2016 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
The 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, also known as the Four-Day War,[a] April War,[24][25][26][b] or April clashes,[c] began along the former Nagorno-Karabakh line of contact on 1 April 2016 with the Artsakh Defence Army, backed by the Armenian Armed Forces, on one side and the Azerbaijani Armed Forces on the other.
The clashes occurred in a region that is disputed between the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh and the Republic of Azerbaijan. The region includes the former Soviet Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and the surrounding districts of Azerbaijan under the control of Armenian forces at the time. Azerbaijan claimed to have started a military operation to prevent purported continuous Armenian shelling of civilian areas in Azerbaijan.[29] However, there was no evidence of Armenian shelling. Until the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, the clashes were the worst since the 1994 ceasefire agreement signed by Artsakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia.[30][31]
A ceasefire was reached on 5 April between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Moscow. The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities also welcomed the oral agreement.[32][33] After the agreement, both sides accused each other of violations. Azerbaijan claimed to have regained 20 km2 (7.7 sq mi) of land,[34] while Armenian officials suggested a loss of 8 km2 (3.1 sq mi) of land of no strategic importance.[35][36] However, the International Crisis Group reported that those heights were of strategic importance.[37]
Officially, Baku reported the loss of 31 servicemen without publishing their names. Armenian sources claimed much higher numbers varying between 300 and 500.[38] The Ministry of Defence of Armenia reported the names of 92 military and civilian casualties, in total.[39] The US State Department estimated that a total of 350 people, both military and civilian, had died.[40] Official sources of the warring parties put those estimates either much higher or much lower, depending on the source.
Aftermath
Casualty estimates
According to the US State Department, Azerbaijan "took a huge number of casualties, including comparatively", although the number was not specified. Overall, a senior member of the US State Department estimated 350 casualties on both sides, including civilians.[40]
Official estimates of the warring parties are far apart from each other. According to official statements of the involved sides, 91 Armenian[7] and 31 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed during the clashes,[14] and several pieces of military equipment from both sides were destroyed. Also according to official statements, fifteen civilians (9 Armenian and 6 Azerbaijani) were killed in the conflict.[10][15] Azerbaijani Defence Minister Zakir Hasanov declared that 560 Armenian servicemen were killed during the clashes and Armenian casualties were 10 times higher than Azerbaijani casualties. Hasanov claimed these figures were pronounced by the Armenian parliamentary commission which was established to investigate April clashes.[13]
Various non-official Azerbaijani sources, per research of social networks, put the actual number of Azerbaijani soldiers killed at 94, while two remain missing.[14][140]
According to Christoph Bierwirth, UNHCR representative in Armenia, more than 2,000 people left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia amid the clashes.[141]
In 2017, dozens of servicemen of the Azerbaijani army were arrested and tortured and accused of spying for Armenia. Azerbaijani military expert, retired colonel Isa Sadigov said that the combat losses over these four days showed that "the country is not ready and not able to conduct military operations." Terter region (where mass torture took place a year later) is located in close proximity to the line of contact between the warring parties. The expert believes that the “Terter case” itself appeared due to the desire of the command to “hide its shortcomings” during the April 2016 battles.[142]
Analysis
There has been no conclusive assessment on the outcome of the clashes.[143] Neil Melvin, director of the armed conflict and conflict management programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, stated that "Azerbaijan suffered heavy losses for relatively minor territorial gains, this is nonetheless seen as a victory, after 25 years of a sense of having been defeated".[144]
Several analysts noted that the clashes did not result in significant changes.[145] Matthew Bodner wrote in The Moscow Times on 6 April that "the previous status quo has been more-or-less preserved."[146] Independent Armenian journalist Tatul Hakobyan, who visited the frontline during the clashes, remarked that the death of scores of soldiers of both sides was "senseless" as no real change occurred. He stated: "Azerbaijan did not win and Armenia did not lose."[147] Russian military expert Vladimir Yevseyev said that the Azerbaijani offensive, despite the initial victory, was not a success because the Azerbaijani side has numerous killed soldiers and destroyed tanks.[148]
The International Crisis Group assessment stated that Azerbaijan gained "small but strategically important pieces of land".[149] Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer believes that Azerbaijan "won the first round of fighting".[150] Former Minister of Defence of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Samvel Babayan stated that the territories gained by Azerbaijan have strategic importance, and that Armenia lost these territories within one hour.[151] The governments of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh rejected his criticism.[152]
Chatham House fellow Zaur Shiriyev suggested that Azerbaijan prompted a "carefully controlled escalation [that] served to raise international awareness of the fragility of a status quo which Azerbaijan regards as unfavourable, in order to galvanize the international mediators and put pressure on Yerevan to be constructive at the negotiating table."[153] British journalist Thomas de Waal, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, does not believe that the Azerbaijani offensive was meant as a full-scale military operation but rather as a limited attempt to bring the conflict back on the international agenda and put Armenia under pressure. He believes that after the April violence, the conflict is unlikely to return to its semi-quiet state and that a new round of fighting would be harder to contain than previous conflicts.[154]
Christine Philippe-Blumauer noted, "Russian official reactions suggest that Russian troops would not actually decide to intervene in favor of the Armenian side, should the conflict scale-up to a fully-fledged war yet again."[155]
According to one analysis, the conflict highlighted the sidelining of the OSCE Minsk Group, which has a mandate to mediate negitations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and its replacement by Russian mediation. The OSCE Minsk Group organized a meeting only several days after the beginning of the fighting, and by that time the parties had already come to a ceasefire agreement in Moscow.[156]
Following the conflict, Russia started to increase political and economic ties with both Azerbaijan and Armenia. In Yerevan, Gazprom agreed to increase gas supply to Armenia, and decreased the price of gas, which was already low. In Baku, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had a discussion about a railway line from Russia to Iran through Azerbaijan. Dmitry Rogozin, then deputy prime minister of Russia, said that Moscow is the biggest supplier of arms to both sides and will continue to be so in the future. People who worked on the settlement process said that none of the sides would have trust in a permanent peace established by Russia alone. As the former US ambassador to the Minsk Group Matthew Bryza puts it, "The key to resolving this is to get the two presidents to have sufficient trust in each other, and Russia is not going to be able to do that".[157]
EU – High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy urged the parties "to stop the fighting immediately and observe the ceasefire".[194]
Federica Mogherini
UN – Secretary General demanded all sides involved in the conflict to immediately cease all armed hostilities and observe the terms of ceasefire.[195]
Ban Ki-moon
EU
OIC – The condemned "the attack by Armenian forces on the borders of occupied Azerbaijani territories" and Yerevan's "disrespect of the unilateral ceasefire" announced by Baku.[201]
