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

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

Author:Thomas Goltz [Goltz, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Russia & the Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9780765602442
Google: kUoKnwEACAAJ
Goodreads: 892520
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1998-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


Note

1. About a week after my tour, Mustafa got his wish: Kurdish villagers in the trans-Karabakh province of Kelbajar managed to capture six Russian soldiers as they were making their way overland from Karabakh back to their base in Armenia. Put on display to reporters in Baku, the six admitted that they had been recruited at a Russian 7th Army base in Armenia and ‘allowed’ to go to Karabakh as a company by their commander, picking up a per diem of 5,000 rubles with an additional 7,000 for each Azeri tank they destroyed—about $20 and $35, respectively. This might seem ridiculously low by world mercenary standards, but it was a princely sum in the former USSR, given the large pool of unemployed Russian youths during the painful transition to the market economy. More interesting was the fact that the six men—more pathetic kids than supermen, if truth be told—had been AWOL for over one year but were only listed as such by the Russian Military Prosecutor after they had been condemned to death in Azerbaijan—at which point Moscow demanded their extradition. Hoping to placate Moscow, Heydar Aliyev sought a parliamentary pardon for the men in the summer of 1993, at which point the six were sent home. I had mixed feelings about it. They were far too young for any sort of death, especially death in a noose; but if they were dumb enough to kill for a living, maybe they were dumb enough to die for one. It is hard to have sympathy with guys who would slit your throat for no better reason than to pocket the equivalent of twenty bucks to blow on vodka and cheap whores.



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