facing the enemies outside, some members of the government have been using their resources to hire the agents of yellow journalism to smear their opponents, forgetting that it is not the time to fight their personal enemies but the mortal enemies of the homeland.

All diasporan Armenians do is to organize some rallies in New York, Washington, Los Angeles or various world capitals.

Understandably, there are some measures beyond the reach of the leadership in Armenia. They cannot match Azeri spending but they can use their resources more prudently and effectively.

Pragmatism in not the monopoly of Azerbaijan.