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Azerbaijan: An era draws to a
close
By K Gajendra Singh
May
10 was to be a grand occasion for nostalgia. The coming
together of the some of the feared former Russian
Communist Party leadership to celebrate the 80th
birthday of the president of Azerbaijan, Haidar Aliev,
would have marked an occasion to honor perhaps the most
senior living former Politburo member, other than former
leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
Among the invitees were Eduard Sheverdnadzde,
now president of Georgia, former president of the
Russian Federation Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin, the
young current president of Russia, a junior
apparatchik in the heyday of Aliev's power. Also
present were some new friends, such as former Turkish
president Suleiman Demirel.
Alas, though, the
celebrations had to be put on hold, as Aliev became
critically ill and had to be flown to Ankara's military
hospital for treatment. He has since recovered well
enough to return to Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, but he
remains ill.
Apart from the disappointment of
the international guests, Aliev's sudden illness has
increased tensions between the government and opposition
groups. Twice elected president (1993 and 1998) in votes
that the opposition claimed were unfair, Aliev has
announced his intention to run again in October. But
many believe he is paving the way for his 41-year-old
son Ilkham to take over the reins.
Born in
Nekhichevan, an Azeri enclave adjoining Turkey, Aliev
was the first Muslim to be raised to the Politburo in
1982, the then sanctum sanctorum of power in the
Kremlin. A few decades earlier, when the communist
ideology was still hot and not eclipsed by Slav
nationalism, Aliev could have made a bid for the very
top, like Georgia's Josef Stalin or Nikita Khruschchev
of Ukraine.
In Central Asia and the Caucasus,
barring perhaps Tajikistan, communist leaders in Soviet
republics took over when power fell like manna from
heaven into their lap after the grandstand fight between
Gorbachev and Yeltsin, which in effect destroyed the
Soviet Union.
To begin with, most Central Asian
leaders felt like orphans and unhappy at the
disintegration, but soon, gingerly following the lead
from the Baltics and European Russia, Muslim majority
republics from Central Asia and Azerbaijan first
declared sovereignty, provided for in the Soviet Union's
constitution, and then full independence.
Since
then most have ruled their fiefs with a communist style
of iron hand and political linkages based on family,
tribal, ethnic and regional ties. They get themselves
re-elected regularly with the same high percentage of
votes, after making opposition candidates ineffective or
disappear. It will therefore be interesting to see
whether Aliev succeeds in handing power to his son and
thus establish a dynasty, an example which others could
also follow.
News of Aliev's ill health brought
back memories of this writer's meetings with him in late
1993 and early 1994, soon after he had helped ease out
Azerbaijan's democratically elected but embarrassingly
pro-Turkish, anti-Russian and anti-Iranian president
Ebulfez Elcibey, with help from modern-day buccaneer
Surat Hassanov, who had rebelled against Elcibey
(Hassanov became prime minister but was later ousted
when he tried to oust Aliev himself, reportedly with
Russian support).
Known in the West as a shadowy
major-general in the KGB and a very senior member of the
Politburo, Aliev had muscled his way back to power.
The rise of Haidar Aliev
His name
written also as Geidar Ali Rzaogly, he joined the
security services and the Communist Party in Azerbaijan
as a young man and quickly rose in the ranks of the
parties in both Azerbaijan and the Soviet Union. He
remained the party chief of the Azerbaijan Republic from
1969-82 and joined the Central Committee of the
Communist Party in 1971.
In 1982, Aliev achieved
full membership in the Politburo, helped by then general
secretary Yuri Andropov, a former KGB chief. But after
Gorbachev took over in 1985 and Aliev opposed his
sweeping reforms, the latter was removed from the
Politburo in 1987. Aliev went into obscurity and shifted
to Nakhichevan to bide his time.
This resilient
politician's re-emergence began in 1990 when, donning
the mantle of Azerbaijani nationalism, he denounced
Soviet intervention in Baku to put down anti-Armenian
riots.
In 1993-94, after becoming president,
Aliev was still trying to find his feet and acquire
legitimacy at home and respectability abroad. Neither
Turkey, which was close to Elcibey and with some
pretensions still left to shape things in the Caucasus
as a US proxy, nor Russia, with Aliev having supported
Gorbachev against Yeltsin and opposed to Russian defense
installations on Azeri territory, nor Iran was happy at
his bouncing back to power.
The US, except for
the oil companies, was going through its recurrent phase
of withdrawal and had put Central Asia on the
back-burner. But all had warily watched Aliev's
coronation in Baku, from where he had hacked his way to
the Kremlin. He did, though, go and meet with Russian
president Yeltsin and tried to soothe Turkish fears.
Somewhat shunned, Aliev felt isolated and
insecure. He was frantically trying to establish
contacts with Western leaders. In my meetings, some
telecast live on TV, he would recall his visit to India,
where he had met with prime minister Moraraji Desai
after Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 elections. But Aliev
also knew many in the Indian leadership from Moscow
days, where they met him as a senior Party member, a
success story from one of the Turkic-speaking republics
that has historic linkages and ties with India.
To break out from his isolation, Aliev was ready
to fly to India at short notice. Invitations were
arranged for him and his foreign minister. But with
India treating Azerbaijan and Armenia on a par, visits
from its leaders took place much later.
My
efforts to ferret out the reasons for the collapse of
the communist system did not succeed much. He only cited
some similarities with Yugoslavia's breakup.
Aliev had inherited an ongoing war with Armenia
in its enclave of Nagorno Karabakh (Black Garden), which
has an 80 percent Armenian population. Soviet Russia had
trained few military officers from Azerbaijan or the
Central Asian Republics, so Azerbaijan had done badly in
the war. It was earlier used as a pretext to remove
Elcibey and other Azeri leaders.
By 1993-94
Nagorno Karabakh's Armenian forces, supported by
Armenia, had gained control of much of southwestern
Azerbaijan, including the enclave and the territory
connecting it to Armenia. Aliev was able to arrange a
ceasefire with Armenia in 1994, which is still in place,
and there has been no fighting.
Azerbaijan, with
a population of nearly 8 million, has more than a
million refugees in Nagorno Karabakh. Twenty percent of
Azeri territory remains under Armenian occupation.
A new constitution was approved in 1995.
Political life is now dominated by Aliev's New
Azerbaijan Party and the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party,
which led the fight for independence in 1991. Apart from
being a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States
and the Organization of Islamic Conference, Azerbaijan
is also a member of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe.
It also wants to join the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
During the war on Iraq, Azerbaijan
sided with the US and is considering sending some troops
to Iraq for the reconstruction process. Aliev would like
to go down as the "father of the nation". He certainly
has brought stability and peace to the country, enacted
economic reforms and brought massive foreign investment.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project to transport Azeri oil
to Western markets through the Turkish Mediterranean
port of Ceyhan is under construction.
The
Nagorno Karabakh dispute
Nagorno Karabakh,
historically known as Artsakh, was acquired by Russia in
1813, but in 1923, in spite of an Armenian majority,
because of being separated from Armenia by the Karabakh
mountain range, it was made an autonomous oblast
(province) of Azerbaijan, thus becoming a minority
enclave.
While there had been murmurs earlier,
in the late 1980s the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno
Karabakh began agitating for its transfer to Armenia,
which was strongly opposed by Azerbaijan and the Soviet
government. Ethnic antagonism between Armenia and
Azerbaijan soon became inflamed and when they gained
their independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in
1991, they went to war.
The OSCE's Minsk Group
is now charged with mediating a political settlement of
the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. But after years of
discussions and several missions to the region to
persuade the two nations to agree to peace plans,
including one that calls for the withdrawal of Armenian
forces from occupied Azerbaijani territory and broad
autonomy to the enclave within Azerbaijan, no agreement
has yet been reached. Even during Soviet rule, the
enclave was passionately disputed between the two
republics, as are settlements and occupied territories
in Palestine between Arabs and Jews, with the cities of
Susha and Lachin evoking the same fervor as Jerusalem
and Hebron.
Aliev, the political chess player
While Azeri Foreign Minister Hassan Hassanov,
much to the chagrin of Western ambassadors, followed an
Islam-based policy, encouraged by Turkey, who used him
and the Albanians as stalking horses for their
objectives, Aliev, like a chess player (world champion
Garry Kasparov is Baku-born), moved stealthily and
aggressively to achieve acceptability and credibility.
He would turn up in Istanbul and elsewhere for
meetings with Western leaders and finally he succeeded
in meeting French president Francois Mitterrand,
Britain's John Major and the Israelis (there were still
100,000 Jews in Azerbaijan and 50,000 Azeri Jews had
migrated to Israel) and other leaders.
Then
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the very
despair of the Arabs, visited Baku. Israel was happy to
have a watchpost over neighboring Iran, one of its
bitterest and strongest opponents in the region.
Azerbaijan has constantly to take internal measures to
counter the strong Iranian presence and influence in
south. Iran has twice as many Turkish-speaking Shi'ite
Azeris as Azerbaijan.
Aliev's contacts with
European leaders paved the way to the establishment of
direct contacts with the Americans, specially the
powerful Jewish lobby, to counteract the influential
Armenian Diaspora in the United States. In September
1994, a US$7.4 billion deal with oil giants led by BP to
exploit Azerbaijan's extensive energy resources was a
watershed. It brought the West on his side in the new
great game of acquiring and controlling scarce energy
resources by the West, led by the US. During his 1997
visit to the United States, Aliev had a meeting with
president Bill Clinton and while in Washington and other
US cities he signed oil deals worth nearly $10 billion
with US oil giants.
The results of Aliev's
efforts were really stunning. In Washington, he was
treated as a star and a statesman. More than 400
American VIPs, including many senior officials,
lobbyists, consultants, investors and facilitators,
attended a $250-per-plate banquet in his honor. In a few
years from being a pariah, Aliev had become a US
darling. Verily, the qualities to reach the top ladder
in any system are perhaps not different.
Now,
with direct links to the US and the Jewish and Israeli
lobby, Azerbaijan did not need Turkey as before. Ankara,
which needed Baku to watch its northeast, was not
amused, and it showed some displeasure by making
overtures to Armenia from time to time. Aliev still
remains angry and wary after a botched attempt by a
Turkish group to topple him in 1995. The Turkish
ambassador had to leave the country, but on the whole
Turkish president Demirel was helpful, and even
forewarned Aliev of a few more subsequent attempts to
topple him.
Azerbaijan is rich not only in
energy resources. Unlike many of its neighbors, it has
good soil and enough water to be self-sufficient in
food. It has underground mineral wealth too. It has
signed $500 million in contracts for exploitation of its
gold and non-ferrous metals. Measures to reform and
encourage foreign investment have paid off. Baku
announced on May 8 that projected foreign investment in
the country over the next three years will reach $10
billion. This will surpass the $9.6 billion in total
foreign investment during 1996-2002. Azerbaijan received
$900 million in aid from the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund to "carry out economic
reforms and to support macroeconomic stability and
structural reorganization". And a World Bank official
has announced that Baku will receive another $235
million in aid during 2003-05.
Baku, the
capital city
Baku, located on the Caspian Sea,
was an important stop on the old silk routes. It
produced half of the world's oil at the turn of the last
century, so it has a rich past and a cosmopolitan
culture with its opera houses and fine buildings.
But in November 1993 it looked gray, bleak and
depressing when five Ankara-based ambassadors and this
writer went there to present letters of credence to
Aliev. We were lodged in a former dilapidated Intourist
hotel, where some rooms had intermittent hot or cold
water, and others none at all. The food was inedible and
the envoys were miserable. The facilities reminded the
writer of the worst period of Nicolae Ceausescu's rule
in some remote province of Romania. But conditions
improved very fast with every subsequent visit as
investment money flowed in.
Afghan war
mujahideen, who had fought for the Azeris in Nagorno
Karabakh and who been flown into the capital in
Pakistani planes, swaggered about in the hotel's lobby.
They had proved to be expensive and not very good
mercenaries against the Armenian forces armed by Russia.
It was not the same as guerrilla warfare on home
territory.
And how times had changed. While the
Israeli Embassy was housed in a big mansion, the
ambassador of Azerbaijan's erstwhile ruler, Russia,
operated from a suite of rooms in a dilapidated
Intourist hotel. Barring Western embassies such as those
of the US, Britain and Germany, most embassies
functioned from temporary hotel suites. (India only
opened a resident mission in 1999.)
Oil and
riches
The area assumed great importance with the
discovery of oil at Baku in the 1890s. In 1901,
Azerbaijan produced 50 percent of the world's
production, and it is the birthplace of the oil refining
industry. Naturally, the oil attracted many outsiders,
especially Armenians, Jews, Russians, Ukrainians and
Germans. This and its location on the Caspian Sea have
given Baku a cosmopolitan outlook.
Before the
Soviet era, rich oil magnates built Western-style opera
houses and music conservatories, a tradition that was
not only carried on but strengthened during the Soviet
era, not only here but elsewhere in Turkic-speaking
countries. This nurtured Western-style Turkmen singers,
Kazakh ballet dancers, Uzbek tenors and Tajik sopranos.
In Baku, one can enjoy opera and music performances of a
very high caliber. Many Azeri musicians and conductors
have transferred to Turkey's Western-style opera,
establishments created by the modernizing and
Westernizing founder of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.
Atishgah, the ancient fire worship
temple
Visitors to Baku should not miss Atishgah,
a fire-worship temple about 15 kilometers from the city
center. The present structure was begun in the 17th
century, although the original Atishgah goes back to
very ancient times when the region came under the
influence of Zoroastrians. Since time immemorial,
natural gas has seeped out of the soil and burned.
Zoroastrians and Aryans, being of the same
stock, Indo-Iranians, worshipped fire. Parsees in India
still do so, as Hindus worship Agni (fire). The Azeri
foreign minister once told this writer that in former
times his country was known as Aagban, which means
"forest of fire" or "arrow of fire". Thus Atishgah has
historic and religious connotations from before Islam
came to Iran and Azerbaijan. The temple was supposed to
have many miraculous powers, bringing happiness and
well-being to visitors and devotees alike. Located on
the silk route, many Indian traders - Parsees, Punjabis,
Gujaratis and others - started visiting the temple and
built rooms for themselves and their horses. This
process began in the 17th century and continued until
the mid-19th century.
An elderly lady in charge
told this writer during his first visit that Jawaharlal
Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi had visited. During
the Soviet era, when Azerbaijan and other
Turkic-speaking countries across the Caspian were part
of the Soviet Union, most Indian visitors were taken to
Baku and Tashkent, as they are culturally closer to
India.
Next door to Daghestan and Chechnya,
Azerbaijan remains a centerpiece in the strategic
multi-ethnic and explosive mosaic called the Caucasus.
Azerbaijan and Georgia are essential for the transport
of gas and petroleum to the West via Turkey or the Black
Sea and the Balkans from not only the Caspian basin but
also from Central Asian Republics, such as Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan, in order to keep both Russia and Iran
out of this strategic economic arrangement. Especially
as tensions are rising in the Middle East, and many
might look to the Caspian for future secure energy
supplies.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian
ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey
from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served
terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He
is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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