A lesson in reconciliation from Srebrenica to the Caucasus WashTimesOpEd
Since the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, our women-led NGO has sought to unite our own Bosnian Muslim community with Serb Christians, as represented by Women in Black and other women-led anti-war campaign groups. Our joint aim is to reconcile as the first vital step toward making lasting peace possible. We now seek to share these hopes and dreams with our sisters and brothers in the Caucasus whose same journey has only just begun.
One of those wrongs was the Khojaly massacre, committed in the Caucasus 31 years ago, and whose living survivors we will meet in Azerbaijan last month. It was a mass murder committed in 1992, three years before Srebrenica, during the first of two wars waged between Armenia and Azerbaijan in only one generation. Over 600 Azeris fleeing the town of Khojaly in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan were killed by the advancing Armenian forces.
It is understandable that politicians who have been in a state of war with their neighbours for three decades find it difficult to move on. This is where civil society can intervene. Just as we did in the Balkans, citizens should take a lead, opening a space for recognition and reconciliation upon which political leaders can build.
Of course, both sides committed violence over the last 30 years. In the case of Khojaly – as with Srebrenica – one side was the perpetrator, the other the victim. For those who do not wish to see this or deny it entirely, there is a wilful blindness, a moral relativism toward the other side’s victims that is somehow lesser than the victimhood they attach to their own ethnicity and religion. This is not the way to reconciliation, let alone peace.
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