AZERBAIJAN WAVERS BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: THE WASHINGTON POST

Tert.am
15.06.11

This article is republished from The Washington Post

Last month, this authoritarian nation tucked between Russia and
Iran won the slightly wacky “American Idol”-meets-Model UN pop song
contest called Eurovision, and now Azerbaijanis are asking themselves
a question:

Can rock-and-roll – the lingua franca of dissent – make them free?

Not only did the Eurovision victory leave this country – which
feels deeply under-appreciated – dizzy with pride, but it also
makes Baku host of the 43-nation event in May, opening it up to a
madcap extravaganza that requires tolerance for high camp – think
spiked orange hair and green sequined sunglasses – and unfettered
self-expression.

This year’s contest in Dusseldorf, Germany, brought a live audience
of 36,000, hordes of exuberant tourists and 120 million viewers
on television and on the Web, more than the number that watch the
Super Bowl.

Government critics are seizing on Europe’s sudden attention and the
leadership’s desire for respect and friendship from it to press for
democratic reforms. The government has a long record of arresting
journalists and other outspoken opponents, and in March and April,
unnerved by the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, it cracked
down hard on youthful demonstrators.

“As you know, rock is the music of free people,” more than 30 civic
leaders said in a May 26 letter to President Ilham Aliyev, asking
him to release journalists and activists before the Eurovision Song
Contest arrives.

U.S. Ambassador Matthew J. Bryza also made the connection. “I hope
this is the opening sign of a new era, a new era for Azerbaijan as it
deepens its reforms,” he said, commenting on the president’s pardon
and release of an opposition newspaper’s editor jailed for four years.

“And what a wonderful way to begin this year of preparation for
Eurovision 2012.”

Strategic importance

Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim nation that is mostly Shiite but wary of
neighboring Iran, has one hand firmly extended toward Europe and the
West – while the other keeps a tight fist on power and wealth at home.

Energy security and strategic location make Azerbaijan – which is
perched on the heights of the Caucasus mountains and curves along the
low Caspian shores – important to the United States. A 1,100-mile oil
pipeline operated by BP in partnership with U.S. and other companies
pumps a million barrels a day from Baku, the capital, through the
Georgian capital, Tbilisi, to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, helping
diversify supplies and cut dependence on energy from the Middle East.

There’s money to be made here, and it washes fetchingly over Baku,
which in the past decade has transformed from a slightly seedy Soviet
capital into a moneyed city with well-landscaped parks, five-star
hotels and the requisite Kenzo, Armani and Escada stores.

Families stroll along the oil-perfumed Caspian shore, eating popcorn,
drinking Coke and stopping to sip tea in outdoor cafes.

Twelfth-century walls enclose a tidily preserved old city where
14th-century caravan stops have been turned into restaurants. Art
nouveau buildings from the last oil boom – the Swedish Nobel
brothers made their fortunes after setting up here in 1879 – offer
cosmopolitan elegance. And now, Soviet-era buildings are giving
way to statement-making architecture, including three flame-shaped
skyscrapers under construction at a cost of $350 million.

Beyond the charms of Baku – you have to love a city with a Pizza Hat
– a struggle is going on between the free-speaking Facebook set and
their controlling elders, between the desire to embrace the West and
old suspicion of it.

The young have numbers and time on their side. The median age in
this country of nearly 9 million is less than 30, and Facebook users
have increased 20 percent in the past three months, to 400,000. The
government, however, has the power.

Emin Huseynov, chairman of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and
Safety, has a list of nearly 50 activists who are being investigated
or held in prison.

“After the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt,” Huseynov said, “the
situation here changed dramatically.”

First, the government tried to tune into the people, launching an
anti-corruption campaign, he said, but then Syria started clamping
down ruthlessly on protesters and Egyptians forced out their longtime
president and arrested him.

“Now Azerbaijan thinks imprisonment is not such a bad option,”
Huseynov said.

In May, Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, a 29-year-old activist who returned
here after earning a master’s degree at Harvard Kennedy School,
was sentenced to two years in prison on charges of evading the
draft. His defenders say his real crime was organizing anti-government
demonstrations via Facebook.

Another social media activist, 20-year-old Jabbar Savalanli, was
sentenced to 2â~@~J1/2 years on what Human Rights Watch called bogus
drug possession charges.

Isa Gambar, chairman of the opposition Musavat party, which was
founded in 1911 and has five members in jail, said huge disparities
have developed between those in power, who have access to privilege
and wealth, and the vast majority of people – the average monthly
income is $400.

“The whole country is monopolized by one family,” Gambar said. “We
not only lack freedom of assembly, we lack economic freedom.”

‘It will change everything’

Heydar Aliyev, who took over leadership of the Azerbaijani KGB in
1967 and became the republic’s Communist Party chief in 1969, won
the presidency in 1993 after a couple of years of traumatic chaos
as Azerbaijan gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991. He died in 2003, just after making son Ilham his prime
minister and successor.

All public buildings display portraits of Heydar, which must be bought
from an official vendor, and his image gazes serenely from many a
billboard. His birthday is marked with a flower festival costing
millions of dollars, and on holidays, television broadcasts include
a small picture of him in a corner of the screen.

Leila Aliyeva, an independent political analyst, said government
suggestions of reform threaten a large and comfortable bureaucracy.

“Many people have high stakes in preserving the status quo,” she said.

The country has made a serious effort to spread the oil money around,
sending students to study abroad, all expenses paid, and developing
technology to create jobs – Azerbaijan has a contract with Orbital
Sciences of Dulles to launch a satellite to expand Internet access.

Officials are proud of these efforts and deeply resentful of a world
that they say plays favorites. “Deputies in Armenia go to prison,”
said Samad I. Seyidov, a member of parliament, “and no one says
they have political prisoners. But we, we’re told we have political
prisoners. It’s not fair.”

All countries have their shortcomings, said Novruz I. Mammadov,
head of the president’s foreign relations department, “but please,
don’t close your eyes to the other things.”

And now comes Eurovision, a contest dating to 1956, in which countries
in the European Broadcasting Union vote, but not for themselves,
leaving regional loyalties to prevail – the Model United Nations part.

Eldar Gasimov, a gel-tousled graduate student who turns 22 this year –
he’s Ell for the contest – and Nigar Jamal, a 30-year-old blond and
beautiful housewife with an economics degree and two small children –
she’s Nikki – met when they won the Baku finals. Azerbaijan paired
them up and hired a Swedish team to write them a song, heavy on the
ooh-ooh-oohs.

Both looked startled when told that the nation’s hopes for freedom
and democracy rested on them. “It will change everything,” said Elnur
Baimov, editor in chief of the News.Az online agency: Taxi drivers
are enrolling in English classes. The police are next. Azerbaijan
will open up to the world.

Maybe it’s only rock-and-roll, but they like it.