NATO CANCELLATION SPURS DEBATE IN AZERBAIJAN
Mammad Baghirov and Shahin Abbasov
Eurasianet
9/15/04
The protests that led to the cancellation of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organizationâ^À^Ùs exercises in Azerbaijan this week are being
interpreted in Baku as the first public expression of popular will
since President Ilham Aliyevâ^À^Ùs accession to power in 2003. Yet
while some believe this show of force indicates that Azerbaijan still
possesses a robust opposition, others are more worried about what
NATOâ^À^Ùs decision will mean in the long term for the country.
Protests at Armeniaâ^Ă€^Ă™s participation in the “Cooperative Best
Effort-2004” exercises, an annual training session for Partnership
for Peace participants, gained steam in late August, when members
of the Karabakh Liberation Organization were sentenced to prison
for forcing their way into a NATO planning conference in Baku that
included Armenian military officers. Anger at the arrests quickly
took on momentum, with pickets held outside the British, German and
French embassies and both pro-government MPs and the opposition media
calling on the Aliyev government to deny Armenia entry into Azerbaijan
for the September 14-26 games.
Though Bakuâ^À^Ùs support for Armeniaâ^À^Ùs participation in the games
began to cool even before the protests, the resulting political tension
appears to have forced Aliyev to clearly define the governmentâ^À^Ùs
position and abandon earlier assurances this April that Armenian
representatives would be allowed into Azerbaijan for the exercises. On
September 10, the Foreign Ministry refused to issue visas to all
Armenian military officers. The same day, parliament pushed for NATO
Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to rescind the invitation to
Armenia to take part in the exercises, saying that the officersâ^À^Ù
presence does not “correspond with the interests of the nation.”
One day later, Aliyevâ^Ă€^Ă™s position was made clear: “Everybody was
invited by NATO. But if you ask the Azerbaijani people, do they want
the Armenian military to come to Baku, they would say no,” Aliyev
said during a visit to the Barda region. “I do not want their visit
as well.”
A tersely worded statement in response from NATOâ^À^Ùs Supreme
Command on Monday said that the decision to cancel the games took
place after the allianceâ^Ă€^Ă™s “principle of inclusiveness was
violated.” Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar is expected to attend
meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels this week to discuss the
countryâ^À^Ùs participation in the Partnership for Peace program,
the Baku newspaper Ekspress quoted the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry as
saying on September 14. “The minister is paying a working visit and,
therefore, no precise topic or principal issue is on the agenda,”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Matin Mirza said.
Throughout the past weeks of protest, however, the government has
struggled to hold on to some degree of neutrality. Permission was
not given for street rallies, and pro-government media refrained
from endorsing independent and opposition journalistsâ^À^Ù calls
for Armenia to be denied entry for the NATO games. The ruling “Yeni
Azerbaijan Party” (YAP) abstained from participation in activities
organized by various public and political organizations, yet was quick
to express its support for the public mood. In a recent interview
with the Baku-based Echo daily newspaper, Bahar Muradova, a member
of parliament and the deputy executive secretary of YAP, said that
her party was instead “negotiating with international organizations
and informing them about the opinion of the Azerbaijani people.”
But in a country where outrage with Armenia over the 1988-1994
Nagorno-Karabakh war still runs deep, appearing out of sync with
such an “opinion” could carry heavy political risks. The Karabakh
Liberation Organizationâ^À^Ùs role in sparking the protests was duly
noted by Aliyev, who commented on an earlier trip to Nahichevan that
the court sentence passed down on the organizationâ^À^Ùs activists was
“too severe.”
With municipal elections scheduled for this December, Aliyevâ^À^Ùs
belief that the activistsâ^À^Ù sentences should be softened appears
well-calculated. The elections will be the first contested vote since
the bloody demonstrations that marked Aliyevâ^À^Ùs election in October
2003. Though Azerbaijanâ^À^Ùs opposition has been badly handicapped
by the brutal crackdown that followed, any government rebuff of the
NATO protests, in which Aliyevâ^À^Ùs critics played a large role,
could conceivably strengthen the oppositionâ^À^Ùs standing with voters.
Some observers see the governmentâ^À^Ùs about-face as a sign of
weak political leadership. “The incident shows that the Azerbaijani
leadership is feeble-minded,” independent political analyst Zardust
Alizada told Azad Azarbaycan TV on September 13. “Armenians could
choose to come or not to come. This would have had no impact on the
Karabakh settlement.”
One interpretation of events states that the participation of certain
pro-government organizations in the protests could indicate a division
within the ruling elite. Aside from pro-government parliamentarians,
the participation in the protests of the newly-created Party of
Unified Popular Front of Azerbaijan, led by Gudrat Gasanguliyev, a
former opposition member, and the National Forum of Non-Governmental
Organizations, led by Azay Guliyev, a member of the State Pardoning
Commission, has prompted this analysis. Under this interpretation,
anti-Aliyev groups within existing power structures worked to use
the protests to muddy Aliyevâ^À^Ùs international image.
Others place the government fully in control of events, and
maintain that NATO â^À^Ùs cancellation decision will merely
serve Azerbaijanâ^À^Ùs aims at talks between Aliyev and Armenian
President Robert Kocharian on Nagorno-Karabakh at a September
15 meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Astana,
Kazakhstan. According to this version, Azerbaijanâ^À^Ùs refusal to
grant Armenian representatives entry into the country can be used to
secure additional concessions from Armenia, which, like Azerbaijan,
is eager to tighten its ties to NATO.
Meanwhile, what the move will mean for Azerbaijanâ^À^Ùs relations with
NATO and the US has stirred an equally vociferous debate. Particular
attention is expected to focus on Aliyevâ^À^Ùs September 22 visit to
New York when he will address the United Nations and, according to an
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry statement to the Olaylar news agency,
meet with President George W. Bush. Recently, speculation has run
rife that a planned redeployment of 70,000 American troops from Europe
and East Asia could result in the opening of a US base in Azerbaijan.
Uzeyir Cafarov, an independent military expert, told Azad Azarbaycan
TV on September 13 that the Azerbaijani governmentâ^À^Ùs response to
the protests will inevitably hamper efforts to integrate the country
within NATO. “The attitude towards us will alter. Just imagine that
up to 1,000 servicemen from about 20 countries have come to Baku. Now
they are returning home frustrated,” Cafarov said.
For its part, the US has attempted to counter that belief. An
unidentified representative of the US embassy in Baku told the news
agency Turan, that while Washington supports NATOâ^Ă€^Ă™s decision, ”
[w]e do not think that this decision has anything to do with Bakuâ^À^Ùs
desire to cooperate with NATO and become closer to the alliance.”
One former foreign minister blames NATO itself for the failed war
games, arguing that the decision to cancel the exercises suggests that
the organization does not understand the nature of Azerbaijanâ^À^Ùs
grievances against Armenia. “Azerbaijan is a victim of aggression,
our lands are under occupation and we have hundreds of thousands
of refugees. It is wrong not to take heed of this,” former Foreign
Minister Tofiq Zulfuqarov told Azad Azerbaycan TV. “This position
should be taken into consideration in the future by NATO and other
international structures.”
A leading academician takes that argument even further, insisting
that, regardless of the countryâ^À^Ùs participation in the Partnership
for Peace, Azerbaijan has no obligation to NATO to invite Armenian
military personnel into the country.
“Itâ^Ă€^Ă™s not the Yerevan zoo that is going to come to Azerbaijan,
but the military of the country, whose commander-in-chief [President
Robert Kocharian] openly speaks about his participation in the
occupation of Azerbaijanâ^Ă€^Ă™s territory,” said Rovshan Mustafayev,
director of the Institute on Human Rights of the National Academy
of Sciences. “[I]f for some reason there will be associates of
[ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic, Kocharian or [ex-Iraqi
President] Saddam Hussein in the lists of participants, the host
country has the right to deny them.”
Editorâ^À^Ùs Note: Shahin Abbasov and Mammad Baghirov are deputy
editors-in-chief of the Baku-based daily newspaper Echo.
Posted September 15, 2004 © Eurasianet