To many outsiders, autocratic Azerbaijan looks stable. But looks…

Subterranean Rumblings

Transition OnLine (TOL)
by Maciej Falkowski
23 November 2009

To many outsiders, autocratic Azerbaijan looks stable. But looks can
be deceiving.

BAKU | 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 `Fuck 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.