Assault on Yerevan police station underlines risk of violent opposition to Armenia-Azerbaijan peace Opinion by Commonspace.eu

Onnik James Krikorian, a journalist and consultant from the United Kingdom has published an article for Commonspace.eu about how the assault on the Yerevan police station can affect the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

For many, the news of the assault on a police station in Yerevan over the weekend brought back memories of the two-week siege of another station back in 2016. The reasons were similar too. Eight years ago, just a few months after the four-day war, rumours spread throughout Armenia that then President Serzh Sargsyan was under pressure to accept the so-called Lavrov Plan in which five out of seven regions then occupied by Armenian forces would be handed back to Azerbaijan as part of an anticipated peace deal.  The remaining two would follow later without any guarantees that the status of Nagorno Karabakh would be resolved to the satisfaction of Yerevan and Stepanakert (now usually referred to as Khankendi).

There were also calls for the release of Lebanese-Armenian Jirair Sefilyan, the then-imprisoned former military commander and ultra-nationalist. Last weekend, in another deja vu moment, what sparked the violence concerned recent statements from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that four Azerbaijani villages located in what he recognised as de jure Azerbaijani territory outside Armenia’s own border would be returned.

This recent incident in the Nor Nork district of Yerevan came after 49 members of the “Combat Battalion” militia were detained by police on their way to Voskepar, an Armenian village on that same border with Azerbaijan in proximity to the now uncontested non-enclave villages. The similarities with the 2016 terrorist action that resulted in the murder of three policemen were even more striking when it became known that six supporters of the National Democratic Pole, a minor but radical ultra-nationalist extra-parliamentary coalition, had also been detained.

The National Democratic Pole is made up of several Armenian political parties but most notably includes Sasna Tsrer (Daredevils of Sassoun), the group that carried out the 2016 attack in Erebuni, and which has now transformed into a political party that claims to renounce violence as an operational tactic. Sefilyan is considered Sasna Tsrer’s de facto leader. Now no longer imprisoned, he again made headlines a week ago when he called on the Armenian military to disobey any orders from Pashinyan to withdraw from positions that could make such a handover possible.

Before the assault on the police station in Nor Nork following the arrests earlier the same day, one of the three men involved in the attempted but failed assault posted a video on Facebook openly stating that they hoped to incite the population to rise up against the prime minister and prevent the authorities from handing over the four non-enclave villages. For many Armenians, such villages were considered among a total of eight all incorrectly referred to as a group as enclaves. However, in this case, the non-enclaves in question are de jure part of the Gazakh region of Azerbaijan but contiguous to Armenia's Tavush region and controlled by Yerevan since the early 1990s. The four others still to be discussed are actual enclaves – territories considered as part of Armenia or Azerbaijan but completely surrounded by and physically situated within the other.

The following day, the Armenian Ministry of Interior did indeed confirm that the assailants were National Democratic Pole supporters, something that the coalition itself confirmed later that evening. However, it added the perpetrators acted independently, and had not been instructed to mount the operation. There is likely truth to that. In my own interview with a senior National Democratic Pole figure, Vahe Gasparyan, conducted in Yerevan a month ago, he insisted that the party had renounced violence as a tactic since the events of 2016.

Whether that will remain the case is unknown. However, that the recent assault failed lends credence to such words – for now anyway. In surreal scenes captured by media, not only did a plainclothes policeman hand a lit cigarette to one of the group as he stood outside the police station, clutching a hand grenade in the ensuing standoff, but two other police were seen bringing chairs to sit just a few meters away from him. And in an almost farcical act, the two other attackers reportedly injured themselves from the shrapnel caused by the blast of one of their own grenades.

Had the National Democratic Pole – especially Sasna Tsrer – planned the assault it would likely have been more professionally conducted, and succeeded, just as it partially did eight years ago. Nonetheless, the Armenian authorities were taking no chances and the next day raided and searched the homes of other yet-to-be-named members. Armenia had been spared another terrorist act similar to that in 2016.

But such incidents could occur again and potentially achieve their objectives. Some believe that Serzh Sargsyan rejected the Lavrov Plan because of the 2016 siege, which also called for his resignation. Moreover, they could also increase in number and frequency as Yerevan and Baku seemingly move ever closer to an agreement on the normalization of relations. Since the 2020 Karabakh War, security surrounding Pashinyan, who most nationalists consider a “traitor,” has also increased significantly compared to that surrounding previous leaders.

And although there have been grounds to believe that Pashinyan could have been hitherto been dithering, including on the need to demarcate the shared border, his declarations on the issue of the non-enclaves seem especially genuine – and also brave. This also includes other developments such as effectively stating that what could be perceived as territorial claims on Azerbaijan in the constitution should be removed and recent remarks about the a “painful transition” from “historical Armenia” to “real Armenia." Clearly, threats posed by extremist groups will remain even after a settlement is reached.

The international community should take note of the dangers and help mitigate the risks. Though the Armenian National Security Service (NSS) is the only hard security counter to the threat, others such as the European Union’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) could support the introduction of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE measures, by civil society.

Vulnerable individuals among current and future generations can still fall prey to nationalist and extremist militias or narratives that could again encourage real-life action. Once radicalised, such groups and individuals will also represent a clear and present danger to a still fledgling process of democratisation over the coming years.