Assessment | To represent harmony, despite everything.

In Azerbaijan, injury is a piece of public personality. Today, it takes care of the war and quiets voices for harmony. Be that as it may, would-be peacemakers, regardless of how hard it is, must have sympathy for and draw in with this injury while staying consistent with their standards. 

The ongoing heightening of contention in Nagorno-Karabakh has shown with total lucidity the intensity of authentic injury among the Azerbaijani public. 

An irritable and isolated society has abruptly been combined through the intensity of military activity. The legislature, the resistance, and the de-politicized lion's share currently uphold similar predominant account of a public obligation to reclaim the nation's lost grounds. 

Then, the voices calling for harmony have never been more underestimated. 

We saw the main looks at this wonder in July during the clashes on the outskirt between the two nations. 

In the creative mind of the Azerbaijani public, Armenia is a somewhat powerless adversary, dependent upon Russia. Notwithstanding, in July, battling with Armenia finished with a significant misfortune — General Major Polad Hashimov was slaughtered. This was the main loss of such a high-positioning official since the truce was marked in 1994. 

Regardless of a clampdown against the resistance and the serious standards of a continuous COVID-19 lockdown that commanded social separating and limited common opportunities, this news sent Azerbaijan's public into an anger. Inside 24 hours of Hashimov's passing, a huge number of protestors overflowed into the focal point of Baku in an enormous, and uncommon supportive of war rally. 

Some protestors even broke into the Azerbaijani parliament, harming a portion of the decorations inside before police scattered them. 

This was the material sign of the early stage injury that the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh is for the post-Soviet Azerbaijani character. The entire of the nation's public character has been developed upon this misfortune — and thusly, every single acceleration sparkles trust among people in general for an arrival of the lost terrains. 

This is the prevailing story that is at the establishment of present day Azerbaijan. 

The rationale of the prevailing story is a basic one: Nagorno-Karabakh had been an early stage part of Azerbaijan and Armenia took it with Russia's assistance. By this rationale, a war for Nagorno-Karabakh is fundamentally one of freedom, not, as the current occupants of the area see it, a war of occupation. 

Elective accounts, for example, the quiet goal of the contention and long haul discourse, considered both incapable and tricky, have been avoided from the public conversation. Particularly, as the concise defrost between the two nations after the unrest in 2018, again chilled after Armenian Prime Minister visited Nagorno-Karabakh and required the unification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. 

The syndication of all talk by the predominant story has implied that, in any event mentally, Azerbaijan has for quite some time been prepared to start a war. 

The dream of peacebuilding 

After the July engagements and fights between ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis abroad, another harmony activity showed up. Many reformist Azerbaijanis and Armenians, generally situated in Western nations, called for harmony and discourse. Such a call was not new, appeals of a similar character had recently showed up in 2014. 

Strikingly, both in 2014 and 2019 the calls to harmony were generally marked by individuals who lived outside of both Armenia and Azerbaijan. They achieved pretty much nothing and such barrenness should amaze nobody. 

Such activities have consistently been undetectable in Azerbaijan. For instance, youth-situated harmony ventures, as a rule financed by the European foundations, just pulled in just specific circles of youth, without a doubt reformist, however consistently similar individuals, with specific benefits — they were English-talking, receptive, and held entrenched enemy of war sees. 

Harmony and discourse activities have never contacted a more extensive crowd. Also, in all likelihood, it has never been an objective of the coordinators – they needed to adapt to the current dictator system, and therefore, followed a delicate and de-politicized plan with no solid suggestions and evading an immediate investigate of state strategy. 

The possibility of one such venture was for members to send letters to the opposite side – from an Azerbaijani to a peruser taking an interest in a similar task in Armenia. At the point when I took a gander at the names of the senders, I perceived the majority of the creators – I knew them actually. 

In any case, disregarding the whirlwind of letters from the standard suspects, the alleged 'holy' obligation of the country has stayed unchallenged by both the resistance and more extensive common society. This is on the grounds that such tasks arrived at their objectives just on paper, and their messages stayed unheard by a more extensive, rather distrustful crowd of normal individuals. 

By and by, in earlier years, those of us who represented harmony didn't know about the degree of the segregation of voices calling for harmony. It was simply after the nationalistic elation that ejected during and after the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh in April 2016 that we were stunned to acknowledge how disconnected from the remainder of the nation we truly were. 

Yet, the rare sorts of people who survived 2016 and didn't surrender are currently smarter. We are not stunned by the way that the resistance currently transparently bolsters the President, who they had in any case called a despot. We are not astonished that previous political detainees and the individuals who had endured state viciousness currently express their deference with Ilham Aliyev's most recent addresses. We are not astounded that we are reviled by standard individuals. 

Indeed, it was only a few days ago that somebody asked whether individuals like us were even conceived of an Azerbaijani mother. 

Four years prior, a large number of us were in strife — how was it conceivable, we asked, that the individuals who purport to remain with popularity based qualities so effectively changed their standards? 

Today is extraordinary, presently we expect and are prepared to bear outrageous minimization and prohibition — and we will do as such until the deadly patriotism that grasps the nations of this contention reaches a conclusion. 

The injury will remain with us 

After a fractional military activation was reported in Azerbaijan on 27 September, informal organizations loaded up with posts repeating similar two words: 'return alive'. 

Effectively, several the individuals who were brought into the world ten years after the contention began are no longer with us. More difficult actually is to see the rundowns with the long stretches of birth of the officers: 1999, 2000, 2001. 

Not at all like in 2016, presently the two sides give a valiant effort to show perpetually stunning recordings, and web-based media takes care of are an interminable look of pictures of death. Regardless of whether one attempts to stay away from them, it is outlandish. 

We all are individuals from damaged networks — and now we have been injured once more, our old injuries have been uncovered and new injuries made every day. It is an endless loop — the torment of the past filling the agony of the present and what's to come. 

This injury can't be evaded. It is genuine and we should figure out how to live with it. 

However, regardless of its solid reality, we should likewise understand that our present techniques for adapting to it don't work. Brutality will just take care of more savagery. Also, a 'discourse' that is shaped by the prevailing story and consumed by the state won't bring harmony between our countries, at any rate, not soon. 

We should request another way. Regardless of how hard that is. 

Yet in addition, we who remain against the war ought to be prepared for empathy. The enduring of the two countries will keep going quite a while. Also, we should comprehend the enduring of our networks and remain by them, working resolutely for harmony — regardless of whether they reject us. 

We should show empathy and tolerance, and recall: the injury remains with us.