Leyla Jafarova

LEYLA JAFAROVA, then a graduate student at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, was awarded a grant in April 2022 to aid research on “Unknown Bodies of Knowledge: The Case of Missing Persons in Post-war Azerbaijan,” supervised by Dr. Robert Weller. This dissertation examines how the Azerbaijani state strategically manages uncertainty surrounding missing persons in the aftermath of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994) to consolidate political power, sustain inter-ethnic enmities, and accumulate “humanitarian capital.” By subsuming humanitarian efforts into its nationalist discourse, the state reframes the search for the missing as an extension of military victories, shifting attention from the suffering of families to its own ability to maintain control and order. By adhering to the humanitarian principle of neutrality, the International Committee of the Red Cross, as one of the primary actors involved in efforts to clarify the fates of missing persons, risks legitimizing this politicization, allowing the missing and the dead to become tools of statecraft. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of desire as a productive force rather than a lack-based model of mourning, the dissertation also examines how the bureaucratic logic of humanitarianism transforms desire into a structured process — families must file reports, provide DNA samples, and wait for forensic identifications, all within a rigid timeline of what constitutes an “acceptable” mourning process. The state and humanitarianism thus channel the families’ desire away from open-endedness into a grid of administrative control. Yet, families frequently challenge this imposed structure — seeking knowledge outside official channels, engaging with alternative epistemologies, and maintaining affective bonds with the missing in ways that resist bureaucratic compartmentalization. This research contributes to understanding how humanitarian practices, despite all the good intentions, can shape and impact the experience of loss in politically charged contexts.