Monte Melkonian

Melkonian was born on 25 November 1957, at Visalia Municipal Hospital in Visalia, California, to Charles (1918−2006)[8] and Zabel Melkonian (1920−2012).[9] He was the third of four children born to a self-employed cabinetmaker and an elementary-school teacher.[10] By all accounts, Melkonian was described as an all-American child who joined the Boy Scouts and was a pitcher in Little League baseball.[11] He also played the clarinet.[12] Melkonian's parents rarely talked about their Armenian heritage with their children, often referring to the place of their ancestors as the "Old Country." His interest in his background only sparked at the age of eleven, when his family went on a year-long trip to Europe in 1969.

While taking Spanish language courses in Spain, his teacher had posed him the question of where he was from. Dissatisfied with Melkonian's answer of "California", the teacher rephrased the question by asking "where did your ancestors come from?" His brother Markar Melkonian remarked that "her image of us was not at all like our image of ourselves. She did not view us as the Americans we had always assumed we were." From this moment on, for days and months to come, Markar continues, "Monte pondered [their teacher Señorita] Blanca's question Where are you from?"[13]

In the spring of that year, the family also traveled across Turkey to visit the town of Merzifon, where Melkonian's maternal grandparents were from. Merzifon's population at the time was 23,475 but was almost completely devoid of its once 17,000-strong Armenian population that was wiped out during the Armenian genocide in 1915. They did find one Armenian family of the three that was living in the town, however, Melkonian soon learned that the only reason this was so, was because the head of the family in 1915 had exchanged the safety of his family in return for identifying all the Armenians in the town to Turkish authorities during the genocide.[14] Melkonian would later confide to his wife that "he was never the same after that visit....He saw the place that had been lost."[11]

Upon his return to California, Melkonian returned to his education. In high school, he was exceeding all standards and having a hard time finding new academic challenges. Instead of graduating high school early, as was suggested by his principal, Melkonian found an alternative thanks to his father: a study abroad program in East Asia. At the age of 15, Melkonian traveled to Japan for a new chapter in his young life, namely to study martial arts and the Japanese language.[15] While there, he began teaching English, which helped finance his travels through several Southeast Asian countries. This introduced him to several new cultures, new philosophies, new languages, and in several cases, like his travels through Vietnam (shortly before the Fall of Saigon[15]), new skills that would become immensely valuable in his later life as a soldier.[16] Returning to the United States, he graduated from high school and entered the University of California, Berkeley with Regents Scholarship, majoring in ancient Asian history and Archeology. In 1978 he helped to organize an exhibition of Armenian cultural artifacts at one of the university's libraries. The section of the exhibit dealing with the Armenian genocide was removed by university authorities at the request of the Turkish consul general in San Francisco. The display that was removed was eventually reinstalled following a campus protest movement. Melkonian eventually completed his undergraduate work in under three years. Upon graduating, he was accepted into the archeology graduate program at the University of Oxford. However, Melkonian chose to forgo this opportunity, and instead chose to begin his lifelong struggle for the Armenian Cause.[16]

After graduating from U.C. Berkeley in the spring of 1978, Melkonian traveled to Iran, where he taught English and participated in the movement to overthrow the Shah. He helped organize a teachers' strike at his school in Tehran, and was in the vicinity of Jaleh Square when the Shah's troops opened fire on protesters, killing and injuring many. Later, he found his way to Iranian Kurdistan, where Kurdish partisans made a deep impression on him. Years later, in southern Lebanon, he occasionally wore the uniform of the Kurdish peshmerga which he was given in Iranian Kurdistan.

In the fall of 1978, Melkonian made his way to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, in time to participate in the defense of the Armenian quarter against the right-wing Phalange forces. While he was living in East Beirut, Melkonian worked underground with individual members of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party and the Lebanese Communist Party. Although he never professed an allegiance to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), he was a member of the Armenian militia that defended positions in and around Bourj Hammoud that were under the command of ARF "group leaders". Melkonian was a permanent member of the militia's bases in Bourj Hammoud, Western Beirut, Antelias, Eastern Beirut and other regions for almost two years, during which time he participated in several street battles against Phalange forces. He also began working behind the lines in Phalangist controlled territory, on behalf of the "Leftist and Arab" Lebanese National Movement. By this time, he was speaking Armenian – a language he had not learned until adulthood (Armenian was the fourth or fifth language Melkonian learned to speak fluently, after Spanish, French and Japanese. In addition, he spoke passable Arabic, Italian and Turkish, as well as some Persian and Kurdish).

In the spring of 1980, Melkonian was inducted into the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and secretly relocated to West Beirut. For the next three years he was an ASALA militant and contributor to the group's journal, Hayastan. During this time several Palestinian militant organizations provided their Armenian comrades with extensive military training. On 31 July 1980 in Athens, Melkonian assassinated the Administrative Attaché of Turkish Embassy in Greece, Galip Ozmen, considered by Melkonian to be a legitimate target for representing a regime that committed the Armenian genocide, occupied northern Cyprus, massacred Kurds in Turkey, among other crimes. After his death, Özmen was also revealed to have been a Turkish intelligence (MIT) spy. Melkonian also shot the passengers in the front and back seats who were obscured by darkly tinted window glass, believing them to be other diplomats. The passengers were later revealed to be Ozmen's wife Sevil and his sixteen-year-old son Kaan, who were wounded but survived, and his fourteen-year-old daughter Neslihan, who later died of her wounds. Melkonian was reportedly unhappy to find out who the other passengers were, and later wrote that he would've spared them if he had a clearer view.[17]

Melkonian carried out armed operations in Rome, Athens and elsewhere, and he helped to plan and train commandos for the "Van Operation" of September 24, 1981, in which four ASALA militants took over the Turkish embassy in Paris and held it for several days. In November 1981, French police arrested and imprisoned a young, suspected criminal carrying a Cypriot passport bearing the name "Dimitri Georgiu." Following the detonation of several bombs in Paris aimed at gaining his release, "Georgiu" was returned to Lebanon where he revealed his identity as Monte Melkonian.

In mid-July 1983, ASALA violently split into two factions, one opposed to the group's despotic leader, whose nom de guerre was Hagop Hagopian, and another supporting him. Although the lines of fissure had been deepening over the course of several years, the shooting of Hagopian's two closest aides at a military camp in Lebanon finally led to the open breach. This impetuous action was perpetrated by one individual who was not closely affiliated with Melkonian. As a result of this action, however, Hagopian took revenge by personally torturing and executing two of Melkonian's dearest comrades, Garlen Ananian and Aram Vartanian.

In the aftermath of this split, Melkonian spent over two years underground, first in Lebanon and later in France. After testifying secretly for the defense in the trial of Armenian militant and accused bank robber Levon Minassian, he was arrested in Paris in November 1985 and sentenced to six years in prison for possession of falsified papers and carrying an illegal handgun.

Melkonian spent over three years in Fresnes and Poissy prisons. He was released in early 1989 and sent from France to South Yemen, where he was reunited with his girlfriend Seda. Together they spent year and a half living underground in various countries of eastern Europe in relative poverty, as one Eastern Bloc regime after another disintegrated.

On 6 October 1990, Melkonian arrived in what was then still Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. During the first 8 months in Armenia, Melkonian worked in the Armenian Academy of Sciences, where he prepared an archaeological research monograph on Urartian cave tombs, which was posthumously published in 1995.[18]

Finding himself on Armenian soil after many years, he wrote in a letter that he found a lot of confusion among his compatriots. Armenia faced enormous economic, political and environmental problems at every turn, problems that had festered for decades. New political forces bent on dismantling the Soviet Union were taking Armenia in a direction that Melkonian believed was bound to exacerbate the crisis and produce more problems. He believed that "a national blunder was taking place right before his eyes."[19]

Under these circumstances, it quickly became clear to Melkonian that, for better or for worse, the Soviet Union had no future and the coming years would be perilous ones for the Armenian people. He then focused his energy on Nagorno-Karabakh. "If we lose [Karabakh]," the bulletin of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Forces quoted him as saying, "we turn the final page of our people's history."[20] He believed that, if Azeri forces succeeded in deporting Armenians from Karabakh, they would advance on Zangezur and other regions of Armenia.

Melkonian Melkonyan's tomb at Yerablur military cemetery

On 12 or 14 September 1991, Melkonian travelled to the Shahumian region (north of Karabakh), where he fought for three months in the fall of 1991. There he participated in the capture of Erkej, Manashid and Buzlukh villages.

On February 4, 1992, Melkonian arrived in Martuni as the regional commander. Upon his arrival the changes were immediately felt: civilians started feeling more secure and at peace as Azeri armies were pushed back and were finding it increasingly difficult to shell Martuni's residential areas with GRAD missiles.

In April 1993, Melkonian was one of the chief military strategists who planned and led the operation to fight Azeri fighters and capture the region of Kalbajar of Azerbaijan which lies between Armenia and former NKAO. Armenian forces captured the region in four days of heavy fighting, sustaining far fewer fatalities than the enemy.[21]

Melkonian had become a legend in Armenia and Karabakh by the time of his death.[26] Due to his international socialist and Armenian nationalist views, one author described him as a mix between the early 20th century Armenian military commander Andranik and Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.[34] Thomas de Waal described him as a "professional warrior and an extreme Armenian nationalist"[35] who is "the most celebrated Armenian commander" of the Nagorno-Karabakh War.[2] Raymond Bonner wrote in 1993 that Melkonian had charisma and discipline, which is why he "rapidly became the most highly regarded commander in the Karabakh War."[25] Historian Razmik Panossian wrote that Melkonian was "a charismatic and very capable commander."[36]

Melkonian was said to have led an exemplary life by not smoking and drinking.[25][49] Melkonian advocated that revolutionary socialists must lead "practical self-disciplined lives" and avoid "self-destructive habits" such as smoking or drinking alcohol: "By severely diminishing a person's self-discipline, these dependencies inhibit a person from becoming a member of the vanguard, and especially a guerrilla or fedaii."[49] When he joined in toasts, he is said to have raised a glass of yogurt.[50] Melkonian is widely known to have forbidden his soldiers consumption of alcohol.[35] He also established a policy of collecting a tax in kind on Martuni wine, in the form of diesel and ammunition for his fighters.[51] Melkonian also burned cultivated fields of cannabis in Karabakh.[5][49]