At present, the most dangerous manifestation of modernity is terrorism; it knows no borders and threatens all society. In different periods of history, the Azerbaijani people have experienced bitter consequences of terrorist acts and genocides. To this day, the actions committed by Armenia against the Azerbaijani people, who have been subjected to ethnic terror, contradict human morality, national law and international law. Armenians have been hostile towards us throughout history and have committed numerous terrorist acts. The Garakand tragedy is one of such bloody historical events. On November 20, 1991, Azerbaijani Mi-8 helicopter was shot down by Armenian armed formations near the village of Garakand in the Khojavand district. This was another violence committed against our nation.

On 7 November 1991, representatives of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Russia and Armenia met in Baku. The main purpose of this meeting was to draw attention to the Karabakh war and the people being oppressed. For this reason, the Co-Chairs agreed to visit Khankendi to witness the events taking place in the region. On 18 November 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev’s personal assistant, calling from the Kremlin to Baku, asked the Nagorno-Karabakh leadership of Azerbaijan to hold a Security Council meeting in Nagorno-Karabakh, as representatives of Moscow and the Armenian leaders who were making territorial claims were expected to attend. Official Moscow also voiced a request that State Secretary Tofig Ismayilov and Prosecutor General Ismat Gayibov be sure to attend the meeting.

The last list of the participants was approved by Ayaz Mutallibov on November 19 and sent to Moscow, the Nagorno-Karabakh leadership and Aghdam port. The delegation was to be headed by the Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, Viktor Polyanichko. Deputies Vagif Jafarov and Vali Mammadov were excluded from the list. They were replaced by representatives of military units and law enforcement. But late at night the list was amended: the names of Polyanichko and a number of representatives of the law enforcement were removed from the list, and deputies Vagif Jafarov and Vali Mammadov were included instead. On 19 November 1991 at 11pm Ayaz Mutalibov approved the new list. The list of persons travelling to Karabakh was sent to the leadership of Nagorno-Karabakh, Aghdam airport, military commandant and Moscow. The activities of the delegation on the territory of Karabakh were supervised by Colonel Georgi Septa, head of the KGB department for the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, Colonel Vladimir Kushnarik, deputy military commandant, and Colonel Oleg Osenov, head of the Khojavand militia. Since the summer of 1991, all land routes in Karabakh and neighbouring areas have been closed. Armenians controlled these roads. A state of emergency and curfew were imposed in the region at that time. Despite this, Armenians carried out terrorist attacks on the roads leading to Azerbaijani-populated villages, staged ambushes, shot cars and buses. The situation in the region was very complicated and contradictory. Villages were occupied one after another. Khojavand district was occupied on 18 November 1991. People forced to leave their native land gathered in Aghdam. At that time the situation in Aghdam was very tense. In the morning of 20 November, under the leadership of State Secretary Tofig Ismayilov, representatives of the state and government arrived in Aghdam and held the meeting with the population expelled from the villages. The delegation then travelled to Aghdam airport to visit Khojavand and see what was going on itself.

But some time later, at 02:05 pm, the radio communication with Mi-8 helicopter flying from Aghdam to Garakand was interrupted by radars installed on military vehicles in Gulablin and Yenikend directions, which were controlling the runways of Aghdam and Khojaly airports. Preliminary information about the communication disruption was passed to Khojavand. However, initial information about the tragedy was given about six hours later. The command of military units in Aghdam, Khankendi and Khojavand remained silent.

According to calculations, the Mi-8 helicopter flying at an altitude of three hundred metres above Garakand was shot down on 20 November 1991 at 02:42 pm. Initial information about the tragedy reached the presidential administration at 07:55 pm. However, the news about the tragedy was broadcast from Khankendi at 03:30 pm in the news section of the programme “Motherland and Citizen”, broadcast in Armenian. On the same day, at 04:15 pm, Yerevan Radio interpreted the news as an “accident”. The tragedy was reported at 04:40 pm by Tehran Radio and at 05:00 pm by Moscow Radio.

The victims of Armenian terrorism were: Tofig Ismayilov – State Secretary of Azerbaijan, People’s Deputy of the USSR; Vagif Jafarov – People’s Deputy of the USSR, former Chairman of the Shusha District Council of People’s Deputies of Azerbaijan; Ismat Gayibov – Attorney General of Azerbaijan; Mahammad Asadov – Major General, State Adviser of Azerbaijan (former Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan); Vali Mammadov – People’s Deputy of the USSR; Gurban Namazaliyev – People’s Deputy of Azerbaijan, First Deputy Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources of the Republic; Zulfi Hajiyev – Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan; Osman Mirzoyev – Honored Journalist of Azerbaijan, Head of the Press Department of the Office of the President of Azerbaijan; Ali Mustafayev – correspondent of Azerbaijani television; Fakhraddin Shahbazov – operator of Azerbaijani television; Arif Huseynzadeh – lighting cameraman of Azerbaijani television; Rafig Mammadov – Assistant Secretary of State of Azerbaijan; Nikolay Zhinkin – Major General of the Internal Service, Commandant of the Emergency Area; Vladimir Kovalev – Major General of the Internal Service, Head of the Department of Internal Affairs of the NKAO of the Republic of Azerbaijan; Sergey Ivanov – Head of the NKAO Department of the Ministry of National Security of Azerbaijan; Igor Plavskiy – Prosecutor of the NKAO; Sailau (Sanlan) Serikov – Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan; M.D. Lukashov – Major General of Militia, Head of the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR; Oleg Kocherov – Lieutenant Colonel, Representative of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR; Vyacheslav Kotov – major, crew commander; Dmitriy Yalovenko (Yakovlev) – lieutenant, senior pilot-navigator; Gennadiy Dolgov – captain, senior technician.

Initially, according to the Azerbaijani delegation, 12 bodies were fully identified, 3 – partially, and the identities of the rest were verified by an expertise.
This was an insidiously prepared terrorist act against recently established independent Azerbaijan.

Recommended literature:

1. Səlimbəyli, Şöhrət Əlvənd oğlu. Terrorizm : qan çilənən torpaqlar / Ş. Ə. Səlimbəyli, M. Dostuyev ; red. Q. Ə. Hacıyev. IV kitab. - Bakı : Avropa nəşriyyatı, 2013. - 504 s.
2. Ağa Xəlilqızı, Sevinc. Əlvida söyləmədən... : [şeirlər, məqalələr, müsahibələr] / S. Ağa Xəlilqızı ; red. D. Osmanlı. - Bakı : Elm və təhsil, 2020. - 256 s.
3. Qolts, Tomas. Azərbaycan gündəliyi : dəliqanlı jurnalistin müharibə dağıntıları yaşamış neftlə zəngin postsovet respublikasındakı sərgüzəştləri: [ing. dilindən tərc.] / T. Qolts. - Bakı : TEAS Press, 2019. - 584 s.
4. Велимамедов Мамед. Карабахская война 1991-1994. - М.: Эдитус, 2021. - 596 с.
5. Goltz, Thomas. Georgia Diary : a chronicle of war and political chaos in the post-soviet Caucasus / T. Goltz. - New York ; London : M.E. Sharpe, 2006. - 262 p.