In these episodes, we are looking back at the Four Day War which took place in April 2016 between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This is an attempt to understand its impact beyond those four days, especially in the most immediately affected and still vulnerable areas.
Since 2014, skirmishes on the line of contact between Karabakh and Azerbaijan, as well as between Armenia and Azerbaijan have become ordinary events. But the April war was different in both scale and impact. In the end, it showed that a military victory by any side would come at a very high military cost and human cost.
In part 1, we speak with Bishop Bagrat Galstanyan who lives and works in Tavush, a province in Armenia’s northeast that has longest border with Azerbaijan, with roughly 23 villages near the Line of Contact.
During those 4 days of the war, 64 military servicemen, 13 volunteers and 4 local civilian residents killed and more than 120 wounded on the Armenian side.
Azerbaijan’s official number of casualties was 31, although various Azeri media reported that some 100 servicemen were killed in combat or were missing following the war.
This escalation was the worst since a 1994 ceasefire brought an end to a six-year-long war over Nagorno Karabakh.
Beyond this, the war had an impact on the lives of those directly under fire as well as on the political situation.
In part 2, we speak with Emil Sanamyan, who is a Washington D.C.-based reporter and a fellow at the Institute of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern California.
ARMENIA UNLOCKED brings you fresh perspectives on issues shaping Armenia.
Subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow host and executive producer Syuzanna Petrosyan on Twitter.
