Crises ripple across the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, so many that we can scarcely process one before the next begins.
One year ago in September 2023, struggling to process the genocide in Artsakh, I waited tense and frightened to hear from friends. It was hard to think of anything else. Would I hear from them, or would they, like my ancestors, join the Armenians whose fate we would never know? I waited in silence. I heard no words from those who had also waited in the aftermath of such violence, so little acknowledgement from the world.
The genocide in Gaza began only days after I finally heard from friends and loved ones from Artsakh. I sent money to friends who needed urgent medical care simply to survive. It must have been terrifying to face such a precarious future as refugees with nothing left of their former lives or country. After facilitating two emotionally heart-wrenching healing circles, I hoped for a little time to regenerate before investigating what more I could do for the Artsakh survivors. I started reaching out to Palestinian friends to ask how they were doing and to let them know they were in my heart in those awful days.
Suddenly an irate message from an acquaintance broke the silence, demanding to know why I wasn’t posting on Instagram about Palestine. There was so much silence around the genocide of indigenous people in Artsakh, and they too had been silent. But now the genocide was in their homeland, and I knew they felt the helpless anger that I’d felt in September and again in October. Powerless to stop such vicious injustice, we often misplace our anger and lash out at anyone we can in place of those we cannot reach.
I have felt the rage of powerlessness. During the 2020 war on indigenous Armenians, I worked hard on protests, lobbying, education, relief efforts, anything and everything I was asked to do or could think of. So many other Armenians did the same. Yet the result was a loss of life and more of our indigenous land, and that continues today, fueled in part by U.S. tax dollars and the relentless inhumanity of capitalism and colonialism.
During the 2020 war on Armenia, it was much easier to build solidarity, because we were all trapped at home in lockdown. That brief solidarity from my local SWANA community meant that as Armenians we were not so alone in the silence. We built a wider community that gave us the strength to face each day as we lived with the helplessness of seeing our people maimed and killed by colonialist aggression from a violent dictatorship fueled by petrodollars. The colonialists in the U.S. and Europe will always side with the colonialists elsewhere, even while “condemning” their atrocities. Our solidarity might mitigate some of that only if we can maintain it.
Solidarity cannot be limited to one group, demographic or issue. We can’t promote solidarity if we do not include all the groups that inhabit the SWANA region and those that are indigenous and have been forcefully displaced. While the violence against my people continues, and I’m consumed with emotions at the horror they suffer, still I cannot forget others from our region who also suffer. I do not give my support only in the current crisis but also fight for the systemic change that can ultimately end the violence and build the path to a better future. Systemic change requires the difficult solidarity that includes the recognition of injustice across our region and the acknowledgment of the human rights of all SWANA peoples. We cannot allow ethnicity, religion or any other demographic to divide us. Our divisions only aid those who would oppress and annihilate us. As feminists, we should have learned this by now, as intersectional solidarity among women is the only way we will gain complete equality as human beings. By recognizing the importance of intersectionality to our feminist struggle, we can lead with strength and intention.
War has so many consequences for those of us who do not rule, who live ordinary lives. Women and children most often suffer the most dire consequences of war. As women and feminists, we must fight for systemic change, for revolutionary change.
In the deafening silence of the Artsakh genocide, I understood that without solidarity, without communities beyond our own, without understanding the pain of others, and without unity, we will not succeed in preserving ourselves, our lands and our cultures.
In my work as a visual artist and writer, I create visions of the future I want to see. While working on my recent book, Reparations of the Heart: Toward a SWANA Futurity, I collaborated with people from diverse SWANA backgrounds to create images of the future we envision together. This is one way to deliberately build the solidarity we need. I am committed to work patiently, incrementally and tenaciously toward a better future. I feel the future and its promise today. It doesn’t matter if I’ll see this in my lifetime. Change for a world after mine is enough.
In the deafening silence of the Artsakh genocide, I understood that without solidarity, without communities beyond our own, without understanding the pain of others, and without unity, we will not succeed in preserving ourselves, our lands and our cultures. We all have to work together with patient insistence for the change we want to see. And we will need each other, the support we find in community, to keep living with the radical joy found in love and compassion and the healing and hope we can bring into the future.
The things I have heard the Israeli government say to justify its annihilation of Palestinians are the same things the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments have said to justify the genocide of Armenians. They are the same things the U.S. government said to justify the genocide of indigenous Americans. Sometimes the silence is so deafening that I cannot hear the sound of my own heart breaking.
Kristin Anahit Cass
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- The deafening silence - November 19, 2024
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