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By Gorkhmaz Asgarov

It looks like the United States’ foreign policy with respect to Azerbaijan is on hold since the American election campaign period of last year.  The new administration of the US president does not seem to act with a clear political line in the South Caucasus. Meanwhile, the Azeri government has been carrying out sweeping policies to transform the country, getting rid of all the checks and balances in the political and civic spheres.

During the previous Bush administration the United States, more or less, had a clearly defined foreign policy goals in the South Caucasus.  With respect to Azerbaijan those goals were heavily focused on energy and security cooperation, while the pro-democracy agenda was lagging behind.  The latter circumstance was much criticized by the democracy activists in Azerbaijan and the United States.  And there were some hopes that with the new administration in the White House, democratic agenda will finally move forward in Azerbaijan (Azeri style of interpreting “Hope” and “Change” slogans). 

However, the Azeri government has steadily moved since then to smash the democratic institutions in the country and on a foreign policy field started a slow, but steady shift toward orienting itself to Russia.  With all pros and cons of the results of the policies of the Bush administration, here is what the United States had in Azerbaijan just a bit over a year ago:

-    Azerbaijan was a steady ally of the United States in a broad range of foreign policy issues and played a leading role in promoting GUAM, a pro-Western alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, which stood up against the ambitious projects of Russia to turn the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) into a pro-Russian political and military bloc, similar to the former Warsaw Treaty Organization;
-    Azerbaijan played a central role in the regional energy projects and one of the expected new developments was the realization of the Trans-Caspian gas project Nabucco, which could ease the monopolist grip of Russia over the gas deliveries to Western Europe;
-    Azerbaijan effectively served as a spring-board for the involvement of Central Asian countries in the regional projects of the West in the economic and political spheres.  Azerbaijan played a huge role in supporting Georgia against the economic pressures of Russia;
-    On the domestic political sphere Azerbaijan was an authoritarian country, but had viable, though weakened, pro-Western opposition parties.  Together with the pro-democracy group of NGOs and a few media outlets, this segment of the Azeri society served as a check over the Azeri government’s old drive on leaning towards Russia;
-    Besides the local NGOs and media, there were international organizations such as NDI, IRI, IFES, Open Society Institute and many others working to strengthen the civil society as well as international radio stations, such as RFE/RL, VOA and BBC, which broadcasted on local frequencies and served as an alternative source of information in a country, where all the electronic media was unequivocally controlled by the government.

Today, the picture is radically different.  With more assertive Russia in the region, the idea of GUAM has turned into a shadow, while the CIS is turning into a threatening military bloc for the countries of the region.  On energy cooperation issues, it looks like the Azeri government is moving away from the Nabucco project, while the Russian Gazprom is on the verge of buying out all of the export gas of Azerbaijan, strengthening its monopolist position in the energy market of the region.  As Azerbaijan is moving more towards Russia on the energy issues, the Western positions in Central Asia are also crumbling.  The British Petrolium already decided to sell its shares of participation in energy projects in Kazakhstan. Who is buying those shares? The Russian LukOil firm.

As Azerbaijan is shifting its orientation toward Russia, its domestic policy also turns to be more and more authoritarian.  It looks like by crushing the political and civic institutions in the country the Azeri government is making sure that there will be no political force left in the country to challenge its political decisions. 

Let us look at the actions of the Azeri government between October 2008 and present:  In October Azerbaijani government held presidential elections with no real alternatives (the last such elections were held in 1993, all the following elections being much more competitive than that one) and Ilham Aliyev recieved 88% of the votes; Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Azerbaijan carried out the earlier made decision to shut the foreign broadcasters – BBC, RFE/RL and VOA from the local frequencies; In a hasty decision parliament appointed a referendum to change the constitution, lifting the restrictions to the presidential terms and allowing the incumbent president to run for the presidency as much as he wanted, thus turning him into a de-fact life-term president.  According to the official referendum results about 90 % of the voters voted to lift those burdensome restrictions; In June the Azeri government officials brought two issues to the public agenda:  introducing restrictions to internet (allegedly, aimed at protecting the moral of the society against indecent websites) and amending the laws on NGOs and Mass Media; The latter idea was submitted to the discussions in the parliament and was luckily rejected under the substantial international pressures.  Had those amendments been adopted, the activities of local NGOs and media would be severely restricted. NGOs would be required to get funding from the Azeri government in order to have the right to be called an NGO, foreign funding for local NGOs would be severely restricted and international NGOs, such as NDI, IRI, IFES, OSI and many others would be outlawed in the country.

The speed with which the Azeri government is carrying out those crushing attacks on the civil society in the country is possible only because one major player in the region – Russia is becoming increasingly friendly with the Azeri government and another major player – the United States shows no reaction to those developments.

The question on why Russia supports the suppression of the civil society in Azerbaijan is easy to answer: Russia itself is an authoritarian country and the opposition parties, NGOs and media, currently suppressed by the Azeri government are largely anti-Russian and definitely pro-Western.  By eliminating those institutions in Azerbaijan Russia helps turning this country into just another Central Asian country, which is much easier to deal with than Ukraine, Georgia, or even Azerbaijan of Heydar Aliyev era.

It is not that easy to answer the question why the US is not doing anything to prevent those developments.  One can only speculate and here are some of such speculations:  Maybe, the US does not see the suppression of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan as a major threat to its other national interests in this region, namely, the cooperation in the sphere of energy and security.  Although, with Russian Gazprom preparing to buy all the export gas of Azerbaijan and with its activities to undermine the project Nabucco, as well as the recent Russian initiatives to strengthen the role of the CIS in the region, one might suspect that people in the US understand that Azeri-Russian cooperation will not stop at just suppressing the civil society organizations.  One might also speculate that the new US administration has other things to do in more important regions of the world and has no time to deal with Azerbaijan, or South Caucasus.  Or maybe, the new US administration is pursuing the policy of non-interference into the domestic affairs of other countries and regards the programs supporting civil society in Azerbaijan as one of those harmful ideas of the previous administration to export the American values abroad. Maybe, the US prepares to recognize the South Caucasus as a Russian sphere of influence and hopes to gain compromise from that country in other important direction, such as the issue of nuclear non-proliferation?

The reason to mention all these speculations is to point out that the Azeri government, when trying to understand the US policy in the region, is also speculating.  And no matter, which of those speculations are true and which ones are false, the messages, the Azeri government is getting from the inaction of the US government are the following: 
-    There is a green light to suppress the civil society institutions and if the Azeri government acts fast, by the time the US gets its act together there will be no institution left to defend in Azerbaijan;
-    Azerbaijan should not stand up against Russia in any energy project, or a regional security project, because if it did that Russia would act with a crushing force, just like in the case with Georgia, while the US will watch and do nothing.

This scenario translates into Russia taking over Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus, while the US will be watching passively.