Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Feb 3 2005

Azeri army purge

Is the Defense Ministry weeding out officers for financial
misdemeanors, or because they are viewed as disloyal to the regime?

By Jasur Mamedov in Baku for IWPR (04/02/05)

About 10 officers in Azerbaijan’s army have been arrested and dozens
more demoted for bribery in recent weeks. The defense ministry
advertised the move as the beginning of a sweeping anti-corruption
drive, stated as a response to a new anti-corruption bill which
President Ilham Aliev signed into law by the president on 1 January
2005. But some observers are asking whether the officers who have
been targeted are really thought to be on the take, or whether they
make convenient scapegoats because their support for the regime is
viewed as suspect. `The officers in question are accused of forging
some papers in 2003 to let some draftees dodge conscription,’ defense
ministry spokesman Ramiz Melikov told IWPR. Melikov declined to name
the officers or reveal how many were involved, citing confidentiality
restrictions surrounding the investigation. Without saying that
corruption is a problem in the military, Melikov said the arrests
could be linked to the new anti-corruption law, which applies to all
government agencies including the armed forces. To comply with the
law, the defense ministry is now obliged to run checks on its staff.
`The defense ministry audits its ranks on a regular basis, and
punishes offenders,’ said Melikov said. The new law against
corruption was passed under pressure from international lending
institutions, which set it as a precondition for advancing further
credit to the Azerbaijani government. Azerbaijan set up an
anti-corruption commission in April 2004, headed by presidential
chief of staff Ramiz Mehtiev. Now that the new law has been enacted,
the commission is gearing up for a series of audits targeting
government bodies and the armed forces.

Incidents of bribery?
The incidents of bribery that led to the arrest of the army officers
were exposed on 13 January, when Mehtiev’s commission announced the
findings of an audit of the Barda Corps conducted in December 2004.
The corps is stationed 40 kilometers from the ceasefire line
separating Azerbaijani from Armenian forces around Nagorno Karabakh.
Some details of the case were leaked to the press earlier via a
retired army officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Uzeir Jafarov, who named two
officers who had been arrested. More recently, it transpired that two
other men, who commanded military units belonging to the Barda Corps,
were taken into custody around 20 January. A criminal file has been
opened on another officer in one of the units, and several more
high-ranking officers have been demoted or sacked. Retired army major
Alekber Mamedov, who heads the non-government Centre for Civilian
Supervision of the Armed Forces, agrees that corruption is widespread
in the army. However, Lieutenant-Colonel Jafarov, who dismissed from
the army in 2003, does not believe these arrests mean the defense
ministry is genuinely committed to rooting out corruption. Instead,
he thinks the officers concerned were removed for political reasons.
`The arrests at the Barda Corps were politically inspired,’ he said.
`I know for a fact that many officers in Barda voted for Isa Gambar
in the last presidential elections.’ Gambar is the leader of the
opposition Musavat party who challenged the current president, Ilham
Aliev, in 2003. According to Jafarov, officials were so alarmed by
the level of support for the opposition that Defense Minister Safar
Abiev took steps to get rid of the dissidents. To back up this
version of events, Jafarov says the Barda Corps commander-in-chief
Talib Mamedov tried to protect his subordinates, and was immediately
shunted off to a minor diplomatic post in Kazakhstan. A Defense
Ministry staffer who did the same found himself similarly dispatched
abroad, in his case to Azerbaijan’s embassy in Pakistan. `With these
two out of the picture, they swooped on the other officers,’ said
Jafarov.

Financial insecurity
Alimamed Nuriev, who heads the Azerbaijani parliament’s commission
for defense and national security, believes the anti-corruption drive
is real. `The events at Barda show that the ministry is getting
serious about corruption,’ he said. `I believe that in a month or
two, we will see the results of this anti-corruption initiative
across all government agencies, including the defense ministry.’
Whatever the truth about the accusations made against the Barda unit,
many officers and soldiers in the corps told IWPR that bribery was
rampant. `In return for a monthly fee paid to their superiors, dozens
of soldiers on the payroll were allowed to live in their homes while
officially serving in the unit. This was common practice here,’ a
Barda Corps soldier, who declined to be named, told IWPR. `Hundreds
of soldiers were never paid their wages. Most of our wages were
deducted under various pretexts such as building a new mess hall or
something.’ Major-General Tajeddin Mehtiev, a former defense minister
who now works at the ministry’s Centre for Military Studies,
prescribes reform rather than punishment. `I don’t think punitive
action alone can prevent offences in the army. The root of the
problem is that military servicemen feel financially insecure,’ he
said. `We should give our soldiers a pay rise to at least 100 US
dollars a month [current pay is between four to 10 dollars], and pay
at least 500 dollars a month to our officers, who are now earning
between 100 and 150 dollars. That would be a strong disincentive to
corruption.’

Jasur Mamedov is a reporter for Zerkalo newspaper in Baku.
This article originally appeared in Caucasus Reporting Service,
produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).
Caucasus Reporting Service is supported by the UK Foreign Office and
the US State Department.