Transitions Online, Czech Republic
Jan 24 2005
Unwanted Brotherly Aid
by Anna Hakobyan, TOL correspondent
Armenia bucks the trend and sends troops to Iraq, to the chagrin of
Iraq’s Armenian community.
YEREVAN, Armenia–Other countries may be pulling their troops out or
thinking of doing so, but there is one country–Armenia–that is
doing the reverse: On 18 January, Armenia sent troops to Iraq for the
first time.
Yerevan’s small contingent of 46 noncombat servicemen will operate in
the Shiite city of Karbala and the nearby town of al-Hila in a
multinational division headed by Poland–which is itself cutting its
number of troops in Iraq and thinking of pulling them out entirely.
Most of the Armenian servicemen will drive military trucks, while 10
sappers will bring experience gained from de-mining Armenia’s border
with Azerbaijan after the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh, a former
part of Soviet Azerbaijan that is now controlled by ethnic Armenians.
The unit may be small, the mission strictly “humanitarian,” and the
deployment long in the offing (Yerevan promised Washington a year ago
that it would deploy troops), but the decision has spurred
significant controversy in a country that is not only close to the
conflict, but also has a sizable diaspora within Iraq.
The results of a Vox Populi opinion poll published on 12 January
showed that 60 percent of Armenians are against sending troops to
Iraq, and only 6 percent are in favor.
Those divisions were reflected in the parliament when, on 24
December, it voted in favor of the deployment. The leading opposition
alliance, Artarutyun, broke a 10-month boycott of the parliament to
vote and found that it was joined in opposition by a member of the
three-party ruling coalition, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Party (Dashnaktstyun). The motion was carried by 91 votes to 23.
Even the deputy defense minister, Yuri Khachaturov, afterwards went
on record as saying, “I am not delighted with the decision to send
our troops there or with the war in general.”
“If Armenian servicemen were sent to Karabakh to protect their home
country, I would understand this,” said one of the leaders of the
Artarutyun bloc, Aram Sargssian, “but I cannot understand seeing off
Armenian servicemen with fanfare to a country that is in a war for
its independence, its own interests.”
While that that statement highlights deeper questions about the
United States’ campaign in Iraq, the main concern for Artarutyun and
Khachaturov–and for much of the public–is the possible threat to
the community of 20,000 to 28,000 Armenians living in Iraq.
In August, an Armenian church was one of five churches bombed in a
wave of attacks on Iraq’s Christian community. Two Armenian churches
were among the targets in subsequent attacks in October, November,
and December. At the same time the Armenian troops were deployed, the
dangers for Christians were highlighted by the 17 January abduction
of Basile Georges Casmoussa, the Roman Catholic archbishop in Mosul.
(He has since been released.)
The fear is that the deployment will add fuel to the flames. Iraq’s
Armenian community itself has been urging the Armenian government not
to send troops to Iraq, believing it will immediately result in
attacks on Iraqi Armenians. Artarutyun’s Sargssian believes the
effects of the deployment are already apparent. “In the United Arab
Emirates, Lebanon, and Syria, anti-Armenian sentiment is already
emerging,” he told the daily Aravot on 21 January.
Similar concerns were factors in Yerevan’s initial decision to remain
on the sidelines after the 2003 invasion. The government came out
neither in explicit support of nor opposition to the U.S.-led war.
WHY THE CHANGE?
Ministers have been quite open in explaining why the government has
changed its position. After the parliamentary vote, Prime Minister
Andranik Margarian told the newspaper Haiastani Hanrapetutiun that
“Armenia’s presence is primarily symbolic and for political
purposes.” The major supporter of the move, Defense Minister Serzh
Sargssian, has argued that the deployment is needed if Armenia is to
develop its military cooperation with the United States.
It is also a preventative measure designed to avoid isolation, as
Azerbaijan and Georgia already have troops in Iraq.
While seeking to maximize the geopolitical benefits, the government
has sought to reassure the Armenian public, stressing repeatedly that
the deployment is “humanitarian” in character.
Washington-based security analyst Richard Giragosian believes the
government’s calculations are accurate and that the deployment
“offers significant geopolitical gains for Armenia.”
“One lesson for tiny Armenia from [11 September 2001] was the need to
seize the new opportunities while minimizing the risks from such a
dynamic shift in international security. In the wake of 9/11, for
example, Azerbaijan was able to exploit and exaggerate its role or
entry in the war on terrorism to a much greater and more effective
degree than Armenia.”
The situation was the same prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
“Armenia was portrayed as a reluctant or even resistant nation,”
Giragosian says. “In U.S. eyes at that time, the misperceptions of
Armenian policy and the rather inaccurate image of Azerbaijan as the
new loyal ally were only strengthened by the twin perceptions of
Armenia as little more than a Russian vassal or garrison state, or as
a weak, isolated state thoroughly controlled by its Russian ‘ally.'”
“Given the participation of its neighbors, Armenia cannot afford to
abstain from strategic engagement” such as involvement in Iraq,
Giragosian believes.
However, Armenia’s contingent will remain the smallest from the
Caucasus. Azerbaijan has 150 troops in Iraq, and Georgia plans to
increase its force to 850. The Armenian contingent’s tour of service
is six months. It is unclear whether the mission would continue after
that.
Though primarily a gesture in relations with the United States, the
deployment “conforms to the overall trajectory of Armenian military
strategy” and to Armenia’s broader balancing act, Giragosian argues.
“Armenia has both participated in Russian-led war games and training
simulations within the Collective Security Treaty Organization as
well as with the U.S. and other Western states within the NATO
Partnership for Peace program,” says Giragosian.
Armenia’s borders continue to be patrolled by Russian troops, and it
retains very close political, economic, and military ties with
Moscow.
More generally, Giragosian argues that Armenia’s engagement with both
Russia and NATO and its deployment of troops to Kosovo, for example,
fits within a concerted drive to professionalize its army.
WHAT NOW FOR THE ARMENIAN COMMUNITY?
But are the Armenian Iraqis being made sacrificial lambs in Armenia’s
broader geopolitical interests? Giragosian believes that the
deployment “poses no real or new risk to the Armenians in Iraq.”
He contends that the Armenian community “has already been living in a
state of insecurity and vulnerability, which will be neither
exacerbated nor extinguished by this deployment.” He sees “the record
of attacks, violence and intimidation [as] all part of a broader
campaign by insurgents against the ethnic Christian minorities of
Iraq” and that “the deployment is both far too small and much too
marginal to result in any serious or specific anti-Armenian strategy
by the insurgents.”
In recent decades, Armenians have found themselves in the crossfire
of another civil war in a heavily Muslim country, Lebanon. There, the
Armenian minority’s pursuit and policy of neutrality generally
protected it, Giragosian says. But the situation in Iraq is nothing
like the civil war in Lebanon, he believes.
“The Armenians of Iraq, like much of the ordinary Iraqi population,
face a reality marked by a faceless insurgency, with no choice or
option of abstaining from the conflict,” Giragosian says.
Nor is the longer-term outlook good for the Armenian community. “The
future of Iraq stands between becoming a state under siege or a
failed state, neither of which offers much hope for a non-Arab,
non-Muslim minority,” Giragosian says.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress