The greatest obstacle to peace is not hatred; it is fear. A person can stop hating. But leaving fear behind takes much longer.
For years, we have been asking the same question: How is peace made? Perhaps we should first ask a different one: How does a society stop being afraid?
No psychiatrist would tell someone who has experienced severe war trauma in their very first session, "You are safe now." Because trust cannot be established by words alone. People only begin to relax gradually when they start believing that the world has once again become predictable. The mind does not merely remember danger; it often constructs its future around the possibility of that danger. That is why, even after a war ends, the state of vigilance within people does not simply disappear. The same is true of societies.
States sign agreements; people live with their memories. Once fear settles into everyday life, even children's birth dates, plans for the future, and the most ordinary conversations at home begin to revolve around it.
Anahit's Departure
One of the most important things I learned during the years I lived in Armenia is this: people in this country are not opposed to peace. Quite the contrary; perhaps those who long for peace the most are those who know best what war means.
I met her shortly after the Karabakh War. She lived in a small house in Erebuni. She worked as a caregiver. I will not share her real name; in this article, I will call her Anahit. Her life was shaped not by grand politics but by the struggle to make ends meet. At the time, one of her daughters had just given birth, and they had welcomed their first grandchild. They also had a seventeen-year-old son. Under normal circumstances, the family's entire attention should have been focused on the newborn baby. Instead, they were talking about their son's eighteenth birthday. Because that date was not simply a birthday; it meant military service, and perhaps another war.
One day she said to me, "I love my grandson so much, but my mind is constantly busy with my son."
Sometimes war sits down at people's kitchen tables before it has even begun, and life starts being reorganized around possibilities that have not yet been lived through.
Escaping What Might Happen
Then they left. They left behind not only their homeland but also their daughter, their newborn grandchild, and the life they had spent years building. Taking their son with them, they sought refuge in France, a country whose language they did not even speak. Leaving was not easy either. To make it possible, they sold everything they owned. The woman who had gone to work every morning back home now found herself waiting within the four walls of a small room in the suburbs of Paris.
Whenever we spoke on the phone, she was often in tears.
"What are we going to do here?"
What uprooted her from her country was not a war that had already happened; it was the thought that another war might happen again. This fear was not imaginary. The losses and displacement of the recent past made it all too real. A real threat and the traces of past trauma can become intertwined in the human mind. In such moments, every decision inevitably leaves something broken behind. That is why Anahit's story is not merely one of migration; it is the story of a family fractured down the middle.
The Traces Left in the Mind
In truth, this is not a story unique to Armenia. The language of war changes, countries change, flags change—but the human mind changes very little. In every society that has experienced war, mothers calculate their children's ages differently, fathers listen to the silence of the night differently, and suitcases are packed differently. Even after the tanks have withdrawn, the defensive positions inside the mind are not easily abandoned.
Over time, fear also becomes embedded in the language of society. It is reproduced in the stories told to children, in school textbooks, in news broadcasts, and in everyday conversations. That is why lasting peace requires not only changing borders but also changing language.
Imagining One Another Again
The space created by political agreements must be filled by people themselves. Sometimes a border crossing does more than connect two countries; it allows two societies to imagine one another anew. Trust grows, in part, through this kind of predictability.
When people begin genuinely listening to one another's stories, fear gradually gives way to curiosity. Journalists working together, student exchange programs, or increasing numbers of people creating things together do not, by themselves, build peace. But such encounters are indispensable if security guarantees are to take root within society. This is how two societies that have imagined each other only as enemies begin to see one another as human beings again.
Of course, such a transformation does not happen on its own. Changing the institutions that sustain fear depends on the existence of independent media, a strong civil society, and critical education. Peace begins with agreements states sign, but it becomes lasting only when it takes hold in people's lives.
Why Shouldn't Trust Be Passed On?
When will the fear that drove Anahit from her country truly come to an end? On the day when a mother no longer looks at her child's birth date and sees the possibility of military service?
We have painfully learned that fear can be passed from one generation to the next. Perhaps trust will not be passed on as quickly; perhaps it will take many more years. But children can inherit not only memories of loss but also the belief that living together is possible.
To achieve this, we need not only new political agreements but also safe public spaces where old wounds can be discussed without being denied. It will not be easy; the truth will sometimes make old wounds ache again. But pain that cannot be spoken about does not disappear, it merely falls silent. The challenge of lasting peace is not to avoid the truth, but to create a just foundation where the truth no longer generates new fears.
Perhaps real peace begins on the day a mother looks at her child's birth date without thinking of the front lines. Only then does war begin to withdraw not only from borders, but also from people's minds.
