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By Gorkhmaz Asgarov

Since the emergence of an independent Azerbaijan in the wake of the Soviet collapse in 1991, U.S. policy toward this country has been beset by the familiar dilemma between democratization and engagement. While trying to gently nudge the country toward democratic reforms, Washington has also been willing to deal with the autocratic leaders in Baku and has given support to multibillion-dollar energy projects that have de facto strengthened the regime at home while also cementing Azerbaijan’s ties to the West. For nearly ten years, from 1993 until 2003, when Azerbaijan was governed by former Soviet apparatchik Heydar Aliyev, the United States believed it had successfully found a formula that reflected both cooperation and a gentle push for democratic reforms. The official American policy laid out cooperation, security, and democratic reforms as three key principles guiding relations with Azerbaijan.

However, it is far from clear that this policy has succeeded either in terms of making Azerbaijan a more democratic country or in solidifying a true partnership rooted in values. The succession of Ilham Aliyev, the son of former president Heydar Aliyev, to power has upset the previous equilibrium of what had seemed to be a policy based on solid foundations. Many Western observers hoped or predicted that as president, Ilham Alieyev would further open up Azerbaijani society. That reading proved false. Lacking a real popular mandate and the gravitas of his father, Ilham Aliyev has instead gone in a different direction. He almost immediately targeted the institutions of civil society by launching an aggressive persecution of the opposition, independent media, and human rights activists. To be sure, the worsening political atmosphere in Azerbaijan has given numerous Western observers pause about Azerbaijan’s future possible directions. In April 2010 the Obama administration snubbed President Aliyev by not inviting him to the nuclear security summit in Washington, DC, which was attended by the presidents of Azerbaijan’s neighbors — Georgia and Armenia. In May 2009, on World Press Freedom Day, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to openly denounce Azerbaijan’s human rights record and equate it with that of Zimbabwe. Azerbaijan responded in turn by canceling its joint military exercises with the United States.

Thus, the perception in both Baku and Washington is that relations between the two countries have reached a new low. For the one-time supporters of Ilham Aliyev who had hoped he would become a young, modern, reformist leader, these recent developments in Azerbaijan have been a severe disappointment. Yet, for many of us with up-close experience with political developments in Azerbaijan, Washington’s engagement policy toward the Aliyev regime has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Indeed, U.S. policy has suffered from serious flaws that in turn have been rooted in misperceptions about the country’s geopolitical circumstances and Azerbaijani society’s democratic potential. If Washington hopes to find a new balance between pushing for a more open and democratic Azerbaijan and working together in the areas of energy and strategy, it will have to rethink those assumptions and recalibrate its strategy.

What Made Azerbaijan Pro-Western?

Abulfaz Elchibey - first democratically elected president of Azerbaijan (1992-1993)

The importance of Azerbaijan, a small country with an officially registered population of nearly 9 million people, transcends its physical size. The geopolitical value of this country is not limited to its energy resources alone. Today the Eurasian map is divided into two halves separated by a potential geopolitical wall formed by Russia, the South Caucasus, and Iran. If Russia manages to control the South Caucasus, then Western access to Central Asia and beyond is effectively blocked by land barriers of anti-Western regimes. At the moment Georgia, an effective Western ally, stands as an obstacle to the completion of that wall. However, Georgia is somewhat isolated and has a weak economy, and its anti-Russian stance cannot be sustained for long without an alliance with another country in the South Caucasus — Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan, the initiator of independent energy projects in the Caspian Sea and the author of the Baku–Supsa and Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipelines, has played a vital role in breaking the energy monopoly of Russia in the Eurasian continent. In many ways the Western orientation of Azerbaijan has served as an essential precondition for the Georgian path to Euro-integration. In 1997 these two countries launched an independent regional organization serving as an alternative to the pro-Russian Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which later expanded to include Ukraine and Moldova. This larger alliance, known as GUAM, was once a powerful regional organization but is currently at its lowest ebb, since Russia has successfully neutralized the pro-Western drive in Moldova, Ukraine, and — increasingly — also Azerbaijan. Currently, Georgia is left alone in the field, with token support from Azerbaijan and very little support from either Ukraine or Moldova apart from their diplomatic refusal to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

As a country with a majority Muslim population and long governed by imperial Russia, Azerbaijan has a history and set of traditions that place it apart from most other nations in the Islamic world. Azerbaijan is home to the pioneer Muslim playwright Mirza Fatali Akhundov, whose 19th-century comedies became the first staged theatrical productions in the Middle East. That same Akhundov authored the idea of introducing the Latin alphabet into the Azeri language, replacing the Arabic script. (The idea was eventually embraced by Azerbaijan in 1928 as well as by the Ataturk administration in Turkey in the same year.) In 1875 Hasan bey Zardabi established an Azeri-language newspaper, Akinchi, which came to be the first regular newspaper produced by Muslims in the region. Dubbed as the Azerbaijani Mark Twain, Jalil Mammadguluzadeh founded the political satiric magazine Molla Nasraddin in 1906 — a leading publication of the reformist Jadid movement that took root in the Muslim peripheries of Tsarist Russia in the early 20th century. In 1908 Uzeyir Hajibeyov, born in the Azeri city of Shusha, composed the first opera in the Muslim world — Leyli and Majnun. Shortly after the Russian Empire dissolved in 1918, the Azeris declared the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic — the first republic among Muslim countries (Turkey’s republic was declared in 1923) to hold free parliamentary elections. The republic granted voting rights to women in 1919, a year prior to that step being taken in the United States.

It was this political memory and tradition that fueled Azerbaijan’s national democratic movement as it took center stage against Kremlin rule alongside the Baltic republics and Georgia in 1989–91. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the national democratic movement led by the Popular Front of Azerbaijan seized power from communist henchman Ayaz Mutallibov. In 1992 Azerbaijan held its first and so far the only truly democratic elections recognized as such by the OSCE since the collapse of the USSR. With 54 percent of the votes, Abulfaz Elchibey was elected president. In a one-year period, the Elchibey government carried out profound political and economic reforms. The democratic government evicted the Russian troops from the country before most Central and Eastern European nations did, implemented comprehensive education reform, and strengthened the role of independent media and civic organizations in the country.

In many ways, the Elchibey government represented the enlightenment trends rooted in the pre-Bolshevik period of Azerbaijani history. As such, it viewed modernization of the country through embracing Western values as a matter of national evolution as well as national security. In this respect, the origins of the idea of integrating with Europe in both Georgia and Azerbaijan have similar historical roots and motivations.

Propaganda Poster featuring Heydar Aliyev, his son Ilham Aliyev and his grandson Heydar Aliyev. The poster says: "They Are the Yesterday, Today and Future of Azerbaijan."

When former KGB general Heydar Aliyev, aided by Russia, overthrew Abulfaz Elchibey in 1993, the former communist official did not inherit Azerbaijan as a tabula rasa. Heydar Aliyev took over the presidency in a country with strong and viable pro-Western opposition parties that maintained a strong presence in every region, an independent media, and a wide spectrum of civic organizations, nearly all of whom shared Western values at least to the degree that they understood them. The population was largely anti-Russian (partly because of Russia’s heavy military support to Armenia in its war against Azerbaijan), sought integration with Europe, and regarded the West as a guarantor of Azerbaijan’s independence.

The rationale behind the coup d’etat, as presented by Heydar Aliyev, was that Russia was too powerful to be ignored. Although Azerbaijan needed to integrate with the West, Elchibey ostensibly had been too impatient in promoting his pro-Western policies. The implicit claim was that Aliyev would be more professional and careful in dealing with Moscow. The concessions that Heydar Aliyev’s government made to Russia were presented as a “necessary evil” to avoid even tougher steps that might be taken by Baku’s northern neighbor.

Decreasing Chips

But Heydar Aliyev was certainly not a democrat. His pro-Western choices from 1994 to 1996 were largely tactical and necessitated by his desire to defeat his political opponents and consolidate power. After 1996 the Azerbaijani government’s pro-Western policies were heavily influenced by backdoor political bargaining in which the West squeezed concessions out of Heydar Aliyev by using credible threats such as throwing support behind the democratic opposition in the country. Likewise, Heydar Aliyev squeezed out Western acquiescence to his suppression of democratic institutions in the country in return for granting, or sometimes only promising to comply with, the West’s demands in other fields such as energy cooperation and foreign policy issues.

President Heydar Aliyev Meeting President George Bush in Washington DC.

On the eve of every subsequent election in Azerbaijan — 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2003 — the pre-campaign period was accompanied by energetic support from Western, particularly U.S., organizations to strengthen democratic institutions in the country, ranging from the opposition political parties to civic organizations and independent media. This was always followed by, in turn, cooperative statements by the Azerbaijani government expressing its support for Western regional projects; falsified elections and crackdown on the opposition and democratic institutions of the country; and the withdrawal of Western support from the democratic institutions in the country until the next campaign period.

Most notably, prior to every election, the Azerbaijani government would take a position signaling possible compromises in peace negotiations with Armenia, focusing the efforts of Western countries on that issue; after the elections in Azerbaijan, the government would completely negate its previously signaled compromises. The confusing results of the peace negotiations in Istanbul, Paris, and Key West had one reasonable explanation: As realpolitik’s founding father, Niccolo Machiavelli, might have put it, the king does not have to honor his promise when the reasons conditioning that promise are no longer present. The seesaw game between the West and the Aliyev regime had one fundamental flaw: The conditions for Western pressures on the Azeri dictator were never permanent. Every time the West acquiesced to the Azerbaijani government’s carrying out one more crackdown on its opposition, that diminished the future “bargaining power” of the West. Since 1993 the regime in Azerbaijan has consistently grown stronger and stronger while democratic institutions in the country have steadily declined.

Police Beating Opposition Protesters In Baku

In 2003, when the West almost overtly supported the succession of Heydar Aliyev by his son Ilham Aliyev, the realpolitik scholars of the West were gambling away their last chips. A day after the “elections,” on October 16, 2003, as the Azerbaijani government rounded up over 1,000 opposition supporters in the country, with many suffering in torture chambers, then U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage congratulated Ilham Aliyev on his “landslide victory.”

This was the start of new era in the U.S.–Azerbaijani relations. For the first time since 1992, the United States had to deal with an Azerbaijani government that was no longer held in check by any viable political opposition in the country.

“We Have Our Own Path”

“Azerbaijan does not need financial support or recommendations from the international community. The government knows well what it is doing and will not allow any interference in its internal affairs.… What will happen if we leave these organizations? Azerbaijan will not fail.” This is what the current Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, said in 2008 with respect to Council of Europe demands that Baku comply with minimum standards of human rights. By March 2010 the president was even more unequivocal in responding to international criticisms on the nature of his regime: “If we need an advice, we will ask for it. Whoever wants to interfere into our internal affairs should understand that their efforts are fruitless.”
These developments are not without consequences in other spheres of relations between the West and Azerbaijan. On May 15, 2008, the Russian energy monopoly Gazprom stated that it wanted to buy all the natural gas produced by Azerbaijan. Shortly afterward, on January 1, 2010, Azerbaijan started pumping natural gas to Russia, and on January 21, Azerbaijan agreed to double the volume of its gas export to Russia (bringing the total up to 2 billion cubic meters) for the year 2011. The strategic Western energy project Nabucco, which was planned to ease Russia’s grip on energy resources in Eurasia, still has an uncertain future, although Baku has finally, after a long delay and equivocation, agreed to provide some start-up resources.

Azerbaijan has also considerably distanced itself from GUAM. It has entered into antagonistic relations with virtually every Western entity, be it a country or a regional organization, actively threatening to abandon its commitment to Western energy projects in the future. In fact, one pro-government member of the parliament — Fazail Aghamali — suggested that the Azeri government should punish the United States by reducing the latter’s existing shares in oil contracts. Aghamali said the United States had used Azerbaijani oil income to support the Armenian separatists in Karabakh. “We need to stop all the U.S. activities in Azerbaijan,” he added. Once an agreeable partner, Azerbaijan has now turned “touchy,” looking for every excuse to justify the upcoming breakup and a possible change of political orientation from the West toward Russia.

Reasons for the Reorientation of Azerbaijan

President Ilham Aliyev meets his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev

Much of the current leading Azeri government comes out of the old Soviet bureaucracy. Many of them were never comfortable with the liberal rhetoric of the West. Ramiz Mehdiyev, chief of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan and former secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan Communist Party on Ideology, is still writing Soviet-style articles analyzing global affairs from the Cold War prism. Ilham Aliyev himself is an alumnus of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), which was the elite Soviet school producing government officials for the USSR. The level of trust and comfort between these leaders and the politicians in Moscow is often organic and natural. Their cooperation with the West has been largely tactical.

Russia has consistently staked its efforts to regain influence with this political elite in Azerbaijan, even when Heydar Aliyev pushed for the oil contracts. When confronted with a choice, Moscow could never side with the Azeri democrats. A democratic government in Azerbaijan was and still is regarded as an anathema for the Russian autocracy.

The West can try to pander to the Aliyev government. However, will the West ever be able to extend to Azerbaijani leadership the package that Russia can offer? Russian election observers come to Azerbaijan only to issue a statement praising the Azeri government for holding “fully democratic elections.” What does the West have to offer? Lukewarm praise such as “This election was an improvement over the last elections” and “The present elections were a step forward toward democracy” cannot beat unequivocal Russian support for the suppression of political freedoms in Azerbaijan. When Russia panders to the Azerbaijani government, there is not a single article published in a Russian newspaper criticizing the Azeri government due to total government control. What about the United States? Can its government order the Washington Post or The New York Times to stop publishing articles critical of the authoritarian policies of the Azerbaijani government?
Friendship between the Azerbaijani government and the United States or any Western democracy is an insincere, ad hoc arrangement in which both partners will always feel great unease — something that is absent in the Azerbaijani government’s dealings with Russia or Iran. Whenever the United States or any Western democracy tries to befriend the
Azerbaijani government, it enters into the game of trying to imitate Russia, China, or Iran.

That imitation will never succeed in beating the autocracies at their own game. Alliances do not exist in vacuum. They develop in the context of shared interests, values, and many other common purposes. The idea that similar regimes foster and differing regimes hinder the alliances between states is not new. Aristotle noted it in the fourth century b.c. That is why Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are such complicated and unreliable U.S. allies and also constitute breeding grounds for anti-Americanism and terrorism. Alliances that are not preceded or followed by the establishment of shared values are always going to rest on shaky ground.

It would of course be wrong to compare the Azerbaijani government’s situation with its counterparts in the Middle East. Unlike the regimes of the Middle East, where United States has military bases, and where the legacy of British or French colonial rule runs deep, an Azerbaijani dictatorship in Baku will always have the luxury of choice. Russia is nearby, with its arms stretched out to embrace Baku. And the West can’t outbid Russia by being more Russian than Moscow. That being said, Moscow’s offer is wrapped in what would be quite an unpleasant package for any government in Baku. Moscow still views Armenia as its strategic stronghold in the region, and part of the price of closer Moscow–Baku ties would probably mean that Azerbaijan would have to agree to the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is unlikely that the Azerbaijani government could survive such a concession.

Western Policy Choices

The West’s policy options with regard to Azerbaijan are not limitless, if only for reasons of geography. But those choices are also not as stark or as narrow as they might appear at first glance. First, it must be acknowledged that the so-called positive engagement that many advocate will not result in the reform of an authoritarian country such as Azerbaijan. Like most dictators, Ilham Aliyev is not so naïve as to stifle democracy due to his lack of knowledge or experience with the outside world. He does what he does because he thinks it is in his interest and he can get away with it. In that sense, he correctly interprets the term “engagement” as a euphemism for accepting dictatorships as they are and working with them in other spheres. In the case of Azerbaijan, this means “energy security.”

Secondly, Azerbaijan has always needed the West more than the West needs Azerbaijan. A small nation in a hostile neighborhood, Azerbaijan can be pressured into reforms through promotion of democratic institutions in the country. The Aliyev regime may not be happy with its burgeoning NGOs and free press, but so long as the West makes it clear that it values these institutions as being vital to its strategic interests in Azerbaijan, they will be as safe as the pipelines carrying Azeri oil to the Mediterranean. Relying on the goodwill of the Aliyev government alone will not accomplish this objective. It will require a principled stand as well as the fundamental recognition that democratic institutions comprise the ultimate guarantor of Western interests in that country.

Finally, there are growing signs that the Azeri people are fed up with the corrupt, dysfunctional, and oppressive dictatorship in the country. People frequently compare their living standards to those in nearby Georgia, where by all measures the Georgians appear to do far better than the oil-rich Azeris. The Azeris know the benefits of democracy. They long for it. The wisest, though not the simplest, decision on the part of the West would be to give a hand to its greatest and most powerful political allies in the region — the people of Azerbaijan — and help them in their quest for more freedom and democracy.

* Gorkhmaz Asgarov is Vice-chairman of Azerbaijani Americans for Democracy and Editor-in-chief of Azerireport news website. This article was first published at the German Marshall Fund’s publication “On Wider Europe.”