Armenia Embraces Syrians, Warily

By Joe Parkinson

More than six thousand Christian Armenians from Syria have poured into Armenia in recent months, escaping the civil war back home. WSJ's Joe Parkinson reports from Yerevan. YEREVAN, Armenia—Syria's war, which has already sparked refugee crises just across its border in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, is also bringing strains to Armenia, a Christian country hundreds of miles away.

Ethnic Armenians fleeing primarily from Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub and a major battleground in its civil war, have found an unlikely meeting point in Armenia's capital, on a dusty side street bracketed by Soviet-era apartment blocks. Buzzing with machinery, and heavy with the smell of motor oil, Glinkai Street houses more than a dozen metal and auto workshops where groups of Syrian-Armenian men gather to seek jobs, drink tea and trade the latest grim news from home.

"I'm lucky, since there's not much work here," said a 27-year-old who gave his name as Tigran. He said he arrived from Aleppo with his mother in September and now makes $200 a month replacing pistons in car engines. "People who can't work have no way to block out what they've left behind."

Syrian Refugees Head for Armenia

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Worshipers lighted candles at a church service in Yerevan, Armenia.

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So far in Syria's 20-month uprising, about 6,000 members of Syria's Armenian community have fled to the country—a journey that in many cases marks a new displacement for families who fled killings a century earlier in the Ottoman Empire. Many have arrived in just the past few months, Armenia's Diaspora Ministry says, raising fears that the country may be bracing for a much larger wave.

Roughly 100,000 Armenians call Syria home, part of a larger population of Christians there who fear reprisals from opposition sympathizers because many of their communities have backed President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Many Armenians fear a repeat of the past decade in Iraq, where sectarian violence after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein forced half of the Christian population to flee.

"The government has looked overwhelmed," said Richard Giragosian, director of the independent Regional Studies Center in Yerevan. "No one [in the government] is talking about it, but everyone is thinking about the prospect of a surge in refugee numbers if Christians get persecuted as they did in Iraq."

The refugee influx, though minor relative to the 400,000-plus people that the United Nations says have taken refuge in countries bordering Syria, poses an outsize problem for this small, landlocked and impoverished former Soviet republic of three million people. The government is already battling unemployment of over 20%, according to the International Monetary Fund, and a decline in remittances from diaspora communities ahead of national elections due in February.

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"We have said all Armenians are welcome, but our country is not in the best economic situation," said Diaspora Minister Hranush Hakobyan. "These people need jobs and they need income."

Armenia has offered returning Armenians visas upon arrival, recognized Syrian driver's licenses and expedited applications for Armenian passports as part of a dual-citizenship law. Two state elementary schools in the capital, Yerevan, are offering classes where Syrian-Armenian children follow the Syrian curriculum. Many new arrivals are staying with relatives in Yerevan. Others have sought shelter in state accommodation. The congregation of Yerevan's 17th-century St. Sarkis Church has swollen with refugees.

The influx began in earnest in late summer, when Aleppo—home to more than 80% of Syria's Armenian community, the Diaspora Ministry estimates—became the focus of an offensive by rebels opposing President Assad. Since then, Syria's largest city has been engulfed in street-by-street fighting between government forces and opposition militias, including some that residents and rebel fighters have said are al Qaeda-allied extremist bands.

Some Armenians fled quickly with few belongings, catching a direct flight from Aleppo on former state airliner Armavia. Others, laden with bags packed for a longer stay, boarded buses set for a dangerous two-day journey through rebel-held territory before heading north through Turkey and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

Predominantly middle-class merchants, members of the community paint a picture of Syria's descent into violence that is at odds with the one presented by opposition activists. The opposition narrative describes one-sided aggression by Syria's regime, an account bolstered by an October estimate by the United Nations that more than 20,000 civilians have been killed by government forces since the uprising began in February 2011.

But many displaced Armenians here echo Mr. Assad's portrayal of rebel fighters, almost exclusively Sunnis from Syria's countryside, as terrorists. They voice support for Damascus's efforts to crush the uprising.

One 22-year-old former shop manager in Aleppo's Armenian-dominated Midan district, who gave his name as Hakob Jackian, said he fled in September with his mother and 20-year-old brother. A series of rebel-instigated gun battles and car bombs made it impossible to remain in the city, he said.

"You wouldn't know when it would start. It would be quiet then terrorists with machine guns would come and explosions would send shrapnel flying toward us," he said, as he played YouTube clips of violent clashes in his neighborhood in which Sunni militias paraded in pickups and appeared to be looting residents' houses. "I still love my president. Even now 80% of people are still happy with him."

Syria's Assad regime, dominated by the Shiite-linked Alawite sect, actively courted the country's 2.5 million Christians as a bulwark against the country's majority population of some 17 million Sunni Muslims. The patronage translated into relative prosperity, meaning many refugees here have left behind properties, gold holdings and bank savings. International sanctions and a government cap on withdrawals have made it difficult to transfer money out of the country.

"We all smuggled the family gold, including in my son's Pampers," said Hovig Asmaryan, a 34-year-old trader, who fled Aleppo in late September with family and friends in a nine-car convoy and said he plans to stay. "The violence isn't going to stop anytime soon and our president won't be able to hold power," he said.

Mr. Asmaryan was one of the few refugees who agreed to be identified by his full name. Syrian intelligence services are still active in Armenia, according to refugees and Armenia's government, and refugees say they fear that revealing their identity could hurt their chances of returning home or leave family members in Syria vulnerable to retribution.

For some here, the shock of being uprooted from their homes is magnified by the ghosts of previous sectarian slaughter. The majority of Syrian Armenians are descended from communities who fled what Armenians say was the mass killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Turks during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Turkey rejects the accusation, saying there were heavy losses of life on both sides.

"My grandfather lost all three brothers when the family fled from Turkey," said Samvel, a 62-year-old houseware manufacturer who said he expected to return to Aleppo, and his family's gold, after a month. Now he doesn't know if he'll be able to return. "We are again refugees."

Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@dowjones.com

A version of this article appeared December 5, 2012, on page A11 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Armenia Embraces Syrians, Warily.

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