Armenian army efficient enough to repel Azerbaijani attacks – opinion

If Azerbaijan were able to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through military operations, it would have launched a war long ago, a former minister of defense has said, commenting on the recent act of sabotage by the Azerbaijani army.

“Azerbaijan is not obviously capable of launching military operations, as it maintains a political-military balance. Whenever we say balance, we do not mean the military equipment, but rather - the quality of weapons, the army efficiency and the moral-psychological atmosphere,” Lieutenant-General Vagharshak Harutyunyan told Tert.am.

He said further that the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies differ essentially in terms of their discipline. “If they take the situation in the military - in terms of the corruption, discipline and moral-psychological standards – it is several times weaker than our army,” the former minister noted.

Asked about the possibility of war, Harutyunyan replied, “There is a little likelihood of war operations. Azerbaijan takes that step in an attempt to create an environment of fear in the border zone and keep the situation in the military tense. Also, Turkish officers teach Azerbaijanis how to carry out sabotage, and once the operations are launched, they check to what extent they are ready,” he said, noting that the Azerbaijani armed forces never manage to reach a tangible success despite the repeated provocations.

Harutyunyan added that incidents of the kind are inevitable as long as the situation in the region continues to remain tense. “Because we do not live in peace; our Line of Contact is 1,000km long, so incidents of the kind have always occurred and will always occur,” he added.

Commander Vova Vardanov, who is the founder of a special purpose detachment, said he funds the Armenian army efficient enough to avert acts of sabotage by the enemy.

“We are able to launch counter-attacks or avert assaults targeted at our [defense] positions. Our army is efficient even in the situation it is facing today,” he added.

Vardanov said he considers Armenia’s mountainous terrain to be the only major obstacle.
“Our military is the Russian army’s duplicate which we have created and named Armenian army. I am sure the Armenian army will always react in an appropriate way, but we have to take a different approach to army building. To avert our neighbors’ aggression, we must avoid copying the Russian army’s manners in a blind way; we must build ours. When, centuries ago, the Russian military appeared in the Asia region, it began making changes in its army building procedures. So we too, must adjust our army to the mountainous conditions,” he said, adding that the question is not in any way linked to Azerbaijan’s recent armed attacks.

Literary critic Vardan Devrikyan, who participated in the Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990’s, said he believes the Armenians demand more from the army today than could be demanded in general. He called for considering the army defense issue from another angle. “We put more burden on the military than needed, and we never think of what we really need to resolve the problem,” he added.

Devrikyan said he finds that it is more important to focus on possible mechanisms of support given that defense is a three-level process. “The frontline is guarded by soldiers, the second line being under the protection of people in the border region[s[ and the third, the rear, constituting the entire nation. I don’t know what can be done and what mechanisms can be elaborated to raise the army efficiency with our active efforts to contribute to at least a [normal] moral-psychological atmosphere,” he said, stressing the importance of consolidated steps.