You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query-continue>
    <backlinks blcontinue="0|Main_Page|3092" />
  </query-continue>
  <query>
    <backlinks>
      <bl pageid="130" ns="0" title="OpenDaylight SDN Controller Platform (OSCP):Main" />
      <bl pageid="287" ns="180" title="Project Proposals:Guidance for New Projects" />
      <bl pageid="788" ns="0" title="Release/Hydrogen" />
      <bl pageid="856" ns="0" title="Defense4All:Main" />
      <bl pageid="1164" ns="0" title="Affinity Metadata Service:Main" />
      <bl pageid="1277" ns="0" title="Documentation/Docs and Structure" />
      <bl pageid="1400" ns="0" title="Group Policy:Architecture" />
      <bl pageid="1437" ns="0" title="Southbound plugin to the OpenContrail platform:Main" />
      <bl pageid="2194" ns="0" title="Wiki gardening" />
      <bl pageid="2702" ns="2" title="User:Lissacoffey" />
    </backlinks>
  </query>
</api>