“Due to the security situation in Syria, the diplomatic staff of the Armenian Embassy in Damascus will temporarily continue its work from Beirut,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Sunday.
Armenia also effectively shut down its consulate in Aleppo shortly before the northern Syrian city fell late last month to the rebels led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist militant group. Both diplomatic missions had functioned throughout the Syrian civil war.
An estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenians lived in the Middle Eastern country when the war broke out in 2011. The once thriving community is believed to have shrunk by more than half since then. Thousands of its members took refuge in Armenia over a decade ago.
Armenia’s Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs said on December 5 that the “first group” of Syrian Armenians that managed to flee Aleppo is due to be flown to Yerevan from Damascus December 14. The Armenian Foreign Ministry statement indicated, however, that the flight has been cancelled. It said that there is no “safe possibility” of evacuating Syrian Armenians at the moment.
Meanwhile, the spiritual leadership of the local Armenian community urged its members to stay “discreet and cautious” in the current circumstances and leave their homes “only if necessary.” It also said that the community will continue to strive for Syria’s territorial integrity and welfare and assist in its “reconstruction efforts.”
SYRIA - Smoke rises in Damascus after Syrian rebels announced that they have ousted Syria's Bashar al-Assad, December 8, 2024.
There are widespread concerns in Armenia about the security of the community and the uncertain future facing it after the rebel takeover.
“The situation is calm right now. It was much worse yesterday and the day before,” Hagop Khajarian, an ethnic Armenian resident of Damascus, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday.
“But things are uncertain and we don’t know how this will end,” he said.
Khajarian said that although no Armenian is known to have been hurt in recent days, many community members plan to leave Syria.
“Everyone I have spoken to has the following plan: when things calm down and there is an opportunity, they will think about getting out,” added the man.
HTS is a U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist organization. In recent years, the group severed ties with Al-Qaeda and sought to remake itself as a pragmatic alternative to the Syrian government.
But concerns remain over its alleged rights abuses and ties to terrorist groups. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the HTS leader, has sought to reassure Shi'ite Alawites and other Syrian minorities, including Christians, that he will not discriminate against them.
Turkey’s support for the rebels is another source of Armenian fears. Before its lighting offensive that toppled Assad’s regime, HTS controlled much of Syria’s northern Idlib province where Ankara reportedly recruited thousands of mercenaries and sent them to fight on Azerbaijan’s side in the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.