If any Armenian officer had murdered a sleeping Azeri officer with an ax who was studying with him abroad, this officer would be minimum worth of the attitude of contempt. If any of our soldiers had boasted about killing a 92-year-old grandmother and cut off her ears, he would not have caused any other emotion than an abomination. The Armenian soldier has a completely different behavior. Being wounded, he sends his friends to a safe place, then waits for the enemy’s soldiers to approach, and blasts both him and the enemies with a grenade. The Armenian war veteran may quietly complain for hours about his social status and the injustices around him, promising “kill me now but I will not go to war” but will stand in the line since the morning of April 2 to go to the front. This is the character of our people and no tank, no “Smerch” and no “Solntsepyok” will resist it.
The civilizational differences are obvious. And eventually, they give us an advantage during the clash because hatred, xenophobia, justification of atrocities weaken the person. Ilham Aliyev, I think, sooner or later, will face his people’s court not only for the meaningless victims but for instilling disastrous poison of hatred in his society for about 15 years.
And why cannot we use this tremendous energy of our people in the domestic life too? One of the problems, perhaps, is that we consider the fighting against the enemy executing harassment a popular task to unite all of us. We do not consider building a strong state such a task, on this matter we rely on a miracle, allegedly a savior will come down from heaven and will put all the stones in their places and thus our desired state “will be formed”.
The energy that makes us strong during the war is spent on meaningless expectations and similarly meaningless protests during the peacetime. When you say that we are the soldier, we all agree with it, but when you say if we are the state, many will argue, no, we are not and will point out the index finger to the ceiling. However, this problem will probably be solved in parallel with the change of generation, and certainly, with propaganda too. We do not need so much patriotic upbringing (we have no problems here) as a state and civic education.
Ultimately, the strong state is also the main guarantee of security.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
