| Seen on http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/dossier/melkonian.html
Name: Monte Melkonian
Location: Karabakh
Affiliation: Armenian Secret Army for the
Liberation of Armenia (ASALA)
Profession: soldier, terrorist, intellectual
Born: November 25, 1957
Died: June 12, 1993
Claim to Fame: only face connected to most
secretive terrorist group of the 20th century
Body Count: dozens
Other: nom de guerre: "Avo"; alt
spelling: Melkonyan
Monte Melkonian was one of the most romantic and
intriguing revolutionaries of the 20th century,
but outside of Armenians and Turks - the people
he fought for and against - his name is hardly
known. For most of his life the mystery was by
design: as reputed leader of one of the factions
of the dreaded (and torturously named) Armenian
Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), Melkonian was
one of the most wanted men in the world, hunted
by Interpol and relying far too much on the
unreliable. His friends at different times
included Communist intelligence agencies,
Palestinian terrorists, Kurdish Marxists and
dithering Western intellectuals. After going
underground to avoid capture, Melkonian
disappeared for two years and was jailed for
three more before resurfacing as one of the most
acclaimed military commanders in the Karabakh
War in the early 1990s.
Melkonian was born in Northern California in
1957. He majored in archeology and Asian history
at Cal-Berkeley before going on the first of his
long sojourns, to Japan and other countries of
the Pacific Rim. After graduation, Melkonian put
off pursuing post-graduate work to teach at
schools in the large Armenian Diaspora in the
Middle East. Always interested in leftist
opposition to authority, he lent his support to
Iranian students and dissidents persecuted by the
Shah, but left the country four years before the
Islamic Revolution.
Melkonian seemed to have a nose for strife. From
the turmoil of the Shah's tottering regime he
moved to Lebanon, just as the country began to
fall apart in sectarian violence. Christians,
Muslims and Druzes began to form militias and
Beirut's large Armenian community was pressured
to choose a side. Melkonian opposed the Christian
Phlange. He joined an Armenian militia instead
which fought alongside the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) and other Arab groups until
pushed out of Beirut by the Israeli invasion in
1982 (Though several wholly Armenian militias
such as the one Melkonian joined were formed,
Armenians as a whole remained neutral in the
conflict, to the great annoyance of the
Phlangists.)
After two years of street-fighting, Melkonian was
recruited to join ASALA. The group is a
by-product of the 1970s, when no group could
rightfully claim to be oppressed if they didn't
have some sort of militant band whacking
bureaucrats on their behalf. Of the chief leaders
of ASALA, only Melkonian's identity can be traced
with any degree of accuracy. The reputed head of
ASALA was known only by the nom de guerre
"Hagop Hagopian". In spite of the reach
of their terrorist attacks, many experts believe
ASALA was made up of a small group of militants.
The Turkish government, which bore the brunt of
the group's violence, claimed ASALA was a front
formed by militants of more respectable Armenian
diaspora groups such as the Dashnaks (though it
was, of course, in their interest to have as many
Armenian groups as possible tarred with the brush
of a terrorist organization).
When Monte Melkonian joined ASALA in the Spring
of 1980, the group had not even released a
manifesto of demands to go with their five years
of bombings, death threats and assassinations.
Melkonian was reputed to be the author of the
first concrete formulation of ASALA's goals,
released to the press in 1981: to pressure the
Turkish government to acknowledge the genocide of
1.8 million Armenians in World War I, and to make
financial and diplomatic restitution. Armenia
itself - then a piece of the USSR - was to be
turned into the base of operations for the
liberation of Mount Ararat and the rest of the
motherland occupied by Turkey.
After extensive training in terror and sabotage -
skills allegedly passed on to the Armenian
revolutionaries by Abu Nidal - Melkonian became
an active bomber in Western Europe and Greece in
the early 1980s. It was he who planned the famous
"Van Operation" on September 24, 1981,
when a small group of ASALA commandos took over
the Turkish embassy in Paris and occupied the
building for several days. Melkonian was arrested
about a year later in France. ASALA bombed
several targets to demand his release, and the
French - quietly - dumped him back in Lebanon
shortly thereafter. He had been carrying a
fraudulent Cypriot passport the entire time; it
was only after his release that he proudly
announced his name to the world, the first face
the world could tie to the secretive ASALA: Monte
Melkonian.
In the Summer and Fall of 1982, ASALA joined the
Palestinians fighting the Israeli army (commanded
by current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon) in
Beirut. After being pushed out of most of
Lebanon, the leadership of ASALA was said to have
moved to Syria, which also provided lodging and
succor to leaders from ASALA's sometime allies,
the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).
It wasn't long after their expulsion from Beirut
that ASALA split into warring factions. The split
was due to an especially grisly act of terror:
the bombing of the Turkish Airlines counter at
Orly Airport in Paris in 1983. Eight people were
killed and 55 wounded. As a result of the attack,
most Western European governments cracked down
hard on ASALA and related Armenian revolutionary
groups (there are also rumours that ASALA's
alliance with Abu Nidal, the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine and other groups
locked in an internecine struggle with the PLO
led the latter to hand over valuable intelligence
on ASALA to anyone who wanted it, including
France and Turkey.)
Monte Melkonian came to head the faction opposed
to Hagop Hagopian. From the two factions' angry
denunciations of each other sent to the press, it
appears that Hagopian defended the
"collateral damage" of innocent
civilians who died in bombings like the one at
Orly (most of the victims had nothing at all to
do with Turkey), which Melkonian's faction
opposed in favour of strictly Turkish targets. It
was small consolation to Turkey's diplomatic
corps, who had to live in extremely high-security
conditions due to ASALA killings, but they
delighted when the two ASALA factions began to
shoot each others' supporters throughout the
diaspora.
Melkonian was back in Paris in November 1985,
where he was picked up by French intelligence
agents who had infiltrated the chain of safe
houses Melkonian's faction shared with various
Mid-East terrorist groups, allegedly provided by
the Romanian Securitate. He was found guilty of
weapons possession and using false identity
papers and sentenced to six years in jail.
Released in 1989, Melkonian was expelled from
France and spent the next six months wandering
through Eastern Europe, including, according to
some sources, Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania. No one
has ever confirmed the extent of the Warsaw
Pact's support for ASALA. It is believed that the
Kurdistan Worker's Party was significantly aided
by the KGB, and that their point-man was the head
of the KGB in Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev. Aliyev
is now president of independent Azerbaijan and
has cultivated ties with Turkey, denying the
credible reports of his old contacts with the
PKK. Soviet support of various Palestinian
factions is also well-known, as is Ceausescu's
personal rapport with the Druze militias in
Lebanon, PLO leader Yassir Arafat and freelancers
like Carlos the Jackal. Their involvement with
ASALA, however, remains speculative and the proof
elusive.
The intellectual ex-con made his way to Armenia
in 1991, where he wed a woman he first met
thirteen years earlier in Lebanon. Melkonian had
a relatively easy transition to the homeland he
had never seen, finding himself in familiar
circumstances of rallies, persecution and the
chilling atmosphere of inevitable civil war.
Karabakh, a region of neighbouring Azerbaijan,
had a large Armenian population and was agitating
for union with the motherland when the USSR began
its slow disintegration. Melkonian first joined a
volunteer brigade, then the nascent Armed Forces
of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh
where rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and
commanded a force as large as 4,000 men. In a
year and a half of war, his legend grew among the
Armenians of Karabakh, Armenia proper and in the
all-important diaspora after he liberated the
city of Martuni from Azeri control. Melkonian
also participated in the operation to secure a
land corridor connecteing Karabakh to Armenia
proper - the infamous Lachin Pass.
Monte Melkonian was killed in action in June of
1993 during a mop-up operation in the village of
Merzuli. His body was taken to Yerevan for
burial. Tens of thousands turned out for his
funeral, and ad-hoc committees throughout Karabakh
and Armenia began to rename old schools, bridges
and even towns after their fallen idol. Beyond
wartime rhetoric, he probably was the most
genuinely admired of the commanders by the
Armenians of Karabakh,
and the profiteers and Mafiosi who swarm around
the slaughter and pestilence of war like flies on
feces quickly moved to co-opt Karabakh's most
prominent martyr. His wife Seta has remained
above politics (the current president of Armenia,
Robert Kocharian, was also a military commander
and native of Karabakh),
and her Monte
Melkonian Fund has initiated or sponsored
numerous projects to attempt to reconcile
Karabakh's victorious Armenians and the estimated
1.5 million Azeris displaced by the war.
Cali Ruchala with Zoran Andjelic
record added 8/14/02
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