THE FAILED COUNTRY

The hostage drama in Yerevan continues to keep the political elite of Armenia on toes. It all started on a Sunday morning, July 17, when some thirty insurgents onboard a truck rammed the gates of a police regiment building and occupied it. During the attack, Colonel Arthur Vanoyan was killed while Lieutenant-colonels Aram Hovhannisian and Hrachya Hostegian and Ensign Gagik Mkrtchian were wounded. The terrorists did not suffer losses. Among the hostages were several policemen including the deputy chief of Yerevan police Valery Osipian.

Armenian MP Nikol Pashinian, who was allowed to enter the captured building for negotiations, announced the requirements of invaders: “The armed group demands the release of Jirair Sefilian, the resignation of Armenia president Serzh Sargsyan and the transfer of power to the people of Armenia”.

The police cordoned off the building and the surrounding area but did not dare storming. On July 20, the members of “Sasna tsrer” released five of the hostages. The government, trying to take proactive measures, began detaining the supporters of Sefilian to prevent the proliferation of protest. The scale of protests was not too large during the early days. A small crowd of activists fenced the building to prevent the law enforcement from assaulting it.

Immediately after that Yerevan witnessed the clashes between the supporters of invaders and the police, which resulted in injures of the dozens of policemen and civilians.

Meanwhile, Yerevan supplies quite controversial information – the police prepares to assault the building, police has exchanged fire with militants, all of the hostages were released, and new hostages, as the doctors arrived to provide medical care, were captured. However, at the time of this writing, the situation is as follows: a large number of militants still holds the regiment building. Two criminals have surrendered, and two more - the leader of the militants Pavlik Manukian and his son – were injured in the shootout and taken to the hospital. The supporters of militants hold rallies on Khorenatsi Street, where the building is located, every day. There are reports on protests against the government and in support of the militants at other cities of Armenia, particularly in Gyumri.

A list of persons negotiating between the government and the militants is quite remarkable and includes some famous personalities like Vitali Balasanian and Alek Yenigomshian (he was arrested on June 27 on suspicion of aiding the armed group).

Main actors

In order to have a larger image of ongoing events, perhaps, one needs to know its main actors. In fact, the events started well before July 17 when one of the leaders of the radical opposition Jirair Sefilian was arrested in Yerevan on June 22. According to the Investigative Committee of Armenia, the police officers having arrived at the scene of traffic accident on Tsitsernakaberd Highway of Yerevan found two AK-74 automatic rifles with 120 cartridges in one of the cars. “As a result of investigations, it was identified that Sefilian and his armed accomplices had planned to seize buildings, construction and telecommunication facilities, including the TV tower of Yerevan. He had organized the illegal purchase, transportation and storage of weapons. The members of the group had planned to carry out certain criminal acts after the April war (in Karabakh - Ed.)”, says the press release.

Based on evidence obtained during the investigations, eight people were charged, six of them were arrested, and one is still wanted.

“The charges are based on evidences and the confessions of group members”, reports the Investigative Committee.

This is not the first arrest Sefilian: in 2006 and 2008, he and his colleagues were arrested on charges of public appeals to forcibly change the constitutional order and to prepare for the riots.

Sefilian was born in Beirut where he gained his first combat, or rather a terrorist experience. In 1990, he moved to Armenia. Initially, he was a military instructor then, in 1991, he went to Karabakh.

Sefilan is one of the prominent figures in Armenian politics; however, he has an extremely low profile when it comes to the adoption of real solutions. In fact, he is one of the hopeless outcasts who can talk loud and sharp but can do almost nothing. He was in consistent opposition to all of the previous Armenian criticizing them for a variety of reasons.

Jirair Sefilian has always been accusing President Sargsyan of “betraying the Armenian Case” and willingness of the latter to provide “territorial concessions” to Azerbaijan. However, he had never shown any evidence. But he has always promised “to gather volunteers,” “to get weapons” to go to Karabakh. However, as we now can see in Yerevan, those weapons fired not on the front line but in the capital of Armenia.

Sefilian and his colleagues represent the interests of Armenia's most militant, semi-secret and paramilitary groups of the Armenian Diaspora and enjoy their support.

It is, therefore, logical that Sefilian is one of the few Armenian politicians advocating the withdrawal of the Russian military base in Gyumri, which he considers “a conductor of Russian interests in the South Caucasus.”

Pavlik Manukian, the leader of “Sasna tsrer” is another famous personality in Armenia. A veteran of the Karabakh war, he had repeatedly demonstrated his “heroism” killing unarmed women and children, while seizing every opportunity to pose in front of cameras, playing more to the audience. In recent years, he was also in radical opposition to the Armenian authorities and had fiercely criticized the negotiation process between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Manukian was wounded and arrested along with his son, a member of the armed group. It is interesting, however, to know the names of individuals “negotiating” between the armed group and the law enforcement agencies: Alek Yenigomshian and Vitaly Balasanian.

Alek Yenigomshian is well known to intelligence agencies around the world. Being one of the leaders of the terrorist organization ASALA, he and his girlfriend Suzy Maheserejian were arrested at one of the Swiss hotels back on October 3, 1980 after the terrorists had accidentally blown up a self-made bomb. Like many former members of ASALA, Yenigomshian ended up in Armenia after 1991, where he was honored as a national hero. After a while, being one of the most faithful representatives of the militant part of the Armenian Diaspora, Yenigomshian same as Sefilian had become an ardent member of the opposition to the ruling Karabakh clan. Many Azerbaijanis of Karabakh who had survived the terrible events in Khojaly as well as the massacre in Aghdaban village of Kalbajar still remember Vitaly Balasanian. He is behind many acts of violence and genocide against Azerbaijani civilians. After the war, he became the deputy minister of the separatist “Nagorno Karabakh Republic” in the rank of a general. Despite his modest status, Balasanian has a huge impact on paramilitary organizations in Armenia. As Sefilian and Yenigomshian, he is considered one of the leaders of the “shadow government of Armenia.”

As we can see, the main actors have a common feature that unites them: they all have a terrorist background and are opponents of the current regime (or so it seems) and they all relate to the semi-secret paramilitary structures that are largely supported by Diaspora.

One thing is clear: Sefilian and his company had perceived the peace talks ongoing between Armenia and Azerbaijan extremely nervously. The negotiations prevent the implementation of their objectives, which is to start a new bloody war. Therefore, the more is the level of diplomatic success, the more active and challenging behave the supporters of Sefilian. It is clear that the main reason of ongoing events, as always, is the occupied Azerbaijani lands. Even before the events, many analysts have suggested that Yerevan would try by all possible and impossible means to derail the negotiation process in an attempt to save its reputation at international level. Perhaps, this explains the behavior of official Yerevan?

Earlier, the authorities in Yerevan have tried some provocations on the front line to derail the negotiations but having received a devastating blow to its “vaunted” defense line in Nagorno-Karabakh broken by the Azerbaijani army within a few hours in April of this year, they do not risk repeating such attacks.

Besides, at the meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg Serzh Sargsyan made a clear commitment not to violate the ceasefire and follow the line of substantive negotiations on the liberation of Azerbaijani lands.

Thus, the Armenian authorities fail to make provocations on the front line. Now they have decided to go for a terrorist attack within the country.

In Armenia, all large-scale domestic political movements are accompanied by a series of terrorist acts. The experts advise not to forget one of the most vehement terrorist attacks of the recent times - parliamentary shooting on October 27, 1999, when five terrorists led by Nairi Hunanian committed an impressive slaughter right in the Armenian parliament. The entire political elite of Armenia had been eliminated. Then, too, the attack occurred during intense negotiations over the Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents. This means that whatever are the cnsequences of this protracted rebellion in Yerevan, it pursues one single goal: to derail the negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh.

But will terror and bloody provocations help this time? Frankly speaking, all attempts of the Armenian law enforcement agencies have failed so far. Now in Yerevan the people wonders how come that the local intelligence services could not anticipate this action organized by Sefilian and his associates? The fact that terrorists took police officers as hostages is already a subject of parody. Logically, the terrorists could not target an object, which is armed and a priori prepared for an unexpected attack. This can happen only in two cases: either the terrorists made a mistake with choosing a “suitable” facility, which seems to be unlikely or... they got a green light from the top ranked officials of the ruling power. After all, the assault of the building by law enforcement agencies followed only many days after the attack. Does that mean that the authorities simply did not have a political will... or an intention to take measures?

According to Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Regional Studies and Policy of the Russian State University for the Humanitarian (RSUH) Sergey Markedonov, the diplomatic power of the moderator of recent negotiations, Russia, has been undermined by internal weakness of Yerevan: “The government is also responsible for the events of 2015 on Baghramian Street (protests against the increase of electrical power tariffs), and the current events on Khorenatsi Street. It shares this responsibility with the radicals who cannot impatiently want to destroy the achievements for a sake of some strange dreams”. It is worth mentioning open anti-Russian rhetoric during the recent events in Yerevan. Same as in last summer, the participants of mass demonstrations made statements full of fervent critic of the Russian authorities, along with offensive slogans.

After the terrorist attack in 1999, the experts have anxiously stated that such methods can jeopardize the very statehood of Armenia. This will mean a real failure of not only the security forces but the entire political class. The crisis over the hostages once again confirms that the Armenian society is not immune from terror, and the local audience does not shy away from similar methods of struggle. Unfortunately, the cult of terror in Armenia is as real as the events held in honor of the anniversary of the “Armenian genocide”.

The experts think that the terrorists are often prone to blow up on own mines. One of the characters of the acclaimed Hollywood blockbuster “The Kingdom”, the Saudi police officer Faris Al Ghazi, advises his American colleagues: “Every bomber at some point gets bitten by his work”. It is necessary to look for a man with deformed hands – that is the expert in making bombs. Today, this “work” seems to be biting the whole country.