LOTS OF LUCK: LOSER IN AZERBAIJAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE CLAIMS FRAUD, WANTS RESULTS ANNULLED
International Business Times News
October 10, 2013
By Palash Ghosh
President Ilham Aliyev’s principal opponent in the Azerbaijani
presidential election, who was trounced by the incumbent, is claiming
fraud and vote-rigging and wants the results annulled. Jamil Hasanli
said the vote was not free and fair and cited, among other things,
that all television channels are under government control, making it
impossible for other candidates to spread their message.
The official tally indicated that Aliyev won 85 percent of the vote
(giving him a third straight term in office) to Hasanli’s paltry 5
percent. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe,
which monitored the election, also blasted the results, citing that
it was “undermined by limitations on the freedoms of expression,
assembly and association that did not guarantee a level playing field
for candidates.”
But it is doubtful that Hasanli’s pleas will go anywhere. Aliyev,
the pro-Western president, rules an oil-rich Caucasus state that has
become an important supplier of oil and gas to Western Europe as well
as a key strategic regional opponent of Iran.
Aliyev was so confident of victory that he did not even bother to
campaign, the BBC reported, while opposition figures and activists
have long criticized him for immense corruption, fraud, human rights
violations and brutally stifling dissent in the nation of 9.3 million
along the western shores of the Caspian Sea. Indeed, in 2009, Aliyev
pushed through a constitutional referendum that lifted the two-term
presidency limit, thereby allowing him to remain in power indefinitely.
Aliyev, who “inherited” power from his father, KGB-trained Heydar
Aliyev, who died 10 years ago, has nonetheless engineered an economic
boom – as the country’s oil and gas wealth, has helped GDP to more than
treble in only the past decade, creating unprecedented improvements
in the people’s living standards.
Indeed, Western nations and oil companies – including BP plc (NYSE:
BP) and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) — have largely overlooked the
corruption and brutality of Aliyev’s state machinery because of the
country’s vast oil and natural gas reserves. For the past eight years,
Azerbaijani crude oil has been pumped through Georgia and Turkey for
eager markets in Western Europe (completely bypassing Russia and Iran),
with the support and financial aid of the U.S.
In addition, Aliyev provides a strong pro-Western geostrategic bulwark
against Iran, Azerbaijan’s troublesome neighbor to the south. In
connection with Baku’s strained relations with Iran, Aliyev has
fostered very close relations with Israel. Over the past few years,
intelligence agencies from both Israel and Azerbaijan have reportedly
prevented terror attacks on Jewish targets in Baku by Iranian entities
and their affiliates, including the Lebanese Hezbollah. In 2012,
for example, Iran allegedly plotted to blow up both the U.S. and
Israeli embassies in Baku. In response, the Iranians have accused
Azerbaijan of assisting Israel in the assassination of top Iranian
nuclear scientists. Further, Iran became alarmed by reports (since
denied by both Baku and Israel) that the Jewish state was planning
to use an Azerbaijan military base to launch pre-emptive strikes on
Iran to destroy its budding nuclear weapons program.
Azerbaijan, which was part of Iran before Russian expansion, shares
much with its former sovereign – both are overwhelmingly Shia Muslim
and Iran has a significant Azeri community (indeed, Iran’s Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is himself of Azeri descent). But
that hasn’t prevented Baku from entering into binding military,
energy and security agreements with Iran’s bitterest enemy, Israel
(which opened an embassy in Baku as long ago as 1992, shortly after
Azerbaijan became independent from the Soviet Union).
In May of this year, Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov made
a state visit to Israel (the first such journey by such a high-level
Azeri minister), triggering more vitriol from Teheran.
Last year, Azeri officials signed a $1.6 billion deal with
state-controlled Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. under which Baku
will receive unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. drones), anti-aircraft
and missile defense systems. UPI reported that this one transaction
accounted for 43 percent of the Azeris’ defense expenditures for the
whole year. In 2011, an Israeli defense contractor named Aeronautics
opened a factory in Azerbaijan to manufacture military UAVs.
Anar Valiyev, an independent scholar in Baku, told International
Business Times that Azerbaijan needs Israel for various reasons,
including its superior technologies and military hardware. “Azerbaijan
cannot buy weapons from the U.S. or Europe,” he said. “Russian
technologies are not adequate, plus Russia is an ally of the Armenians”
— Azerbaijan’s bitter enenmies.
Valiyev also suggested that Azerbaijan needs the Jewish lobby in the
U.S. due to their perceived heavy influence in government.
In exchange for their close ties with Azerbaijan, Israel gains not
only a much-needed Muslim friend in a very dangerous neighborhood,
but also a huge portion (40 percent) of its annual oil requirements
come from the small Caucasus state. Bilateral trade between Azerbaijan
and Israel now totals some $4 billion annually. Since 1997, a number of
senior Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and President Shimon Peres, have visited Azerbaijan, solidifying their
military and economic relationship. Israel’s links to Baku intensified
a few years ago when Jerusalem’s once-strong diplomatic ties to Turkey
collapsed after Israel commandos killed Turkish civilians on the Gaza
flotilla that sought to send supplies to Palestinians in May 2010.
But the Azeris can only go so far without antagonizing Iran too much –
for one thing, Azerbaijan has not yet opened up an embassy in Israel;
moreover, Baku even signed a “non-aggression” pact with Teheran
in 2005. Quipping about the often-secretive nature of the Azeris’
relations with Israel, Ilham Aliyev himself once famously likened it
to an iceberg by stating: “Nine-tenths of it is below the surface.”
Intriguingly, Raphael Harpaz, Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, who
has praised the Azeris for their “courageous stand against efforts to
destabilize the region” (a direct snipe at Iran), also claimed that
anti-Semitism is nonexistent in Azerbaijan. Indeed, some 42,000 Jews
call Azerbaijan home.
Moreover, Baku’s relations with Teheran cannot be regarded as stable
– a recent crackdown on Iran’s Azeri minority sparked outrage
in Azerbaijan, which, in turn, prompted the Iranians to verbally
invoke old territorial claims on Azerbaijan. On a cultural front,
Azerbaijan is a secular, Western-leaning society with some freedoms
for its people, compared to a very repressive and rigid Iran.
“Azerbaijan’s economic success and relatively liberal attitudes form
a contrast with Iran’s restrictive policies and a viable alternative,
which is probably making the mullah regime [of Iran] uncomfortable,”
Avinoam Idan, a senior research fellow at John Hopkins University’s
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
However, Idan added that Azerbaijan’s cozy ties with Israel are
designed to rankle not so much Iran, but rather another regional (and
less prominent) enemy, Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia have waged
at least two wars over the much-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region –
causing thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Aliyev’s continued aggressive designs on the disputed territory have
made his Western allies unwilling to sell him weapons (this is where
Israel came in handy, as a very eager arms-seller).
“There are 20 to 30 million ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Iran,”
Valiyev told IB Times. “The Iranian ayatollahs are scared that if
Azerbaijan becomes a strong nation, with its secular nature it could
lead to separatism among Iranian Azerbaijanis. Thus, Iranians will
support anyone who seek to weaken Azerbaijan — even Christian Armenia
rather than Shia Muslim Azerbaijan.”
From: A. Papazian
http://www.ibtimes.com/lots-luck-loser-azerbaijan-presidential-race-claims-fraud-wants-results-annulled-1420900