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Azerbaijan once more tries to understate the amount of the losses its armed forces experienced during Karabakh war from 1991 to 1994. Probably, they exclude all the memebers of different Azerbaiajani militias who took part in an agression against the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh Republic.

It's more convenient for Azerbaijan to call the deaths of those militants from various groupings as “civilian casualties”. Reduction in the number of losses gives Azerbaijan an opportunity to save on benefits for the families of the dead servicemen.

The issue of benefits and compensation gained urgency after the self-immolation of Karabakh war veteran Zaur Hasanov in Baku.

However, the most important aspect is that Baku longs for the effect of the propaganda. It has already been reported that 11.5 thousand Azerbaijanis died in the war. In reality, the losses of Azerbaijani armed forces constitute no less than 28.5 thousand people, which is 5 times more than the Armenian losses.

In February of 2007 a group consisting of 9 Azerbaijani NGOs and 3 experts released their data, according to which in the course of military operations in Karabakh 24 thousand Azerbaijani military servicemen died and another 4.5 thousand is missing.

However, official Baku is not satisfied with this data. It tries to present part of its military losses as civilian ones; moreover by cutting the number of losses in its armed forces Baku reduces the difference that exists between the losses of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

As “Lenta.ru” reports, the list of the Azerbaijani dead servicemen in the course of Karabakh war has been published in the website of State civil service mobilization and conscription into the army of the republic. The Civil service claims that the total number of Azerbaijani servicemen, who died in Karabakh war, is 11.557 thousand people. Although the list is not yet complete, it has first official data on the dead from 1991 to 1994, reports the Azerbaijani news agency “APA”.

It is stated in the article that the list includes only the names of the servicemen, whereas some of them are still considered to be missing. Civilians are not included in the list. Until now, official Baku has preferred not to disclose the official data on victims of the conflict with Armenia. However, that information was collected and systemized long ago, since the veterans of Karabakh war and the families of the dead servicemen got compensations.

Earlier Azerbaijan presented various numbers of the losses, but still there is no list with the surnames.

On 27th of October in 1993 the president of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev declared that Azerbaijan had 11 thousand dead and 25 thousand wounded in Karabakh war. A week later, Aliyev reported about 16 thousand killed and 22 thousand wounded, while already on 25th of December of 1993 he said that during the conflict with Armenia 18 thousand Azerbaijanis were killed and almost 50 thousand got wounded. In the course of official meetings in May-June of 1994 the president of Azerbaijan reported about the 21 thousand servicemen killed in the war.

The son of Heydar Aliyev, the current president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev in an interview with “Al-Djazira” TV channel, answering to the question of the correspondent about the number of servicemen killed in Karabakh war said. “The figures differ, but, of course, there were losses during the military operations. During the war we lost 12-15 thousand people, about how many Armenians were killed, the Armenian side knows better.” The article as well reports that the Armenians released the figures of the dead Armenians in the course of war already 10 years ago. The list of 6 thousand surnames, including the losses of Armenia as well as Nagorno Karabakh, appeared in March of 2004 in the national newspapers of the republic in two languages, Armenian as well as in Russian. The encyclopedia called “Artsakh war 1988-1994” (Artsakh- Armenian name of Karabakh) was published. It included detailed information about the victims of the war.

When talking about the Azerbaijani losses the author notes, “Lack of precise figures and the local politicians’ constant juggling with those figures became a campaign of propaganda that accompanied the war and created the cruel image of an external enemy. Why Baku has postponed the publication of the list of victims for 20 years is still unclear.”

Azerbaijan cuts the lists of veterans as well as the dead of the war. Consequently, people are being deprived of social benefits. They don’t know how to solve the issue about the status of veterans in Azerbaijan. “The debate about the precision of these figures will be an ongoing one,” “Lenta.ru” writes.

To sum up, it can be stated that the difference between the data presented by NGOs (28.5 thousand killed or missing) and the “official data” recently articulated, is 17 thousand people. How the Azerbaijani authorities are going to explain to the families of the servicemen, why their relatives have been excluded from the list, is yet unclear.

By putting the names of the militants of the “local terrorist groupings” into the list of “civilian population” Baku aims at strengthening its image of a “victim”, which has been intensively built by Azerbaijani propaganda. It’s possible that allowances would be given to those families, to make them silent and hide the falsification.

On the other side, part of the killed servicemen from the Azerbaijani side are the mercenaries from the former Soviet Army, the Afghan mujahedins, Chechen fighters, etc. the Azerbaijani authorities won’t include them in their list of losses, for sure.