A Review of
Markar Melkonyan
My Brother’s Road: an American’s fateful journey to Armenia
(London and New York: Taurus, 2005/2007).

Hikmet Hajiyev

PhD Student

Baku Public Administration Academy

There have been so many books documenting Armenian terrorism that most people are now familiar with what they are going to say without even looking into them.  But this memoir in which Markar Melkonyan discusses the career of his brother, Monte, is significant not only because it opens a window to the hidden world of the inner workings of Armenian terrorism and helps to explain the mindset behind those who are part of that effort but perhaps even more because it represents a rare if not in fact unique Armenian acknowledgement of Armenian terrorism, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Motivated by Myths

Born in California in November 1957, Melkonyan grew up in a family which like many in the Armenian diaspora promoted feelings of hatred toward and the need for revenge against the Turks.  “For me,” he is quoted in this book, “everything was simple and logical that it was even mathematical: diasporan Armenians live outside Armenia because the genocide took place, and they were obliged to leave the country.  Today, they can’t go back because [of] the Turkish government…  …Therefore, our nation should carry out an armed struggle over there, in order to achieve any tangible rights.  And every Armenian patriot, including me of course, should go and participate in that struggle” (Melkonyan 2005/2007, pp. 39-40).

Melkonyan studied ancient Asian history and archaeology at the University of California, hoping to finish his schooling as quickly as possible and to enter into the world of terrorism against Turkey.  He was convinced given the instability in that country in the 1970s that the time had come for Armenians to act in order to claim what they saw as “their” territory in Turkey.  Toward that end, he revived the Armenian Students Association in order to form the nucleus of a terrorist band, something his fellow members document when they note that he passed out “xeroxed bomb literature at the first ASA meeting” (Melkonyan 2005/2007, p. 37).  And the group acted on that, placing in 1977 a bomb outside the residence of a historian Prof. Shaw who described the events of 1915 as a myth concocted by “Entente propaganda mills and Armenian nationalists.”  

Getting on the Orient Express

In April 1978, Melkonyan arrived in Beirut, but most Armenians there assumed he was a CIA or KGB agent and did not give him a warm welcome.  In his autobiography, he acknowledged that “it was a little difficult to gain the confidence of some Armenians” in Lebanon.  They certainly had reasons for suspecting him: Here was a 20-year-old Armenian American who had left his own country with the intention of opening an Armenian terrorist training camp in Ainjar, an Armenian village in the Bekaa valley.

But if the Armenians were suspicious and some Kurds were unwelcoming (Melkonyan 2005/2007, p. 61), one group of the latter, the Komala, an organization dedicated to achieving autonomy for the Kurds inside Iran, and especially its leader Ezzedin Hosseini, were interested in working with such an Armenian.  And he began to think about how to provoke an Armenian uprising in Iran modeled on the Kurdish one Hosseini sought to promote.  But Melkonyan was unable to make any progress in that regard and so had to return to Lebanon.

There, he came to the notice of ASALA, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia.  That group, which had close ties with Palestinian groups like Abtal al-Auda and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, would not have been able to conduct the terrorist actions it did except for the support it received from the Soviet KGB, which viewed ASALA as a means to the achievement of a variety of Moscow’s geopolitical goals.

The Culmination of a Terrorist Campaign

In his book, Markar Melkonyan describes the wave of terrorist actions that ASALA unleashed in the early 1980s, including those intended to force governments like the Swiss and Italian to release their perpetrators.  “In mid-January 1981,” he writes, “Italian officials asked a Fatah official named Hael Abdulhamid to help negotiate a ‘ceasefire’ with the Secret Army.  The Italians send word that they were prepared to support Armenian demands for Turkish recognition of the genocide, in exchange for a Secret Army pledge to desist from bombings in Italy” (Melkonyan 2005/2007, p. 92).  

In 1985, the book under review notes, Monte Melkonyan was captured by the French police, but the French courts were not able to convict him of trying to sink a Turkish ship, although in fact he was, but only of entering France illegally, having a counterfeit American passport and an illegal handgun.  Monte for his part considered his six year sentence “more insulting than anything else.”

Armenia at last and terror against Azerbaijan  

With the support of Levon Ter-Petrosyan and Khachig Stamboultsyan, leaders of the pro-independence movement in Armenia, Moscow sent an invitation to Timothy Sean McCormick at the Soviet embassy in Bulgaria.  “McCormick” was none other than the nom de guerre of Monte Melkonyan.  After a warm welcome at the Yerevan airport by the Armenian KGB, Melkonyan was provided with cover – as a researcher at the Yerevan Institute of Ethnology – and reinstructed to organize terrorist groups against Azerbaijan.

Within a short period of time, the book here relates, Monte was involved with ASALA groups ready and willing to kill Azerbaijanis.  “If you give them half chance,” Monte told his brother proudly, “they’ll ‘do’ an Azeri-village - they’ll kill everyone in sight, men, women and children” (Melkonyan 2005/2007, p. 189).  In the Azerbaijani village of Garadagli, the group killed more than 50 Azerbaijani captives, some of them after being doused with gasoline and set aflame.  Shortly thereafter, the Khojali massacre took place, and Monte played a role there.

He conducted Armenia’s reconnaissance of the city of Khojali and organized intelligence operations in that region before the assault.  And he said he had helped set up free fire zones for the Aramo and Arabo death squads along the only routes that Azerbaijanis living there could use to escape.  Later, he was involved in killing 25 more Azerbaijanis at the Zulfugarli tunnel during the occupation of Kalbajar.  In the book under review, these actions are portrayed as a form of heroism, but there is only one correct term that can be applied: they were crimes against humanity.

No End in Sight

Monte was subsequently killed during the Armenian occupation of Agdam, his brother reports with obvious grief despite the horrors Monte had been involved with (Melkonyan 2005/2007, p. 264).  But Monte’s activities and the Armenian terrorism with which he was involved continue.  One of his close associates, Kechal Sergey, for example, - notorious for his cruelty in killing Azerbaijani civilians – after the ceasefire was promoted to a senior position in Armenia’s Ministry for National Security [Melkonyan 2005/2007, p.p. 215 and 303], evidence that many in Armenia are continuing the policies of ASALA and the Armenian terrorist community into the new century. 

Reference

Melkonyan, Markar (2005/2007) My Brother’s Road: An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia, London and New York: Taurus. 

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