Los Angeles Times, CA
Aug 17 2008

A middle road in Azerbaijan

In a region torn by conflict, the tiny country in the Caucuses leans
toward the West without riling Russia.

Gregory Rodriguez
August 18, 2008

BAKU, AZERBAIJAN — There’s probably no country in the world watching
the Russia-Georgia conflict more intently than this small, energy-rich
nation to the south and east of the turmoil. It too leans toward the
West. Its oil runs through the pipeline that crosses Georgia. And it
too wants to know how far Russia will go to keep its former vassal
states within its sphere of influence.

Azerbaijan was one of the first Soviet republics to win
independence. It’s a rare secular Muslim nation with a tradition of
religious tolerance — it enjoys friendly relations with Israel. It
also signed on to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, contributing troops
to coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has felt some heat
from other Muslim nations because of it.

But as friendly to the West as Azerbaijan is, it is under no illusions
about its place in the world. It is betwixt and between superpowers
and religious and ethnic groups in a volatile neighborhood. And unlike
headstrong Georgia, which clearly miscalculated the extent to which
the West would come to its aid, Azerbaijanis don’t lean too far in any
direction. They seem intent on pursuing a sometimes torturous process
of diplomacy, compromise and caution.

Consider what Sheik Allahshukur Pashazadeh, the chairman of the Muslim
Board of the Caucuses, told me over tea and grapes: "There are never
friends in politics. Individuals have friends, countries don’t. Their
interests are too complicated."

"What does ‘friend’ mean?" echoed Samad Seyidov, who chairs the
Foreign Relations Committee in the Azerbaijani parliament. "We just
want normal relations."

I came to Azerbaijan as a guest of the government for a conference on
U.S.-Azerbaijani relations. The sheik wasn’t on the official agenda,
but the pragmatism he expressed was often repeated at the conference
and across Baku by government representatives, thirtysomethings,
businessmen and passersby.

Not that Azerbaijanis are only Kissinger-esque realists. They harbor a
flagrant and bitter — and frankly debilitating — enmity toward
Armenians and Armenia, to whom Azerbaijan lost nearly one-fifth of its
territory in a still technically unfinished war in the early 1990s —
a cease-fire is in place, but not yet a truce. Beyond that, however,
relations with nearby and neighboring states are decidedly textured
and complicated.

Turkey is their natural ally, another secular Muslim state and one
with which Azerbaijan shares a common ethnic and linguistic
heritage. But in Baku, Turkey’s move toward a stronger mix of Islam
and government can come in for criticism, even as some Azerbaijanis
consider with envy its NATO membership and its attempt to join the EU.

In general, for Azerbaijanis, shared religion does not predetermine
cooperation or enmity. Azerbaijanis clearly see Georgia, a majority
Christian country, as an ally and sympathize with it in the current
conflict. Meanwhile, Iran, which like Azerbaijan is a majority Shiite
nation and with whom it has cordial formal relations, is still looked
upon with a healthy dose of distrust. And although Russian cultural
and linguistic influence remains strong, and binational relations are
good, you’d be hard-pressed to find an Azerbaijani who isn’t deeply
suspicious of Vladimir Putin et al. (It is not insignificant that Iran
and Russia supported Armenia — the former tacitly and the latter
militarily — in its war with Azerbaijan.)

Such nuance ran through a wide-ranging discussion I had at a Georgian
restaurant packed with young, educated residents in Baku. "You try to
serve all masters," said 27-year-old journalist Olga Pukhayeza. "You
try to be polite to everyone while maintaining your independence."
Said Rashad Novruzov, 23: "For us, there’s nothing really
black-and-white. You can’t trust everyone, and you can’t distrust
everyone."

Azerbaijanis know their caught-in-the-middle status presents them with
an opportunity. "Maybe we could be the answer to the clash of
civilizations," Seyidov said. But mostly, it leaves them with the
sense that they enjoy only a tenuous grip on their own destiny. The
deputy minister for national security, Ali Shafiyev, even conceded
that his nation’s great resource, its oil and gas reserves,
contributes to its shaky status. "On the one hand, interest in our oil
makes us more secure, and on the other, it makes us more vulnerable,"
he said.

One thing seems to be certain. Even as Azerbaijan makes its move
toward the West, it will not challenge or turn its back on Russia in
the way that Georgia did a week and a half ago. On Thursday, Vitaliy
Baylarbayov, the deputy vice president of SOCAR, the State Oil Co. of
Azerbaijan Republic, told his American visitors that his company is
considering an offer by Russia to buy all of the firm’s natural gas
production for both domestic use and export to Europe. The move would
clearly give Russia even greater political leverage over
energy-dependent Western European nations.

Wouldn’t such a deal impede Azerbaijan’s embrace of Europe and the
United States? No, Baylarbayov insisted. His state-owned company is
strictly a commercial, not a political, enterprise, he said. Could any
answer have been more pragmatic or more "Western" than that?

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress