러시아ㆍ유라시아

Events in Egypt and Tunisia have already triggered apprehensive reactions from Central Asian governments and Azerbaijan.  These authoritarian governments, like Egypt, try to portray their domestic oppositions as Islamist while suppressing human rights and political opposition.  But the issues in Azerbaijan are somewhat different than those in Central Asia. Azerbaijan’s human rights problem is directly tied to the Iranian context.  Azerbaijan’s admittedly defective human rights situation is directly connected not only to Iranian policy but also to Iran’s own much more serious human rights violations.

BACKGROUND: Azerbaijan is a unique community.  Its people are mainly Turkic-speaking Shia Muslims with a long-standing tradition of tolerance and orientation toward Turkey and the West, not toward Iran.  Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the south, contains a huge minority of Azerbaijanis in Northwest Iran whom Tehran has oppressed for years because of fears of separatist agendas.  This situation would foster Iranian-Azerbaijani tensions even if Iran were not a militant Islamic state.  But that factor, which is Iran’s defining attribute of statehood, introduces explosive elements into the relationship, because the Islamic Republic is a militant upholder of the centralizing tradition of centralization that the 1979 revolution took over from the deposed Pahlevis. 

For many reasons, including the unease generated by the large Azerbaijani minority there, Iran has been threatening Azerbaijan since 1992.  In the conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh Iran has supported Christian Armenia over its Shiite co-religionists.  Iran fired on Azerbaijani oil exploration ships in the Caspian in 2001, built up its navy there while blocking any final agreement on the Caspian Sea legal status, repeatedly threatened Azerbaijan overtly with military action if it should consent to a U.S. base, attacked its leaders in the press for their pro-Western, and particularly their pro-Israeli policies, and organized armed groups among the Islamic opposition parties in Azerbaijan that command little support, including members of the clergy opposed to the state and its Westernizing proclivities.  Also, for years, Iran has backed subversive and armed groups in Azerbaijan that seek to subvert the regime.  President Ilham Aliyev recently specifically cited Iranian financing of Ashura ceremonies in Nakhichevan, the organization of demonstrations in front of Azerbaijani consulates in Tabriz and Istanbul, a recent violent religious procession in Baku, and the placement of his photograph next to the star of David on Iranian Azeri-language broadcasts on television beamed into Azerbaijan.

The latest episode in Azerbaijan’s “twilight struggle” between the government and the Islamist opposition revolves around the government’s ban of the Hijab for teenage girls in Azerbaijani high schools.  As we know from other Islamic countries like Iran, the Hijab signifies not just extreme religious affiliation but also a political statement about the nature of the society, state, and the role of women in society.  Azerbaijan’s government, with its traditional tolerance for a looser form of Muslim observance and Western tendencies, has opposed this kind of medievalism and sought to ban it from its schools.  Naturally, this ban aroused the ire of the religious Islamic community leading to demonstrations at the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011.  The leader of the outlawed and overtly pro-Iranian Islamic Party of Azerbaijan (AIP), Movsun Samadov, was then arrested on January 7 after he posted videos denouncing President Aliyev.  While this arrest may have violated his civil rights, as we understand them, Samadov was not just opposing the Hijab ban.  Instead his screed came right out of the Iranian and Islamic playbook.  He accused Aliyev of destroying mosques, trying to ban the Muslim call to prayer, harassing women who wish to wear the Hijab, and compared him to Yazid, a seventh century caliph vilified by Shi’a Muslims.  He urged a revolution to oust the despotic regime and its personality cult, quoted Mohammed for people to give up their lives for religion’s salvation, and asserted that Azerbaijan will face even bigger tragedies as long as the government is fully controlled by the Zionists.

The government rightly claimed that Samadov was not only inciting revolution and suicide attacks on the government, but also that they found weapons in his home as he and over 20 other believers were arrested.  The AIP naturally denied all these charges and from here, it is impossible to ascertain who is right.  But Samadov clearly was inciting revolution and violence, and his party rejected the authority of the official Muslim religious leader of Azerbaijan who is appointed by the government.  And since the controversy began, the Iranian media has weighed in by attacking the Azerbaijani government in unprecedented terms over the Hijab ban, suggesting again that it is led by or inspired by Israel to attack Islam.

IMPLICATIONS: Unlike states like Belarus, Azerbaijan clearly does face Iranian-backed threats of subversion from domestic Islamist elements. While this does not justify human rights violations, it provides a context for distinguishing between it and Belarusian President Lukashenka who faces merely the threat of losing power while Azerbaijan also confronts an assault upon the nature of the state. Yet at the same time, the authoritarian elements of Azerbaijan’s political system, along with massive corruption and inequality that has soared with the country’s oil wealth, contains dangers to the state, and is arguably a partial cause for the resurgence of Islam among the people – amid much evidence that banning the Hijab is deeply unpopular. 

Accordingly, there is good reason to argue that timely economic and political reforms might defuse the tensions lest they develop, over time, into a Tunisian or Egyptian scenario.  Nevertheless, the coincidence of an Iranian press campaign denouncing Azerbaijan’s anti-Shiite, pro-American, and pro-Israeli policies with this crisis suggests that Iran is, or would like to be, involved behind the scenes.  Moreover, the merit of the ban of the Hijab notwithstanding, Samadov’s advocacy of violent revolution and suicide attacks represents a clear and present danger.  In the Islamic world such threats are generally not idle ones.

CONCLUSIONS: While criticism of the Aliyev government’s human rights record is justified, it is important to remember that Azerbaijan’s constitution and government, like the U.S. Constitution, in Justice Robert Jackson’s memorable words, “is not a suicide pact”.  Insecure states (like the US in 1798, 1861-65, and 1917-1920) may easily interpret such attacks by revolutionaries as genuine incitements to violence and revolution.  Reform in Azerbaijan may well be desirable, as U.S. reports have noted an increase in the regime’s attacks upon Islamic parties and institutions.  But there is little doubt that many of these targets are affiliated with forces seeking to undermine the state, not just the regime.
In that context, the human rights violations in Azerbaijan do not compare with those of Belarus or with the kangaroo court and show trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Moscow. That does not mean that the Azerbaijani government’s argument that it is under threat from foreign human rights groups should be taken at face value.  Human rights advocacy, to be effective, must recognize these differences along with the similarities and proceed accordingly to effectuate real and lasting reforms in countries that are falling short of their treaty obligations. Governments, too, must discern real threats from imagined  ones. Where a genuine external threat exists, linked to an internal minority disposed towards violence and subversion, it will inevitably be difficult to convince governments that timely reforms are needed lest the government fall prey to Tunisian or Egyptian-like uprisings. 

Failing to grasp the real situation in which Azerbaijan finds itself will only lead Baku to disregard calls for reform from abroad.  Azerbaijan is not Belarus, and it is wrong to treat these two countries whose geopolitical situations are so different as identical twins merely because there are human rights violations in both countries.  Nonetheless, the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings confirm the wisdom of reforming government from above lest it start to reform itself from below.