Waterloo Record, Canada
Oct 15 2012
Azerbaijan taunts irking Iran
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN – The latest weapon in this country’s ideological war
with Iran arrived late last month in an armada of jets from
California, accompanied by a private security force, dazzling
pyrotechnics and a wardrobe that consisted of sequins and not much
else.
A crowd of nearly 30,000 gathered to watch as the leader of this
mini-invasion pranced onto a stage built on the edge of the Caspian
Sea. With a shout of `Hello, lovers!’ Jennifer Lopez wiggled out of
her skirt and launched into a throbbing disco anthem, delighting her
Azerbaijani fans and – it was hoped – infuriating the turbaned
ayatollahs who live just across the water.
`You could almost feel the Iranians seething,’ said an Azerbaijani
official who attended the U.S. pop star’s first concert in this
predominantly Shiite Muslim country of 9 million. `This stuff makes
them crazy.’
The effect on Iran’s leaders is real enough, and it is at least partly
by design. Azerbaijan, Iran’s neighbour and longtime rival, is coming
to relish its role as the region’s anti-Iran, a secular,
Western-leaning country that is working mightily to become everything
that Iran is not.
As Iran sinks ever deeper into isolation and economic distress, its
northern neighbour is sprinting in the opposite direction, building
political and cultural ties to the West along with new pipelines
connecting energy-hungry Europe with the country’s rich petroleum
fields on the Caspian Sea. Where Iran is repressive and theocratic,
Azerbaijan is socially and religiously tolerant, offering itself as a
model of a nonsectarian, Muslim-majority society that champions
women’s athletics and embraces Western music and entertainers.
It also enthusiastically pursues diplomatic and business ties with
Israel, the Jewish state that Iranian officials have threatened to
destroy.
Azerbaijan’s leaders insist that such policies have nothing to do with
Iran, and they point to a record of mostly cordial relations with the
vastly larger, notoriously peevish republic to the south. Yet, with
each stride toward modernity – and with every Western diva who arrives
to croon and titillate on Baku’s expanding international stage –
Azerbaijan chips away at the legitimacy of Iran’s government and fuels
discontent among ordinary Iranians, say Western officials who study
the region.
`It is one of the most serious threats to the long-term viability of
the Iranian regime,’ said Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. ambassador to
Azerbaijan who now works as a private consultant. `Every day that
Azerbaijan grows stronger economically and more connected to the
Euro-Atlantic community – that’s another day in which the Iranian
regime grows weaker.’
It is hardly a perfect role model. The government in Baku is dominated
by a single political party, and it has frequently come under
criticism by independent watchdogs for its human rights record and
alleged corruption. Azerbaijan also is mired in a nearly
two-decade-old conflict with another of its neighbours, Armenia, over
control of the disputed enclave known as Nagorno-Karabakh.
Still, even as they press for faster reforms, Western governments are
seeing a lot to like about a country whose steady ascent makes Iran’s
failings appear even more wretched by comparison.
`Iranians now see Azerbaijan emerging as a regional player at a time
when they are being sidelined by sanctions,’ said a Baku-based Western
diplomat who insisted on anonymity in discussing his country’s
geopolitical assessments. `They see new embassies opening and new
foreign investment pouring in … Azerbaijan is gaining, and Iran is
losing.’
The visit to Baku by the pop star known as J-Lo was only one in a
string of events marking the cultural coming out of a newly assertive
Azerbaijan. Concert promoters have lured a steady stream of A-list
Western entertainers to the country in recent weeks, including fellow
pop icon Rihanna, who arrived in this Caspian seaport two weeks after
Lopez’s Baku premier on Sept. 23. Rihanna was followed by blond
songstress Shakira, the closer in a triumvirate of female performers
known for skimpy costumes and sexually provocative dance moves.
If Baku’s mostly Muslim concert-goers were offended, they showed no
signs of it. Tens of thousands of young Azerbaijanis paid the
equivalent of a week’s salary to dance along with Lopez at her show in
Baku’s Crystal Hall, a lavish arena built on a small finger of land
jutting into the Caspian. Many others camped outside a downtown hotel
for a chance to glimpse the American pop icon.
`Best show I’ve ever seen,’ gushed `Leyla,’ a Baku woman who posted a
pithy review on a fan site after Lopez’s performance.
Azerbaijani officials say they invited female vocalists to help draw
attention to yet another event: the Women’s World Cup soccer
tournament, hosted this year by Baku. The overall idea, they say, is
to burnish Azerbaijan’s standing as a progressive country that not
only protects women’s rights but also promotes female participation in
sports and the arts.
`We recognize that having a secular, progressive state is important
for the well-being of this country,’ said Novruz Mammadov, an
Azerbaijani diplomat and current director of foreign relations for the
administration of President Ilham Aliyev.
Azerbaijani officials say it’s by happenstance that the country’s
policies run against the grain of more conservative countries in the
region. In fact, the contrasts could not be more striking –
particularly with regard to Iran. And Western concerts and soccer
games are only part of it.
In Baku, an ancient seaport in which Zoroastrian ruins coexist with
brilliantly lighted glass skyscrapers, young couples hold hands or
embrace on park benches along the broad, tree-lined promenade that
hugs the Caspian shoreline – public displays of affection that are
officially banned in Tehran. Women and girls in designer jeans hunt
for bargains at Western clothing stores such as Bebe and Benetton.
Head scarves are rare, but karaoke bars and nightclubs are plentiful
along the downtown thoroughfares choked with traffic and new
construction.
Fuelled by a booming oil industry, the country’s gross domestic
product rocketed forward at an astonishing 35 per cent annual rate –
the world’s highest – in the mid-2000s before cooling off in the face
of the European recession. The cash influx paid for the city’s
gleaming skyline while helping lower the official poverty rate from
nearly 50 per cent to less than 16 per cent in a single decade.
The central government has struggled to raise standards for education
and health care, particularly in rural areas. But, while most
Azerbaijanis share the same Shiite beliefs as their Iranian cousins,
Baku has managed to prevent the emergence of religious extremism – at
times trampling on political freedoms to do so. Government officials
say an overwhelming majority of Azerbaijanis are proud of the
country’s secular traditions, which already were well established
before Azerbaijan became part of the Soviet Union.
`It’s not so much that we have changed, it’s that others have come
understand who we are,’ said Mikayil Jabbarov, director of the
country’s historical and architectural preservation agency. `We had
girls’ schools 100 years ago, and we were the first Muslim country to
give women the vote. The mentality was shaped back then.’
Only more recently have these traditions become a problem for
Azerbaijan’s neighbours, government officials say. Iran’s irritation
with Western-leaning Azerbaijan turned to resentment and then
hostility in the wake of published reports last year that Azerbaijan
supplied assassins for an Israeli effort to kill Iran’s nuclear
scientists – an allegation that Azerbaijan vehemently denies.
Then, in February, Azerbaijani authorities disrupted what they said
was an Iranian plot to kill Israeli diplomats and Jewish
schoolteachers in Baku. An investigation would later implicate 22
Iranian operatives in a series of alleged schemes to target Western
embassies and businesses, including the U.S. diplomatic mission in
Baku.
Relations between the two capitals cratered. But the worst crisis was
yet to come, and it was over a cultural event: Azerbaijan’s election
to become the host of this year’s televised and highly popular
Eurovision Song Contest. The contest was Azerbaijan’s chance to shine,
and the country spent billions of dollars building a new arena and
sprucing up its central avenues for the expected onslaught of
tourists. Iran, however, attacked the event as an anti-Islamic `gay
parade’ and withdrew its ambassador in protest.
The harsh reaction left Azerbaijanis shaking their heads. `I do not
know who got this idea into their heads in Iran,’ Ali Hasanov, head of
the administration’s public and political issues department, told
reporters at the time. `We are hosting a song contest, not a gay
parade.’
But by then, Azerbaijanis had acquired a taste for Hollywood-style
glamour, and their government was enjoying the international attention
as well as an awareness of Iran’s extreme discomfort. Tickets for the
Jennifer Lopez concert went on sale the following month and sold out
quickly – delighting the city’s concert promoters and winning new
admirers for a country that appears to have sided firmly with
musicians over mullahs, with implications that extend far beyond its
borders.
`It’s easy to make fun, but this is part of their foreign policy
strategy, and it’s actually smart,’ a second Western diplomat said of
Azerbaijan’s canny embrace of pop. `On one level, it says to the
world, `We’re a real country, and we can attract world-class
entertainment.’ On another level, it drives the Iranians to
distraction.’
The Washington Post
http://www.therecord.com/news/canada/article/818091–azerbaijan-taunts-irking-iran