Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
March 14, 2010
Azerbaijan’s Unsinkable General
By Liz Fuller and Richard Giragosian
Colonel General Safar Abiyev is the longest serving defense minister
in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and one of the
longest serving in the world.
Now just 60, he has headed the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry since
February 1995. Over that time, Azerbaijan has raised defense spending
from $97.2 million in 1999, to $175 million in 2004 to $1.5 billion
last year.
Yet the spending of prodigious amounts of cash on state of the art
military hardware has not resulted in the creation of an effective and
battle ready army. On the contrary, the armed forces remain
weak. Discipline is lax, morale low, and hazing endemic. The rank and
file suffers from shortages of food, fuel, and such basic items as
winter uniforms. The Defense Ministry is reputedly a hotbed of
corruption. Why, then, is Abiyev seemingly viewed as indispensible?
Abiyev was born in Baku on January 27, 1950. He is a Lezgin. He
graduated in 1971 from Baku’s Higher Military College, and in 1982
from the Command Faculty of the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, and
has spent his entire professional life in the armed forces.
Abiyev served briefly as acting defense minister from June — August
1993, immediately after the coup that toppled the Azerbaijan Popular
Front government and paved the way for the return to power in Baku of
former Communist Party of Azerbaijan First Secretary Heidar Aliyev. He
was named defense minister in February 1995, four months after the
failed bid by Suret Huseinov and Rovshan Djavadov to overthrow Aliyev
— an undertaking in which the army reportedly sided with the leaders
of the insurrection.
Azerbaijan has channeled into the defense budget a considerable amount
of the proceeds from the export of its oil and gas. That trend
intensified after Ilham Aliyev succeeded his father in late 2003. But
much of the money has reportedly been embezzled. The independent daily
"Ayna/Zerkalo" played a key role in the late 1990s and early 2000s in
reporting on the efforts of former naval officer Djanmirza Mirzoev to
publicize corruption within the armed forces. Mirzoev was arrested,
tried and sentenced in 2001 to eight years’ imprisonment on fabricated
charges of murder; Aliyev pardoned him in May 2004.
In addition to sporadic corruption scandals, hazing too has raised
questions about discipline and professionalism in the armed forces. A
scandal erupted in the fall of 2008 after two videos were posted on
YouTube showing sergeants beating younger servicemen. The Defense
Ministry reacted by denouncing them as a fake, but subsequently
admitted that an investigation had confirmed that the mistreatment
shown on the video clip had indeed taken place. Aydyn Mirzazade, who
heads the parliament commission for defense and security, nonetheless
denied there have any been any incidents of hazing in the armed
forces.
At least five fatal instances of hazing have been reported in the
media since December 2006. In the most recent, in January 2010, two
privates reportedly shot four officers and then killed each
other. Yashar Djafarli, chairman of the Organization of Retired and
Reserve Officers, claimed in November 2008 that of over 40 servicemen
who died not in combat or of disease since 2003, the majority either
died from ill-treatment or committed suicide.
During Abiyev’s tenure as defense minister, Azerbaijan has signed
military cooperation agreements with Turkey, the U.S., and Pakistan,
among others. It was one of the first former Soviet republics to join
NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program, but has for years remained
equivocal over full membership of that alliance. In September 2004,
NATO cancelled a conference in Baku after the Azerbaijani authorities
refused to issue visas for Armenian officers who planned to
participate.
This year, for the first time, the Defense Ministry budget does not
allocate any funds for Azerbaijani participation in PfP activities or
for Azerbaijan’s Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP).
Baku’s lack of real commitment to cooperation with NATO is paralleled
by delays in formulating and making public a national defense strategy
and in implementing radical reform of the defense sector. The
International Crisis Group (ICG) noted those failings in a briefing in
October 2008 that described the armed forces as "fragmented, divided,
accountable-to-no-one-but- the-president, untransparent, corrupt and
internally feuding." Among other measures, the ICG urged greater
oversight powers for the parliament; increased civilian control in the
defense ministry; amending relevant legislation in line with
international human rights requirements; and improving personnel
management and training.
In light of the multiple weaknesses that detract from Azerbaijan’s
defense capability, two inter-connected factors may explain Abiyev’s
extended tenure.
The first is his absolute and unswerving loyalty to the Aliyev dynasty
— first father Heidar and then son Ilham, whose ascent to the
presidency was more by selection than election. The second is his role
in an ongoing double act with Ilham Aliyev intended to expedite a
solution on Azerbaijan’s terms to the Karabakh conflict.
Ilham Aliyev’s legitimacy and political future hinge to a considerable
degree on his continued ability to convince the population that
Azerbaijan will at some point succeed in wresting back control of the
breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. And in this exercise Abiyev’s
support is crucial, if not indispensible.
Over the past decade, Abiyev has sporadically conjured the specter of
a new war in Karabakh. He reasons variously that as a result of either
Armenia’s refusal to compromise and withdraw unconditionally from
occupied Azerbaijani teritory, or of the OSCE Minsk Group’s inability
to draft a settlement plan that will satisfy all conflict sides, Baku
will have no choice but to resort to military force. And he claims
that Azerbaijan’s armed forces are fully capable of winning a new war.
A year and a half after the brief but devastating war in Georgia, the
most recent belligerent statements by the Aliyev/Abiyev duo raise the
specter of a new outbreak of hostilities in South
Caucasus. Increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress towards
resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and angered by Turkey’s
embrace of tentative rapprochement with Armenia, Azerbaijani officials
are again threatening a new war to restore Azerbaijan’s control over
the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
Moscow’s formal recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the wake
of the August 2008 war left Nagorno-Karabakh the sole "frozen"
conflict in the South Caucasus. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and
G-8 leaders have launched separate but complementary initiatives aimed
at overcoming the remaining points of disagreement between Armenia and
Azerbaijan and thus expediting the signing of a blue-print that could
serve as the basis of a permanent settlement.
But Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev continues to alternate between
reaffirming his commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement, and
threatening a new war in light of Armenia’s intransigent refusal to
"compromise," by which he means to withdraw unconditionally from seven
districts of Azerbaijan bordering the NKR that are currently under
Armenian control.
In most countries, the head of state’s traditional New Year’s address
seeks to convey a message of cooperation, peace and prosperity. But
this year, President Aliyev’s message was one of war. He warned that
"Azerbaijan is strengthening its military potential," which he claimed
is "increasing day by day" and is "being strengthened in terms of
weapons and equipment." He then affirmed explicitly that Baku has the
"military effectiveness" and will "use all the means at our disposal
to solve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."
Abiyev expanded on that threat during a meeting on February 25 with
the French Ambassador to Baku, Gabriel Keller. He warned that a "great
war" in the region is becoming "inevitable." He argued that since the
1994 ceasefire with Armenia that effectively "froze" the Karabakh
conflict, "diplomacy has not achieved any concrete results."
"Azerbaijan cannot wait another 15 years," Abiyev continued, adding
that "now it’s the military’s turn, and the threat is growing every
day.’
But there is a profound disparity between such militant rhetoric and
the military reality. At one level, such words of war are no more than
empty threats, as the exaggerated boasts of Azerbaijan’s military
strength ignore the weakness of the Azerbaijani armed forces. Even
so, despite the overwhelming superiority and defensive advantages of
the Armenian side, the future trajectory of the military balance of
power in the region favors Azerbaijan over the longer term.
But at another level, the bellicose warnings by the Azerbaijani
leadership pose a very real threat to regional security and stability,
insofar as they exacerbate latent tensions that have their own
destructive dynamic. Specifically, they harden the defensive posture
of the Armenian side, making any real resolution of the Karabakh
conflict that much more difficult now, and making it even harder for
Azerbaijan to adopt a more moderate position later.
In addition, such rhetoric steadily saps morale within the Azerbaijani
military, which has yet to enjoy the benefits of increased defense
spending.
Clearly, despite repeated injunctions from visiting U.S. and European
diplomats, Azerbaijan has failed to learn the primary lesson from the
Georgia war – that there is no military solution to what are
essentially political problems. And for Nagorno-Karabakh, still
excluded from the formal negotiating process, Azerbaijan’s bluff and
bluster only serves to highlight the broad divide between Azerbaijan
and Armenia.
In addition, such threats from Baku foster a perception that the
Azerbaijani leadership is not ready for peace, and call into question
the sincerity of its proclaimed commitment to international mediation
efforts seeking a negotiated resolution of the Karabakh conflict.
Both Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and Defense Minister Seyran
Ohanian have responded to Baku’s threats with warnings of their own
that any Azerbaijani attack against Armenia and Karabakh will be met
by "serious counter attacks" and rebuffed.
The recent verbal spat and its possible repercussions have not gone
unnoticed. Senior U.S. intelligence official Dennis Blair recently
testified to the U.S. Congress that the chances of another
Armenian-Azerbaijani war are only increasing, fuelled in part by
Azerbaijani frustration over the U.S.-backed normalization effort
underway between Turkey and Armenia.
— Liz Fuller, RFE/RL, Prague, and Richard Giragosian, Director,
Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS),
Yerevan
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