The New Nation, Bangladesh
June 20 2005
Political trouble brewing
By Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah
Jun 20, 2005, 12:25
In the last two years, the world heard earful of news of political
dissensions in several of the ex-Soviet republics. Some of these
nations are located near Euro-Asian border in Caucasus region while
one is in Europe. The protesters wore different colored scarves in
different dissenting nations thus engendering new and catchy names
for each of the revolution.
Take the case of Georgia (Rose Revolution) where in late November
2003 a pro-West politician by the name Mikhail Saakashvili ousted a
tyrannical president Eduard Shevarnadze, an aging ex-communist who
was the foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev.
The second revolution took place in Ukraine in December 2004 to
protest a rigged election in which a pro-Russian presidential
hopeful, Viktor Yanukovych, was declared a winner by a slim margin.
For weeks, protesters jammed the central city square wearing orange
scarf. The end result was the declaration of the rigged election null
and void. Within weeks, a new election put the dissident politician,
Viktor Yushchenko, into power and christening the term the `Orange
Revolution.’
In late March 2005, trouble brewed in Kyrgyzstan, a tranquil central
Asian ex-Soviet republic, where the despotic president, Askar Akayev,
who enforced an iron clad rule since the summer of 1991 when Soviet
union imploded due to President Mikhail Gorbachev’s implementation of
perestroika and glasnost. Ordinary citizens and political dissidents
stormed the presidential palace and government offices in capital
city of Bishkek. During the tumult, the deposed president Askar
Akayev fled the country to neighboring nation of Kazakhstan. The
country is now under the control of pro-west politicians.
On May 13, 2005, a political trouble escalated in Ferghana valley,
which is politically controlled by Uzbekistan. In the eastern-most
city of Andijan (in Ferghana), the government troop fired
indiscriminately killing more than 600 protesters and bystanders.
Uzbekistan is ruled iron-fistedly by a dictator named Islam Karomov
who is supported by Kremlin and tolerated by American Administration.
Many Uzbek dissenters moved into neighboring Kyrgyzstan in the
aftermath of May 13 carnage. After the putsch, life seems to be
returning to normalcy in eastern Uzbekistan. Only time will tell if
the seed of political discontent sowed in spring 2005 will amount to
anything in the future.
A month could hardly pass when we read in the news that a new trouble
brewed up in the oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan, which is located to
the west of Caspian Sea, and which is also considered an eastern
Transcaucasian nation. The geo-political significance of Azerbaijan
cannot be underestimated. It sits at the far end of the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipelines,
situated between the Black and Caspian seas, containing two, possibly
three breakaway provinces, and borders Iran, Georgia, Armenia, and
Russia.
Some background information should come handy to better appreciate
what ails this oil-rich nation inhabited by nearly 8 million people
living in a land about half the size of Bangladesh. Azerbaijanis are
essentially Turkic and Muslim whose nation regained independence
after the collapse of the Soviet Union in summer of 1991. Trouble
brewed in 1994 with the neighboring nation, Armenia, over disputed
region of Nagorno-Karabakh enclave where Armenian people live.
Despite a 1994 cease-fire, Azerbaijan has yet to resolve its conflict
with Armenia. The country has lost 16% of its territory in the
conflict and must support some 571,000 internally displaced persons
because of the conflict. The sad part of Azerbaijan story is that
corruption is ubiquitous and the promise of nation building from oil
revenues remains largely unfulfilled. One parenthetical note about
Azerbaijanis is that most of them are Shiites. Culturally, they are
similar to people who live in Azerbaijan province of Iran whose
capital city is Tabriz.
A personal anecdote about Azerbaijani people and their devotion to
religion Islam. In early 1960s when I was a high school student in
Tejgaon, Dhaka, the Soviet Union sent a soccer team to Pakistan for
friendly matches. The Soviet team happened to be the Baku Oil Mill,
which was one of the best team in the communist paradise. A couple of
my friend befriended a team member who had a Perso-Arabic name. He
told us that he is an Azeri. We wanted to give him a gift as a token
of our friendship. He asked for a prayer mat and a copy of Koran for
his elderly parents. I now gather that during Soviet rule, the
Azerbaijanis were not allowed to practice their religion in public;
however, in private people maintained their faith. The response from
the visiting team member asking for a copy of Koran and prayer mat
speaks in volume for a thriving religion in private.
Coming back to the main story, on June 4, 2005, about 10,000
opposition Azerbaijanis chanted `Freedom!’ and carried pictures of
President Bush as they marched across nation’s capital (Baku), urging
the government of this U.S. ally to step down and allow free
parliamentary elections this year.
The spontaneous rally in Baku was the largest of its kind in which
opposition demonstrators shouted `Freedom.’ The last time Azeri
people came out to demonstrate against the government was in October
2003 when one person died and nearly 200 were injured in clashes
between police and demonstrators protesting vote rigging in the
presidential election.
Tensions have been building ever since October 2003 demonstration in
this oil-rich Caspian Sea nation in the run-up to parliamentary
elections set for November 2005. Experts from the region predict that
Azerbaijan could see a massive uprising similar to the ones that
toppled unpopular and autocratic regimes in other ex-Soviet nations
of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan during the past 18 months.
According to news report, supporters of several opposition parties
shouted `Freedom!’ and `Free Elections!’ while holding placards with
such slogans as `Down with robber government!’ Some even carried a
picture of Bush with the inscription: `We want freedom!’ Azerbaijanis
know that America has its eye fixed on this oil-rich nation.
Therefore, carrying Bush’s photo while protesting against the
repressive regime meant asking America’s help to topple the present
government.
The U.S. Department of State has given a statement in which it
welcomed granting by the Azerbaijan Government of permit to the
meeting of opposition on June 4, 2005, last Saturday in Baku. State
Department spokesperson, Mr. Sean McCormack, underlined that the
political rally ended peacefully. On behalf of the Bush
Administration, he called on the government of Azerbaijan to grant
permit to further demonstrations of opposition so that the
forthcoming fall parliament elections met international standards.
Why should America have interest in seeing a pro-West government
installed in Baku a la Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan? The answer
lies in the fact that Azerbaijan sits on a massive oil reserve. Oil
output from Azerbaijan is expected to balloon to more than 20 million
tones in 2005. Furthermore, according to President Ilham Aliyev,
Azerbaijan, which inaugurated the four-billion-dollar
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in May 2005, is expected to see
output grow further to 50 million tons per year in 2006 Aliyev said
at an oil and gas conference.
It should be noted here that America had backed the BTC project — an
infrastructure initiative that will allow Caspian Sea producers to
get their oil to Western markets without going through Russia – that
is expected to handle the excess output from the oilfield located on
the Caspian Sea. America is hoping that the BTC pipeline when fully
functional would allow the West to depend less on OPEC nation to
fulfill their energy demand. After 2010 when Azerbaijan will produce
less oil, then Kazakhstan would commit their crude to the BTC
pipeline. These are the reasons why America and the West would like
to see a pro-West government installed in Baku. The present
president, Ilham Aliyev, while maintains good terms with both Kremlin
and Washington but fellow Azeris considers him an authoritarian ruler
because he has the virtual monopoly to power in Azerbaijan.
Some experts in Baku say that the opening of BTC marked the
unofficial start of the parliamentary election campaign. President
Aliyev and other top officials have offered assurances that the
parliamentary vote will be fair. Opposition leaders, however, voiced
their concerns about such exaggerated claims, and expressed a desire
to intensify the pressure on the government. Opposition protesters on
June 4, 2005, milled on the streets for electoral amendments designed
to dilute the Aliyev administration’s influence over election
commissions on all levels.
In summary, opposition politicians and their supporters took to the
streets in Baku to demonstrate against the present regime on June 4,
2005. The good thing is that Aliyev regime allowed the demonstration
to go through. The parliamentary election is nearing; therefore, the
restive opposition politicians are agitating on the streets of the
capital. The Aliyev Administration hailed the opening of BTC pipeline
as a monumental achievement; however, the opposition politicians are
using the same venue to tell the world that all is not well in this
oil-rich Muslim nation as far as democracy and free election is
concerned. Stay tuned for more development in the political front. My
take is that Aliyev is a seasoned politician who would be difficult
to remove in the near term. In addition, the Bush Administration is
in good term with him. Therefore, there is no urgency in toppling
Aliyev. We maybe entering a New World Order but America still calls
the shots.
-SAN-Feature Service
[Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New
Orleans, USA.]