By Eduard Arakelyan
The Investigative Committee of Armenia has once again reported that 3,833 people were killed as a result of the 2020 Second Karabakh War, of whom 3,755 were military personnel and 78 were civilians. A total of 191 people are listed as missing: 172 military personnel and 19 civilians.
These figures were announced by the Investigative Committee after Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan, while in Prague, stated that 4,800 people had been killed on the Armenian side as a result of the 44-day war.
The president’s statement effectively returned the discussion to the initial estimates that were circulated by unofficial sources in the first days after the war. But there is a fundamental difference between unconfirmed estimates amid the information chaos, particularly during the first post-war months, and a statement made by the country’s president years after the war has ended.
The result is a strange and, to put it mildly, shameful situation. The president publicly cites a death toll that is almost 1,000 higher than the official figure provided by the state body responsible for such calculations.
One might assume that he simply is not personally interested in the exact number of people killed. But these were citizens of his country, each of whom died in the war. Such an attitude toward the question of casualties is unacceptable for a person holding his position. He may not know many details, such as economic indicators, demographic challenges, or the technical characteristics of weapons. But he simply must know the number of citizens killed in the largest war in Armenia’s modern history before publicly citing it. That is the minimum standard of competence expected of a head of state.
Following the public uproar, the president’s office explained what happened by saying that the president had misspoken. In other words, according to the official version, it was simply a mistake.
Such an attitude toward official statements is becoming the norm in Armenia. Moreover, the ruling party has made the admission of mistakes part of its political practice. First, a decision is made or a statement is issued. Then, when the consequences become catastrophic, there is an admission that a mistake was made, after which the matter is considered closed. Publicly acknowledging mistakes is not inherently problematic. The problem lies in a system in which mistakes cease to have a cost and remove the need to answer for words, decisions, and their consequences.
If There Is an Exact Figure, There Must Also Be a Named List
If the government has accurate data on the number of people killed and missing, then these figures must be based on specific individual records, meaning that the names and relevant information of each person must be known. State statistics of this kind cannot simply appear out of nowhere. Behind every figure is a specific name, documents, and circumstances on the basis of which a person was included among the dead or missing.
So why has the full official list of names still not been presented? Especially since the problem is not the fundamental impossibility of creating such a list. A named list of those killed in the 44-day war exists, for example, on the website of the Fact Investigation Platform. It lists 3,246 people killed, with the data collected on the basis of information from the Insurance Foundation for Servicemen.
However, there is a difference of 587 people between that list and the officially reported figure. If the authorities possess complete data, they should publish the named list of those killed and missing in the 44-day war on the basis of which the official statistics were compiled.
At the same time, government representatives have offered a peculiar explanation for the absence of such a list. Last year, former parliamentary speaker and current Secretary of the Security Council Armen Simonyan, responding to journalists’ questions about why the names of those killed in the 44-day war were not being published, stated that publishing names and personal information was inappropriate because it involved personal data.
But the names of citizens killed in a war cannot be treated as secret information or as information that the state is entitled to conceal under the pretext of protecting personal data. Armenian legislation does not establish any general prohibition on making the names of those killed in war public. It is even more absurd to invoke such restrictions six years after the end of the war.
An Independent Verification Is Necessary
However, publishing a named list alone is not enough. A public commission independent of the government should then be established to conduct an independent verification.
The sole purpose of such a commission should be to establish the facts. It should verify whether the published list corresponds to the actual number of people killed, whether any military personnel or civilians have been omitted, and whether there is documented evidence of people who were killed but, for whatever reason, were not included in the official records.
Every citizen should have the opportunity to submit documents and evidence if they believe that a particular person is missing from the official list. Only after such an open and independent review can the question of the actual number of people killed in the 44-day war receive a definitive and verified answer.
Until then, the discrepancy between official and unofficial figures will inevitably remain a space for speculation.
The Price of Public Silence
Another, no less uncomfortable question arises: to what extent does Armenian society itself demand the truth from the authorities about that war?
If society genuinely wants to know what happened in 2020, it must demand direct answers to all the questions, including the reasons for the defeat, the fate of those missing, and the identity and circumstances of every individual who was killed.
A society that does not demand accountability from those in power effectively allows the authorities to decide for themselves what to say about the war and what questions to leave unanswered. Ultimately, the authorities can evade uncomfortable questions only as long as society allows them to do so through its silence.
The even more unpleasant and shameful aspect of this entire story is that six years after the war, Armenia continues to publicly debate the total number of people who were killed.
That is precisely why the issue must be closed not with another statement from the Investigative Committee or another accidentally cited figure, but with a published named list and an independent public verification of that list.
The country must stop counting its dead approximately. These are thousands of individual human lives, which the state has an obligation to account for by name. Because behind every number is a specific person and a specific life.
All those who died deserve to be remembered, each one of them.
The article was originally published on CivilNet.