About 30 or 35 years ago there was a joint German-French youth exchange program where students from a medium-sized school had the possibility to live for one month with families of the opposite country; the children of those host families would, in turn, send their kids to live in the family of the guest student. There was a stereotype told by Germans of French villages along the German-French border that if you went in the morning to get eggs from the hens, but there were none, that it meant the French had come across in the night and stolen the eggs. After one German student had lived with a French family for a month she came back and heard her friends in the village saying this one morning; immediately she told her friends that no, this just was not true, because she had lived with this French family and seen that this could never happen.

Every time I remember this story and understand for myself how important it is to organize such programs between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, I am trying to analyze for myself what are the obstacles to doing it. I see that the main obstacle is political will. Every time a peace activist is trying to organize such a program, either on the Armenian side or the Azerbaijani side, immediately they are criticized by the media, by their peers, and by society. Why don’t peace activists try to unite and fight against this resistance within our societies? Only by achieving a relevant approach within the societies can we start the real process of reconciliation. And here I really agree with Phil that this is our task.

John, to your bigger question about within society reconciliation vs. reconciliation between people of two different states. I personally think there are cases of reconciliation of societies who experienced violence and ethnic cleansing, yet who live in different states. In fact I think these are typically more successful that the in-state ones. Few major cases would be: French-German reconciliation, to a degree the Jewish-German one, the Greek-Turkish and many others. All of them have a very bloody past, numerous ethnic cleansing, long history of violence. All of them were ‘resolved’ as a result of a very conscious and a very concerted effort to reconcile and deal with the history of violence. I am sure 40 years back it would have been impossible to imagine that French-German relations could be where they are today. Yet here we are.

So it is possible. But not going to happen on its own. It is up to us

phil

That is an excellent observation. I agree that separation of two people via an international border makes it difficult to reconcile differences/grievances, since they do not have to deal with each other on a daily basis. I think that is exactly the problem. I believe there is this notion among the Armenian and Azerbaijani populations that there is a magical solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where they will be able to avoid contact with each other altogether. I think many Azerbaijanis contend that it is as easy as “getting our lands back” , in which case they expect Armenians to leave Nagorno-Karabakh. On the Armenian side, I sense that prevailing belief is that once the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh is secured, no Azerbaijani will dare to go back to Nagorno-Karabakh. This, however, is not a viable solution. There will be no peaceful or sustainable solution to the NK conflict, where either Armenians or Azerbaijanis are expected to “abandon” NK. Many Armenians as well as many Azerbaijanis rightfully call Nagorno-Karabakh their home. Regardless of the final status of the region, Azerbaijanis and Armenians who call Nagorno-Karabakh home will have to learn to live next to each other. This is exactly where the Armenian and Azerbaijani leadership is failing. They are not doing anything to close the gap between people’s unrealistic expectations about the outcome of the NK resolution and the reality. For the reconciliation process to start, therefore, our leaders need to move away from their belligerent rhetoric, which fuels people’s unrealistic expectations. I will discuss this issue in more detail in my next post.

Thank you for taking time to read and comment on my post. To me that middle ground would look something like this: people would remember the atrocities to honor the memories of those who fell victim and also to recognize the “early warning signs” and prevent such horrors from happening in the future. However, they would not harbor hatred and pass that hatred onto the next generations. It will require an understanding that barbaric actions of a few members of an ethnic/national/religious group do not necessarily reflect the values of the larger group.

It will also require an understanding that under even normal circumstances, the most ordinary or ‘normal’ people can be ‘programmed’ to carry out the most barbaric instructions. An example that comes to mind is Stanley Milgram’s psychology experiment. In this experiment set up as a study of memory and learning, Professor Milgram of Yale asked his subjects (some ordinary people of New Haven, Connecticut) to act as teachers and if their learners did not respond correctly to the questions, the “teachers” would inflict the “learners” with increasing amount of electric shock (they did not know it was fake). Professor Milgram’s findings were quite shocking:

“I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” (Milgram, Stanley. 1974. “The Perils of Obedience.” Harper’s Magazine.)

My views may seem as naïveté or impractical idealism. However, the fact that Jews, for example, can live and work among Germans today, without fearing or hating Germans and at the same time, retain a strong memory of the Holocaust, gives me hope. As I mentioned in the post, however, the road to that middle ground is long and difficult…