Armenian paper predicts Azerbaijan is next in line for revolution

Hayots Ashkarh, Yerevan
21 May 05

An Armenian paper thinks that the American administration has set its
sights on Azerbaijan as being the next country in the Central Asia and
Caucasus region to be ripe for “colour revolution”. The paper thinks
that a particularly strong clue for such conjecture is provided by the
fact that the revolutions in both Georgia and Kyrgyzstan took place at
around election time and elections are due in Azerbaijan later this
year. The paper concludes by noting that if revolution sweeps
Azerbaijan, Armenia should not expect to get off scot-free. The
following is the text of the article entitled “Parade of revolutions,
Azerbaijan will be the next” by Armenian newspaper Hayots Ashkarh on
21 May. Subheadings have been inserted editorially:

By means of George Bush’s latest speech, the USA republican
administration has finally confessed that the “colour revolutions”
happening in the CIS countries are financed and sponsored by him. At
the same time the US president underlined the main strategic priority
of this process, i.e. the inevitability of the expected political
changes in the Caucasus-Central Asia region.

In such conditions an interesting question arises for the peoples of
the Caucasus and Central Asia: has their country been included in the
list of overseas democracies? Who is going to make revolution for them
in their country? But surely any political change, especially
revolution, is possible only as a manifestation of the strong will of
the majority of citizens in a given country.

Elections in Azerbaijan give clue to American thinking

What other countries in addition to Georgia and Kyrgyzstan are waiting
their turn in the queue for a “colour revolution”? To find an answer
to this question we need to pay attention to the fact that the
revolutions indicated by Bush took place only as a result of regular
elections and developments after the elections. The institution of
elections is the main mechanism that the USA view as being an
instrument for the establishment of democracy in the newly independent
CIS countries. Thus it is not accidental that the National Democratic
Institute [with headquarters in Washington DC] and other American
structures are above all working on improving the monitoring of
election processes in the CIS countries. We should note that at
present, in the whole of the Caucasus-Central Asia region, it is
Azerbaijan which is the country on the threshold of parliamentary
elections [in November 2005]. For this reason we think that by hinting
at his “great expectations” as regards the “prospect of change”, the
US president was pointing specifically at the inevitability of events
expected in Azerbaijan in the autumn.

Other factors pointing to Azerbaijan as next in line

Such a prediction gains more objective weight if one examines in
detail the political, geoeconomic and geopolitical processes in and
around Azerbaijan. They are:

a) the “hereditary autocracy” in Azerbaijan fully corresponds to the
“dictator regimes” mentioned by the US president;

b) the existence of a “new generation” that wishes liberty, which was
mentioned by the US president, tallies fully with the existence of a
strong pro-Western opposition in Azerbaijan;

c) the US president considers the Caucasus-Central Asia region as a
geopolitical whole and Azerbaijan as a “connecting link” and thinks
that it is an absolute priority to establish control over Azerbaijan;

d) the Azerbaijani leadership needs to understand that the Baku-Ceyhan
oil pipeline exists to control the world prices of oil.

Revolution in Azerbaijan would leave its mark on Armenia

Thus, on closer examination it becomes evident that the idea of the
inevitability of a colour revolution in Azerbaijan in the autumn is
the “hot point” of George Bush’s policy speech in Tbilisi. The events
expected in Azerbaijan will pose the main challenge which Armenia and
Karabakh will also be obliged to resist in the future, because if an
Azerbaijani model of the Georgian Saakashvili scenario suddenly
appears [presumably with breakaway regions such as Ajaria being
reabsorbed], our country will be forced to correct its foreign policy
as well.