Eastern Europe November 24, 2009, 9:52AM EST

Rumblings of Instability in Azerbaijan Rich on oil, the Caspian
nation said it had escaped global downturn until the evidence was
irrefutable. Now dissent is rising – and the call of Islam is growing

By Maciej Falkowski
< os/Maciej_Falkowski.htm>

Although it is just the beginning of June, the sun has instantly warmed the
old Soviet buildings of Patamdart, a quarter of Baku located in the city’s
southern hills. Around noon staying inside becomes unbearable, and there has
been no running water for the last few days. On some evenings the flat is
lit only by the light of a cheap candle. The warm, dusty wind blowing from
Iran rattles the windows and stirs up piles of rubbish. Dawn brings the
crowing of cocks and the noises of cows and sheep that are being slaughtered
and flayed in the street.

Jaga, a taxi driver, roams the streets of Baku every night, fighting for
every fare with other self-appointed cabbies. In his spare time he visits
his friend Ludmila in a neighboring block of flats or drinks vodka with his
buddies, smoking marijuana and cheap cigarettes under the portraits of the
ancient Shia imams Ali and Hussein that hang on the walls. They chat about
the good old Soviet times, recalling their past Armenian neighbors, and
mocking the TV news in which President Ilham Aliev once again promises to
recapture Karabakh from the Armenians.

"They lie and deceive us every day," said Ramiz, who along with Jaga’s two
other friends helps build mobile phone towers. "It’s all about money. You
have to pay the doctors, clerks, police. Where am I supposed to get the
money for all the bribes? Prices keep rising, but our salaries don’t."

Economic data published by the government and international organizations
are marvelous. In 2006, the country’s GDP rose by 30.5 percent, in 2007, by
23.3 percent, according to the IMF. At that time Azerbaijan was the world’s
fastest growing economy. The country remains financially stable, its budget
is balanced, and unemployment does not exceed several percent.

Baku flaunts its oil money. It’s in the good road from the new airport, the
skyscrapers springing up in the center, the lavish *dachas* by the seaside,
villas belonging to government officials surrounded by several-meter-high
fences with black Hummers parked in front. The fountains on Neftchilar
Avenue, continually watered lawns surrounding the Old Town, and thousands of
billboards showing old Baku that have recently been erected all around the
city. The expensive perfume shops, the restaurants and air-conditioned
hotels for foreigners.

Most of those foreigners will never come to Patamdart, nor to the villages
of the Apsheron peninsula a few kilometers from Baku, where time stopped
over a hundred years ago. Here, people live next to oil wells, children play
in puddles of oil, and rivers look like a mixture of sewage and petrol.

In the wake of the global financial crisis the government remained silent
about the effects on Azerbaijan and its economy.

"The whole world was already struggling with the crisis, but our government
still claimed that it had miraculously bypassed Azerbaijan thanks to the
weak integration of the Azerbaijani economy with the global market," said
Hikmet Hajizade, director of the FAR Center for Political and Economic
Research in Baku. "It wasn’t until oil prices dramatically fell and Baku’s
construction sites came to a standstill that the government officially
admitted that there was something to it."

The crisis is hitting ordinary people increasingly hard. Many factories have
stopped production, the construction industry is plagued with enormous
problems, wages are paid only after long delays, and, although down from
about 20 percent in 2008, inflation is expected to remain troublesome this
year, according to the IMF.

Compared with Georgia and Armenia, where opposition demonstrations and other
destabilizing events happen relatively often, Azerbaijan seems stable. The
country saw the last turbulent moments in 2003, when the authorities put
down opposition protests staged after rigged presidential elections. But the
lack of visible signs of potential destabilization in Azerbaijan is
misleading.

Beliefs about Azerbaijan’s internal stability are based on the common
conviction that Aliev’s position is strong and that he sets the rules and
makes most important decisions independently, especially those on foreign
policy and the oil industry. That he is like his father, Heidar, president
from 1993 to 2003, a cunning and experienced player whom officials simply
feared.

But when speaking privately, Azerbaijani experts question the position of
Aliev Jr.

"Ilham is an indecisive man who fears contacts with journalists, avoids
speaking in public, and has a weakness for risk," commented a well-known
Azerbaijani political scientist speaking on condition of anonymity. "He has
proved during his first term in office that he is a gifted and clever
politician, but cannot equal his father as far as political games are
concerned."

Indeed, Ilham differs from his father in almost everything. He has a
different character, personal and political experience. Heidar was a product
of the KGB and the leader of a strong clan from Nakhichevan, an Azeri
exclave sandwiched between Iran and Armenia. By contrast, Ilham studied at
the prestigious Moscow University and has much closer ties to Baku’s
intellectual elite and the community of his Baku-born wife, Mehriban, than
to the people of Nakhichevan.

Perhaps the best measure of an autocrat’s power is his ability to conduct
political purges, to remove his predecessor’s people and nominate his own.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov’s purge of the state
administration following his rise to power after the death of Saparmurat
Niyazov is one example. Ilham has come close only once: in November 2005,
when he imprisoned two cabinet ministers, Farhad Aliev and Ali Insanov.
Nevertheless, most members of the old guard kept their offices. Many
commentators on the Azerbaijani political scene claim that it is they,
especially the chief of the president’s administration, Ramiz Mekhtiev, and
Interior Minister Ramil Usubov, not the president, who rule from behind the
scenes.

Adding to the president’s weakness is the growing dissatisfaction of the
elites with the rule of two clans: the Nakhichevan clan and one that groups
Azerbaijanis originally from Armenia (the so-called Eraz – from the Russian
phrase *erevanskie azerbaidjantsy* meaning Yerevan Azerbaijanis), who have
dominated the political life of Azerbaijan and whose members hold almost all
offices in the central and regional administrations.

"The conflicts and tensions within the ruling elites, including those
between the Nakhichevanis and the Eraz, are another threat," said Leyla
Aliyeva of the Center for National and International Studies, a
pro-democracy think tank in Baku. "They are fueled by the rivalry over the
division of oil money."

The assassination of Deputy Defense Minister Rail Rzayev in February could
have been a signal that the rivalry is getting fierce, according to many
commentators. In early October General Prosecutor Zakir Garalov said the
general was probably killed by his subordinates.

NOT THE WEST, BUT ISLAM

Among the major threats to Azerbaijan’s internal stability are massive
corruption, nepotism, and the dependence of the economy on energy resources.
No country struggling with such problems can be considered securely stable.

Few seem to notice the growing discontent in Azerbaijani society. But based
on dozens of conversations I had with political analysts and ordinary
people, I would say that many Azerbaijanis have lost their belief in a
better future. Common people often stress that they no longer believe that
they will share the profits from oil and gas sales. They do not trust the
government, perceiving its members as "parasites" who care only for their
own interest.

Tofiq, who has lived in Patamdart since 1993, when his family fled the
now-Armenian-occupied Zangilan region, is typical. "How can I trust the
government, which promises to recapture Karabakh from the Armenians every
year, but has so far done nothing to fulfill these promises? Why are they
lying? All they care about are their own pockets, not ordinary people."

Azerbaijani society has been passive for years and has represented no threat
for the regime. But signs of change are there for those who look.

"Unrest among young people is on the rise: they discuss, set up their
organizations, opposition websites, and blogs," said Hajizade, of the FAR
Center. "Baku’s walls are splattered with hundreds of belligerent graffiti:
from ‘F**k Bush’ to ‘Allah Akbar.’ Leftist movements are also gaining
popularity."

The events that took place in Baku after a gunman killed between 13
and 30 people (the actual number remains undisclosed) at the State Oil
Academy on 30 April were another measure of the growing
dissatisfaction. After the attack people expected the government to
announce national mourning and disclose detailed information about the
results of the investigation. Meanwhile, the government tried to
cover up the incident and did not even call off the Holiday of Flowers
on 10 May, Heidar Aliev’s birthday. In response, students organized a
street march that attracted more than 2,000 people and was dispersed
by the police. Possibly fearing that protests might continue, the
authorities called off all events planned to celebrate the end of the
academic year.

The growing influence of Islam, including its radical versions, could also
help destabilize the internal situation. As recently as a few years ago
everyone would stare at a woman dressed in a *hijab*, whereas today there
are so many that nobody seems to pay attention. On Fridays, the Baku mosques
fill up, unthinkable only a few years ago in this strongly secular society.
And the city was the site of demonstrations in support of the Palestinians
during the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip.

"Only Islam can save Azerbaijan from the influence of the rotten West," said
Mukhtar, a student at the State Oil Academy. "The role of Islam in
Azerbaijan’s public life should be stronger, and the government should
cooperate not only with the U.S., but also with Muslim countries."

That disillusionment with the West is a new phenomenon in Azerbaijan, and it
is getting stronger. Many Azerbaijanis perceive the West as a cynical player
that calls for democratization but values Azerbaijani oil more. The West is
also commonly perceived as supporting Aliev’s authoritarian regime.
Azerbaijani opposition politicians, advocacy groups, and pro-Western elites
criticize international organizations and Western governments who they say
are not sufficiently critical of the government and who try not to let
authoritarian practices and human rights abuses impede relations with Baku.
They often recall the government’s violent suppression of the demonstrations
against the rigged presidential election of 2003. Although the West
criticized the government at the time, opposition and civil society
activists had hoped for a "color revolution" and looked on bitterly as
Western officials continued to do business with Aliev.

"The strongest criticism is directed toward the U.S., on whose support
everyone relied and counted only a few years ago," said Arif Yunusov from
the Institute for Peace and Democracy. "The Azerbaijanis do not like the
materialism and high-spending lifestyle of Western diplomats and NGO workers
living in Baku, who isolate themselves from the local people, often even
despise them. The policy of the West toward the world of Islam and its
insufficiently active stance in the Karabakh conflict is also regarded with
common disapproval."

In view of such an attitude toward the West and the common disillusionment
with Western values, assurances made by politicians about the pro-Western
course of the government sound barely credible.

"We’ll get by," said Jaga, opening another bottle of Xirdalan beer, "if only
things don’t get worse." But what if they do?

Maciej Falkowski is an analyst with the Center for Eastern Studies in
Warsaw, specializing in the Caucasus and Central Asia.