More Iranians to flee to Azerbaijan due to rising tension with USA – website

Institute for War and Peace Reporting website, London
15 Apr 06

Ethnic Azeris from Iran are fleeing to Azerbaijan for fear of a
possible US attack, the website of the London-based Institute for War
and Peace Reporting has said. They have chosen Azerbaijan because they
speak the same language spoken north of the border and often have
relatives in Azerbaijan, it said. At the same time, the website quoted
several experts as saying that in 2005 the number of Iranians applying
for refugee status in Azerbaijan was 10 times the 2004 figure, rising
from 14 to 147. If the tension between Iran and the United States
continues to rise, it seems inevitable that many more Iranian
nationals will want to make Baku their new home, the IWPR said. The
following is the text of Kamal Ali’s report by London-based Institute
for War and Peace Reporting website on 15 April headlined “Iranian
Azerbaijanis move north.

Growing numbers are moving from Iran to Azerbaijan, especially since
the upsurge in tension between Washington and Tehran”. Subheadings
have been inserted editorially:

Safe haven

I would never have thought they were from Iran. Said Soleymani, 42,
and his family members looked like regular residents of Baku. Women in
the Azerbaijani capital do occasionally wear black headscarves, and
there was nothing unusual about the denim gear worn by Said and his
two sons. Only their accent betrayed that they were southerners,
possibly from Iran.

I met them in Baku’s Zavokzalnyy district beyond the railway station,
which used to be an Armenian neighbourhood before the war over
Nagornyy Karabakh, and which then became a haven for Azerbaijani
refugees.

Now there are reports that the area has become a haven for a new kind
of migrants. Semen Kastrulin, a journalist who lives in this
neighbourhood, says Zavokzalnyy is now home to large numbers of ethnic
Azerbaijanis from Iran.

Said and his bashful and silent wife agreed to talk to me. They come
from around Tabriz, the capital of Iran’s East Azarbayjan
Province. They said they had come to Baku for about three weeks, to do
some sightseeing and shop for cheap goods.

According to Said, their visit had nothing to do with fears of an
American attack on Iran, in the dispute over its development of
nuclear technology. He said they had long been planning to come. But
he conceded that they might stay a bit longer, waiting for things to
quieten down back home.

I met another Iranian, Nazim Mohammadi, 60, in Cafe Tabriz close to
the Iranian embassy. Apparently, this is now the local Iranian
community’s favourite place to hang out and discuss the latest
political and sports news.

Mohammadi and his two sons came to Baku at the end of March. They are
staying with his wife’s relatives, who emigrated from Iran during the
Soviet era, fleeing political persecution in the wake of the Red
Army’s withdrawal from northern Iran at the end of the Second World
War.

“We are from Tehran, where we own a beautiful two-storey house with a
courtyard,” said Mohammadi. “We have a family car repair business. My
brother and his family are staying there now, looking after the house
and the business.”

Nazim is playing with the idea of starting a car repair centre in
Baku, but he is not sure he can compete with the locals. “We are not
going to stay here forever; we’ll see how it goes. If we’re lucky,
we’ll probably go to Europe.

If not, we’ll go back home,” he said.

The Iranian Azerbaijani migrants are hard to spot in Baku – still less
count – partly because they blend in with the locals, but also because
they keep a low profile and come and go from Iran.

Sharp rise in migration from Iran

IWPR contacted Majid Feyzullahi, press spokesman for the Iranian
embassy in Baku, for a comment on newspaper reports that Azerbaijan
was being “overrun” by refugees from Iran. The Ekspress newspaper, for
example, had reported that the flow of migrants to Baku had
intensified to such an extent that housing and land prices had gone
up.

Feyzullahi appeared annoyed and said he could only repeat what his
ambassador, Afshar Soleymani, had already said – that the embassy had
no information about this matter.

Word-of-mouth reports however suggest a sharp rise in migration from
Iran.

Political analyst Rovsan Novruzoglu told IWPR he knows of more than
150 Iranian families who have fled to Azerbaijan in fear of an
American attack on Iran.

But Iranian immigrants are nothing new for Baku. Ethnic Azerbaijanis
came across from Iran in the Soviet period, fleeing persecution by the
shah’s regime before it was overthrown in 1979.

Novruzoglu also claimed that Iranian security agents were in the
country disguised as migrants, creating a threat to Azerbaijan’s
national security.

Why have Iranian nationals chosen Azerbaijan as a safe haven? Iran’s
ethnic Azerbaijanis speak the same language spoken north of the border
and often have relatives in Azerbaijan. However, Persian-speaking
Iranians also come to Azerbaijan.

It is easy and inexpensive for Iranian nationals to obtain an
Azerbaijani visa. A three-month renewable visa costs them 40 US
dollars. Under a 2005 bilateral agreement – yet to be ratified by the
Azerbaijani parliament – both Iranian and Azerbaijani nationals living
within 40 kilometres of the frontier will be entitled to cross without
a visa.

Another Iranian, Ahmad, who had arrived in Baku a few weeks before,
said he believed the Azerbaijani authorities were stalling on the
visa-free border agreement for fear of being overrun by Islamic
fundamentalists from Iran.

Azerbaijan’s National Committee on Refugees and Forced Migrants
reported that in 2005 the number of Iranians applying for refugee
status was 10 times the 2004 figure, rising from 14 to 147. In 2005,
the applications of 40 Iranian families were approved, according to
the committee’s press spokesman Sanan Huseynov.

Vuqar Abdusalimov, press spokesman for the Azerbaijani office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told IWPR the numbers
had not really changed despite the talk of an increased refugee flow
prompted by the threat of conflict.

Baku residents are wary of their more affluent cousins from Iran,
believing that they bump up property prices in a city already bursting
with other migrants and refugees from the Karabakh conflict.

According to Baku’s Birzha newspaper, the average price of a
three-room apartment in a good Baku neighbourhood has gone up from
22,000 or 23,000 US dollars to 35,000-40,000 dollars in just 12
months. Property prices are also reported to be on the rise in
Naxcivan, the Azerbaijani exclave that borders Iran.

Westernized Baku is a strong contrast to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Kastrulin said he noticed that Iranian men enjoy the freedom to drink
alcohol in restaurants – something they are denied at home, while the
women are frequently seen on the street without the obligatory
headscarf.

If the tension between Iran and the United States continues to rise,
it seems inevitable that many more Iranian nationals will want to make
Baku their new home.

Kamal Ali is the editor-in-chief of Birzha Plus newspaper in Baku.