THE AZERI EDGE: WITH OIL, QUESTIONABLE ELECTIONS, AND A RISING ISLAMIC PRESENCE, AZERBAIJAN MAY BE AT CROSSROADS
by Peter Church
04/05/2006 12:00:00 AM
The Weekly Standard
April 5 2006
IN NOVEMBER 2005, Azerbaijan held parliamentary elections. Voter
participation was down 20 percent from the 2000 elections, and
President Ilham Aliev’s party won overwhelmingly in what was regarded
by international observers as a questionable, if not fraudulent,
election. The small but increasingly visible Islamic Party of
Azerbaijan was again barred from running, as in past elections. The
opposition bloc lost again, as it has in every election over the past
12 years.
Dodgy elections in an impoverished, oil-rich, quasi-dictatorial
former-Soviet republic isn’t exactly big news. But seen against a
backdrop of the recently opened BTC oil pipeline, an almost 20 year
conflict with neighboring Armenia, an antagonistic southern neighbor
in Iran, an unsettled dispute to the north in Chechnya, and a rising
Islamic revival, Azerbaijan is actually standing in the middle of
some powerful geopolitical tectonic plates. The West would do well
to pay more attention to the goings on there.
I ARRIVED IN AZERBAIJAN at the end of last November, just in
time to take measure of post-election claims of fraud, opposition
demonstrations, and the mounting frustration with the political system
that is fueling an Islamic revival. I was surprised when the customs
agent in Baku asked me if I was a terrorist. I’d arrived from Kabul
wearing a beard and learned later that Azeris often refer to Salafis
as sakkaliar, or “bearded people.” As an ultra-strict sect of Sunni
Islam, Salafism in Azerbaijan is on the rise.
After 70 years of Soviet rule, when religious practice was driven
underground, Islam
is experiencing a revival in Azerbaijan. Almost 94 percent of
Azerbaijan’s 8 million inhabitants are culturally Muslim, with about
70 percent of those being Shia. If religious practice waned under
Soviet-enforced secularization, today, according to a 2004 survey
sponsored by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, almost 97
percent of Azeri Muslims call themselves “believers.” Nearly a quarter
of Azeris support governance by sharia (with higher proportions
reported along the borders in the north and south) and nearly 30
percent apply Islamic codes to their family lives.
Even in Baku, where secularization imposed by Soviet fiat has been
replaced by the secularizing effect of attracting foreign investment,
Salafis are gaining in-roads. Amidst the city’s new five-star hotels,
downtown shops displaying designer Italian suits, bars catering to the
oil men, and the $40-a-night girls, the Salafis count up to 20,000
adherents. Mosques in Baku typically attract about 300 worshipers
for Friday prayers. But Abu Bakr Mosque, the town’s Salafi mosque,
attracts some 5,000 worshipers.
THIS RISE OF A VISIBLE SALAFI PRESENCE in Azeri society are
complicated, but they are explained in part by a combination of
geographical and historical forces. And it has been pushed along
by the fighting between Azeris and Armenians that erupted over the
disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region when the Soviet empire began to
buckle in 1987, along with the persistent conflict in Chechnya.
(The fact that Nagorno-Karabakh was home to a concentration of
Armenians in Azeri territory is the vestige of the 1828 Treaty of
Turkmenchay between Iran and Russia, which historically, along with
Turkey, have had the greatest influence over Azeri fortunes.
Azerbaijan’s first attempt at independence was short-lived, lasting two
years between the 1917 collapse of czarist Russia and the invasion
of the Red Army in 1920. Also a result of the 1828 treaty, today
some 16 million Azeris live in northern Iran–almost a quarter of
Iran’s population.)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress