KARABAKH AMONG TOPICS FOR AMERICAN ARMENIAN LOBBY TO SURVIVE
news.az
Dec 21 2009
Azerbaijan
Adil Baguirov News.Az interviews Adil Baguirov, Ph.D.Managing Director
and co-founder U.S. Azeris Network (USAN).
Azerbaijan has presented a note to the United States regarding the
decision by the Congress to allocate $8 mln to Karabakh separatists.
If I am not mistaken this occurred for the first time in the history
of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Is it possible to
speak about the cooling in bilateral relations?
I know that Azerbaijani protests, at least verbal ones, have been
always lodged and heard, but it is indeed the first time that the
Azerbaijan government and wider public have given a very stern and
strong reaction from all sides. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani-Americans
have been vociferously protesting this waste of U.S. money as well,
especially in the past two years.
Unfortunately, there are many precedents in both U.S. politics as well
as policy of any country, including Azerbaijan, when some decisions
are a result of mistakes, omissions and faulty decision-making process.
Adil BaguirovConsidering that the direct aid to the occupied region
of Azerbaijan has been masterminded and done only by a few very
motivated, and powerful, members of the U.S. Congress, for whom
this is a special "pet project", and who are not representative of
the entire United States Congress and people, I do not think that
the bilateral relations between our two countries would, or should,
suffer, since neither the White House (Executive Branch), nor the
majority of Congress (Legislative Branch), nor the American people,
are in favor of hurting Azerbaijan, and, quite frankly, American
national interests. Because Azerbaijan is a time-tested, proven and
recognized strategic ally and friend, whilst Armenia is simply not
at the same level, and would be unable to be such for a while. Also,
considering the fact that Azerbaijan, as former President Bush said,
is the locomotive of the Caucasus region and bridge to Central Asia
and Caspian region, it makes zero sense for U.S. to intentionally hurt
its close friend. It would be very hurtful for Azerbaijani-American
Diaspora to see cooling in relations between their adopted homeland
and their historic homeland.
Unfortunately, there are many precedents in both U.S. politics as well
as policy of any country, including Azerbaijan, when some decisions
are a result of mistakes, omissions and faulty decision-making
process. Just like Azerbaijan is not immune from unfortunate mistakes,
neither is the United States. In America right now there are a great
many very important initiatives and decisions, which are a direct
result of mistakes, from the huge so-called "stimulus bills" that
increased the deficit, is projected to increase the gross national
debt to over 100% of the GDP in the coming few years, and devalued the
U.S. dollar, to being very soft on Wall Street bankers who created
this financial mess, to U.S. foreign policy from Afghanistan to
Honduras and other areas of the world (e.g., pressure on Turkey).
And when we have a relatively small (2 million Armenians out of 308
million U.S. population is relatively small), but a very motivated and
well organized community, a "special interest" group, in this case the
Armenian Diaspora, it is able to negatively affect and influence the
political process through targeted lobbying in certain states such as
California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts,
thus prolonging problems for everyone in U.S. and the Caucasus region,
and, ironically, more so for Armenia, since it has a hard time to
sustain its aggression and occupation of Azerbaijan economically,
demographically and also politically (not to mention morally).
Regrettably, U.S. politics is filled with examples of such special
interest ethnic lobbies negatively influencing processes, and
derailing usual government thinking and policies – for example, many
political scientists point to the highly-effective lobbying by the
Cuban-American community, which dominates politics in the politically
crucial state of Florida, which has imposed a full embargo on Fidel
Castro’s Cuba for the past almost 50 years, as a punishment for all the
wrongs committed by President Castro. This emotional lobbying by some
activist Cuban-Americans has, in the words of many academics and former
politicians, delayed democracy and normalization in that island country
for all these years, and despite all attempts by the White House,
including President Obama, and many in Congress to lift or at least
relax the embargo, some very active Cuban-American lobby groups oppose
it, prevent such efforts and dictate their own narrow agenda (even if
a sizeable number of Cuban-Americans, not to mention most Americans,
are not supporting this – in fact 64% of Cuban-Americans want to
have the embargo relaxed according to the latest polls). So this
shows the sometimes disproportionate power that a relatively small,
but well mobilized ethnic community can do with the U.S. policy.
What can you say about the very fact of allocation of assistance to
Karabakh separatists? It is clear that it is done not for the first
time but, probably, the expectations from Obama’s administration that
did not envision assistance to Karabakh in a separate article have
not been justified.
As you know, a few motivated pro-Armenian members of the U.S. Congress
have been inserting the provision of direct aid to the Armenia occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan since 1998. This is a classic
example of "pork barrel" spending, when something that goes against
the common good is inserted into a large bill for the benefit of a
very small special interest group. And the U.S. Administrations of
Presidents Clinton, Bush and now Obama always opposed it, as did some
in Congress, particularly the Azerbaijani Caucus members.
It is absolutely reprehensible and plain outrageous that even one
single U.S. taxpayer dollar goes directly to the Armenia occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, bypassing Baku.
Adil BaguirovFor example, when Amb. Richard Morningstar was in charge
of aid to the former Soviet republics in the Clinton Administration,
he was successful in stopping and delaying the Congress appropriated
aid, which constantly led to friction and problems with the members of
the Armenian Caucus, particularly the recently defeated co-chair of
that Caucus, Congressman Joe Knollenberg. Unfortunately, at the time
neither the Azerbaijani-American Diaspora, nor Azerbaijan itself,
seemed to have been vocal enough or even informed enough to oppose
this ridiculous piece of legislation. Also, Azerbaijan has never had a
large lobbying presence on the Capitol Hill, which is very surprising.
What is even more surprising is that Azerbaijan has seemingly never
rectified this huge omission. The very same $8 million that are
being sent to the occupied NK potentially could be prevented if
Azerbaijan is to spend as much on lobbying for its interests and
explaining the situation to all the involved political leaders. On
the other side of the spectrum, we have Armenian groups such as ANCA
and AAA with combined operating budgets of well some $12 million
per year, plus up to $50 million in assets, plus dozens of other
such organizations, plus raising another $5 million per year just for
political contributions to federal and state candidates for office. Is
it not interesting that these seemingly grassroots organizations
created by the Armenian Diaspora are actually hiring lobbyists to
help them achieve their goals, paying them hundreds of thousands of
dollars each year (no Azerbaijani or Turkish Dispora organization
has ever done that, by the way)? This massive lobbying and advocacy
potential appears to be far greater than whatever Azerbaijan and Turkey
put together combined. Hence one can witness the result. Nations and
ethnic communities that spend the most, are generally most effective
lobbyists of their perceived interests – whether Indians, Israelis,
Greeks, Armenians, Taiwanese, Italians, Saudis, or Irish.
It is absolutely reprehensible and plain outrageous that even one
single U.S. taxpayer dollar goes directly to the Armenia occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, bypassing Baku. It is even
more ridiculous that the Congressional conference report that
accompanies the bill was changed, where now Congress appropriated
the $8 million specifically just to Nagorno-Karabakh region, whilst
before, in 1998-2009, it was for all "victims in the vicinity of the
Nagorno-Karabakh region".
Plus, if before there was language to provide direct assistance to
Abkhazia too, but it was never done and members of Congress always
ignored that – which flies in the face of anyone trying to defend
the indefensible stance that this is just a humanitarian aid to the
people, done by some NGOs – which makes matters worse since there is
less accountability as it is not administered by the U.S. government.
Moreover, how can anyone logically explain why would occupied Karabakh
region with up to 120,000 people get $8 million in aid, whilst the
rest of Azerbaijan with 8.5 million population only $22 million –
i.e., just 3 times more. This is plain insulting to say that the
"humanitarian" needs of the aggressors in Karabakh region are greater
than the needs of the 800,000 Azerbaijani refugee and IDP victims of
the Armenian occupation.
One more problem with the recent bill – it has a reference to the
Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act (FSA) and basically
concerns itself with it being waived since 2002 – in other words,
the Armenian Caucus members of the U.S. Congress are trying to do
everything they can to make it harder for President Obama to waive
Sec. 907 in 2010 and beyond, and to eventually try to reinstate that
outrageous piece of legislation. Of course the irony of this is that
if Sec. 907 is to be reinstated, U.S. will stop all military aid
to Armenia, too. Which in a strange twist of events, might actually
benefit Azerbaijan.
Even if this so-called direct "humanitarian aid" to the occupied
NK region is strictly non-military, non-security, and is used
only for vaccination, demining and food, that still frees up more
money for the Armenian army to sustain its continued aggression
and occupation of Azerbaijan, and circumvents Azerbaijani law and
potentially international and U.S. laws, since there is absolutely
no legitimate need or reason to send money directly to an occupied
region of a friendly nation that happens to also be a strategic
ally. Considering that Armenia spends up to $150 million per year to
sustain the non-military part of Karabakh’s occupation, giving them
$8 million is a serious present, or actually an outrageous example of
wasteful spending, that would have been better to give to the millions
of unemployed, disabled and uninsured in the U.S., particularly the
American military veterans who are suffering a lot after their tours
of duty, or the homeowners in the very same California and Michigan
that are being crushed by the debt. For example, we just learned that
of the 100,000 mortgage loan modifications attempted by homeowners,
only some 400 were actually approved by banks. The rest 99,600
homeowners could have got about $80 each from the $8 million given to
"criminal secessionists" in Karabakh, as they were called by former
Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones, and later, in a similar
manner by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. courts, who have
deported an Armenian army lieutenant Vigen Patatanyan for, I quote,
"crimes against humanity" in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
Thus, it is understandable that Azerbaijan and all Azerbaijanis are
furious about this – so are all Americans once enlightened on what some
of these irresponsible pork-barrel spending, special interest serving
members of the Armenian Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives
do with their money. With so many problems at hand, it is absolutely
not the business of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State,
Foreign and Related Programs, made up of the Armenian Caucus members,
to override U.S. policy and circumvent international and foreign laws.
And this happened because the Obama Administration is so bogged down
with other bigger, national problems and is in such a hurry trying
to do so much in so little time, that it simply could not prioritize
this critical issue and give stern instructions to the Congressional
liaison offices, to the respective State Department, Pentagon, as well
as Congressional leaders, to oppose the inclusion of this outrageous
line-item "aid" in the reconciled FY2010 State and Foreign Operations
Appropriations bill — especially considering that this line-item was
neither in the Presidential FY2010 budget request, nor in the Senate
appropriations version of the bill. In this case it is due to the
push done by the following members of the Armenian Caucus of the U.S.
Congress: chairwoman Nita Lowey (Democrat – New York), co-chair of
Armenian Caucus Mark Steven Kirk (Republican – Illinois), Adam Schiff
(Democrat – California), co-chair of Armenian Caucus Frank Pallone
(Democrat – New Jersey), Frank LoBiondo (Republican – New Jersey),
Jesse Jackson, Jr. (Democrat – Illinois) and Steven Rothman (Democrat –
New Jersey). So this makes for seven (7) members of Congress, out of
435, who took this extremely unfriendly and outrageous step.
Additionally, their initiative, urging all the Congress to support
the direct aid to the Armenia occupied Karabakh region of Azerbaijan,
was signed by the following twenty-nine (29) members of the Armenian
Caucus: Bruce Braley (D-IA), Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Barney Frank
(D-MA), Jim Costa (D-CA), Jerry Costello (D-IL), Anna Eshoo (D-CA),
Chakah Fattah (D-PA), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Rush
Holt (D-NJ), James Langevin (D-RI), Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), Stephen
Lynch (D-MA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Ed Markey (D-MA), James McGovern
(D-MA), Candice Miller (R-MI), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Collin Peterson
(D-MN), Garry Peters (D-MI), John Sarbanes (D-MD), Jan Schakowsky
(D-IL), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Mark Souder (R-IN), Jackie Speier (D-CA),
Tim Walz (D-MN), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Anthony Weiner (D-NY), and Frank
Wolf (R-VA). Note that there are 148 members of the Armenian Caucus,
and only 36 of them, or just one-quarter of the total, supported this
outrageous legislature. Unfortunately, majority of the co-signers
are Democrats, two of which are Armenian-Americans – Congresswoman
Eshoo and Congresswoman Speier. After November 2010 midterm election
several of these members of Congress will not return there, since
by taking such anti-American stances, they irritate many American
voters and taxpayers, particularly the growing Azerbaijani-American
and other Turkic-American communities.
Is this decision of the Congress final or it can be reviewed? Anyway,
does the Azerbaijani Diaspora plan to take any steps and actions as
a sign of protest?
Yes, as I predicted sometime ago, at this point, there is nothing that
can be done by the Congress, since the bills have passed. President
Obama hypothetically could veto the appropriations bill, but neither
he, nor his predecessors, would veto a thousand-page law because of
one small line-item. Back in 1996-1998, President Clinton used to
have the line-item veto authority, but that has expired long ago,
which would have simplified the process enormously (and that is why
Armenian lobby was unable to pass such legislation before 1998). So
the only way is by the White House instructing the State Department to
either not disperse the Congress-appropriated $8 million (unlikely),
or appropriate only a small portion, and even that to disperse
those funds to everyone from NK region, including the 46,000-strong
Azerbaijani community of Karabakh, which also requires immunization,
help with demining, and all – and there are plenty of NGO’s to help
them do just that. This is feasible.
I should note that the members of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus
have written "Dear Colleague" letters to their colleagues, the members
of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign and Related
Programs (you can read this and many other relevant documents on our
website, ), but their appeal was obviously ignored.
The Azerbaijani-Americans and the USAN in particular, have been very
active on this subject, sending over 15,000 letters and petitions just
on this subject in the past two years (for the 2009 and 2010 budgets).
That is 15% of our total letters sent! USAN has also submitted several
congressional testimonies to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on
State, Foreign and Related Programs, plus sent three (3) letters to
all the nearly 10,000 staff members of the U.S. Congress. In respect
to the 2010 budget, USAN members sent 1,345 letters to President
Obama and members of the Senate, as well as the Azerbaijan Caucus,
thanking them for their fair stance, and 9,781 letters to all the
members of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees.
As you can see, despite these great never-before-done on such a scale
grassroots advocacy initiatives, all done by volunteers and activists
of the Azerbaijani-American Diaspora, it was not enough, because
the much larger Armenian lobby made even more efforts, mobilized
even more people, raised even more campaign funds, and hired many
lobbyists. The leading Armenian-American lobby organizations need two
topics for their survival and relevance, to always be in the news,
one of which is the Karabakh issue. Hence, they do everything they
can to, what they rashly think, "hurt" Azerbaijan and "help" Armenia,
even if the result is actually completely opposite – it makes Armenia
sink deeper and deeper, as all politico-economic ratings reveal,
while Azerbaijan economy, as well as military budget keeps rising,
and hurt U.S. policy and interests in the region, by making people of
Azerbaijan, as well as Georgia, Turkey, and Central Asia, far less
enthusiastic about America. That is how we in America always lose
friends abroad – millions of great, trusted, time-proven friends and
allies. This has a negative effect on the U.S. interests in the Greater
Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, and Caspian energy, to name a few.
But it can still be all fixed, and what is most important, despite
the significant advantage that the Armenian lobby has always enjoyed
in U.S. and other Western countries, it is eroding, and they have
experienced massive setbacks in the recent times. It should be obvious
to any long-term policy planner that Azerbaijan and the rest of the
Turkic world is on the rise, whilst Armenia is falling behind, and
the actions by the Armenian Diaspora groups are actually contributing
to this.
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