Speaking in parliament about the Shaki incident, Nikol Pashinyan said that after discovering an Azerbaijani serviceman in her home, the resident should not have taken any action, but instead called the authorities and waited for the law enforcement agencies to arrive and do their professional job. So, apparently, according to Prime Minister Pashinyan, had she done that, she would now be unharmed and perfectly healthy.
It is difficult to say whom that parliamentary remark was mocking: the seriously injured resident, her children, the citizens of Armenia, or the “professional law enforcement agencies.” The whole point is that if there had been a professional law enforcement system functioning properly, that Azerbaijani serviceman—whether he was a saboteur or simply lost—should never have reached Shaki in the first place, let alone ended up on the sofa in one of its homes. Especially since the “professional” law enforcement system, as the NSS itself acknowledged in its statement, had learned from Azerbaijan as early as September 29 about the possible infiltration of the serviceman.
So, for two whole days, the professional law enforcement agencies were unable either to locate the serviceman or at least to ensure the security of the settlements. Finding him in forests or gorges might have presented difficulties, but ensuring the security of populated areas should have been an entirely solvable task for a professional system—especially over the course of two days.
Now, in the wake of this obvious failure, Nikol Pashinyan is giving the woman who found an armed Azerbaijani on the sofa in her own home the post-factum “advice” that she should have called the law enforcement agencies and waited, rather than taking action herself. It is difficult to say what experience Nikol Pashinyan has of discovering an armed Azerbaijani serviceman in his own home, but residents of Armenia’s border villages do not have such a wealth of experience that they can calmly reach for a phone and call the police instead of taking some means of self-defense.
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All the more so because, to put it mildly, it is difficult to say how many days it would have taken those “professional law enforcement agencies,” which had failed to locate and neutralize the Azerbaijani serviceman for two days, to respond to a call and neutralize an armed Azerbaijani. That, of course, would only be the case he himself had thought the way Nikol Pashinyan apparently does—and had simply sat there calmly waiting for the woman to call the authorities and for them to arrive and arrest him.
Hakob BADALYAN
