ARMENIA PLANS TROOP DEPLOYMENT IN AFGHANISTAN
Emil Danielyan
Jamestown Foundation
Jan 14 2010
Soldiers from the Armenian army’s special Peacekeeping Brigade
Armenia is due to send a small contingent of troops to Afghanistan
next month, in what will be a largely symbolic boost to the NATO-led
multinational force fighting the Taliban insurgency. The deployment,
approved by the Armenian parliament last month, has a primarily
political significance. It will increase to 43 the number of countries
participating in the increasingly challenging mission and highlight
Yerevan’s intention to continue to deepen its security links with
the West, while remaining Russia’s main ally in the region.
The Armenian government has sought to bolster the military alliance
with Moscow, both on a bilateral basis and within the framework of
the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO),
while it worked out the details of its deployment with top NATO
representatives during 2009. In late October, the Armenian Defense
Minister Seyran Ohanian met with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh
Rasmussen and several of his Western counterparts on the sidelines of
a NATO conference on Afghanistan held in Bratislava, Slovakia. By that
time, the alliance officially listed Armenia as one of the partner
states making up its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
in Afghanistan ().
"Let me express our appreciation to Armenia for its strong
contributions to Allied missions, first in Kosovo, and now also in
Afghanistan," Robert Simmons, NATO’s special representative to the
South Caucasus and Central Asia, subsequently told journalists in
Yerevan (, November 6). Celeste Wallander, the US
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia,
likewise discussed the matter with President Serzh Sargsyan and Ohanian
during an early December trip to Armenia. "The United States values
its partnership with the Republic of Armenia," Wallander said after
the talks (Statement by the US Embassy in Yerevan, December 3).
Following these meetings, the Armenian National Assembly debated and
overwhelmingly backed the deployment of 40 soldiers to Afghanistan.
Ohanian told the parliament that they will be stationed near the
northern Afghan city of Kunduz, and serve there under German command.
"I think that this mission will contribute to the accomplishment
of our national objectives," he said. "We will gain a stake in the
formation of an international security system." The minister also
noted that neighboring Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey are already
participants in ISAF (Armenian Public Television, December 8).
The Armenian leadership made similar arguments when it dispatched
troops to Kosovo in early 2004 and to Iraq one year later. It doubled
the number of Armenian soldiers serving in Kosovo to 70, before
pulling out of Iraq in late 2008. The military personnel engaged
in those and the Afghan missions serve in a special peacekeeping
detachment of Armenia’s armed forces that was formed in 2001 with
financial and technical assistance provided by the United States and
other NATO member states. The volunteer unit, which currently consists
of two battalions, is due to expand into a fully-fledged brigade by
2015 in accordance with Yerevan’s Individual Partnership Action Plan
(IPAP), with NATO. The launch of the IPAP in 2005 marked an important
milestone in a so-called "complementary" policy pursued by the current
and previous Armenian administrations. The cooperation framework
committed the South Caucasus state to implement defense reforms aimed
at bringing its military into greater conformity with NATO standards
and practices. As part of those reforms, the Sargsyan government
pushed through the parliament in late 2008 a law that allows the
defense ministry to hire civilian personnel. It went on to approve new
statutes and structures of the ministry and the Armenian General Staff.
The reforms also resulted in the adoption in 2007 of Armenia’s official
national security strategy and military doctrine. Both documents
describe close cooperation with NATO as one of the guarantees of
the country’s security and independence. They make clear, however,
that "strategic partnership" with Russia will remain the bedrock of
Armenian defense policy in the foreseeable future.
One key manifestation of that partnership is the presence of Russian
troops in Armenia, which essentially precludes any Turkish military
interference in Karabakh in favor of Azerbaijan. More importantly,
the military alliance with Moscow allows Yerevan to receive Russian
weapons at discounted prices or even free of charge. Russian-Armenian
military-technical cooperation appeared to intensify after the
signing in Yerevan on December 17 of an agreement which the Armenian
defense ministry said envisages bilateral "interaction in exporting
military products to third countries." A defense ministry statement
to that effect gave no details of the deal. Moreover, Armenia was
among five of the seven former Soviet republics aligned in the CSTO,
the Russian-dominated defense pact, which formed a NATO-style rapid
reaction force in June 2009. Sargsyan joined his counterparts from
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in monitoring the first
exercises of the Collective Operational Reaction Forces (CORF) held
in Kazakhstan in October 2009 (Armenian Public Television, December 8).
Armenia will thus remain cautious in boosting its military ties
with the West. The Armenian military stated in the aftermath of the
Russian-Georgian war that it will not halt its growing cooperation
with NATO, despite increased tensions between the Alliance and
Russia over the conflict in South Ossetia (,
August 27, 2008). As if to drive home that point, Yerevan hosted
in September-October 2008 NATO-led military exercises, boycotted
by Moscow.
However, Armenia backed out of similar drills that were held in Georgia
in May 2009 and strongly condemned by the Kremlin. The last-minute
decision is widely believed to have been taken under Russian pressure.