Azerbaijan's President will visit the White House when he is in DC for a conference titled "U.S. - Azerbaijan Strategic Relations: Political and Commercial Priorities." This ought to be a good opportunity for President Bush and other officials to pressure Aliev on his supression of democracy and dissent. Instead, I imagine it'll be a chummy gathering of business associates. Why do I suspect that? Keep reading.
President Ilham Aliyev will get a chance to catch up with old friends when he speaks at an event organized by the US-Azeri Chamber of Commerce later this month.
Senior government officials and businessmen of the two countries will also attend the conference. James A. Baker, USACC Co-Chairman said that the conference will provide a chance for the U.S. business community to acquire and develop the most current information about business and investment opportunities in Azerbaijan: "Perhaps more importantly, President Aliyev's address will offer an important perspective on the state of the U.S.-Azerbaijan bilateral relationship. Any U.S. company interested in business opportunities in Azerbaijan ought to attend this important event". The conference falls on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the USACC. The speakers to deliver addresses at the conference include Senator Sam Brownback, Heydar Babayev, Minister of Economic Development, Matthew Bryza, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and other officials.
--Azerbaijani press release, "US-Azerbaijan business-forum to be held in Washington on April 27"
An Eyebrow Raising Invitation
Aliyev's political opponents in Azeri jail cells are probably thinking more about political freedom than business opportunities. New York Time's reporter CJ Chivers:
Opposition leaders have long said the United States' desire to diversify Western energy sources and to encourage democratic growth have collided in Azerbaijan. With Aliyev's invitation to the White House, made last week, they now say Bush has made a choice: Oil and location trump other concerns.
Ali Kerimli, leader of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, noted that when Aliyev was elected in 2003 in a vote deemed neither free nor fair, the White House withheld an invitation, waiting for improvement in Azerbaijan's record of promoting civil society and recognizing human rights.
"It is difficult for Azerbaijan's democratic forces to understand what changed," said Kerimli, who was beaten by police officers in front of this correspondent with several thousand demonstrators during a crackdown on a protest against fraudulent parliamentary elections last fall. The demonstration had been peaceful until police rushed in with clubs.
"I think the White House must explain what has happened when three years ago Aliyev was not wanted for a reception in the White House, and now he falsifies another election and is received," he said.
--CJ Chivers, "Azerbaijan leader's U.S. visit raises eyebrows"
In his article Chivers goes on to describe America's conflicting interests in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is rich with Caspian oil that has mostly headed West rather than East, is led by a secular Muslim, allows the US to use its airspace, and is hence a key regional ally that neighbors both Russia and Iran. Yet, Ilham Aliyev has arrested opposition pliticians, violently supressed protests, loaded elections commissions and rigged election results accoring to Human Rights Watch.
Is America this desperate for allies? For oil and natural gas?
Contract of the Century
In the spring of 1994 Azerbaijan's President Heydar Aliyev signed the "Contract of the Century" with a consortium of Western oil companies. Heydar, an ex-KGB agent who was installed in 1993 after a military coup overthrew the newly independent Azerbaijan's first President, is deceased and was succeeded in the Presidency by his son Ilham. Interestingly, barely more than a year after being installed by a military coup, Aliev the elder signed the deal negotiated by the law firm Baker-Botts, which was and is run by Bush the elder's former Secretary of State James Baker III:
Once ratified and implemented, the agreement is certain to transform the economy, political standing, and standard of living in Azerbaijan for decades to come. Speaking at the signing ceremony, British Petroleum Exploration's Managing Director John Brown said, "The investments will open new possibilities for Azerbaijan and will ensure thousands of occupations for all people. It will be one of the greatest projects in the history of Azerbaijan."
The agreement brings full circle the recognition of Azerbaijan as the birthplace of the international oil industry, the subsequent demise of the oil industry due to Soviet mismanagement, the premature conclusion on the part of the Western companies that Azerbaijan's oil had been depleted, and the ultimate comeback of Azerbaijan as a leading world supplier of light sweet crude petroleum.
President Heydar Aliyev, at the signing ceremony, recounted the long and significant history of Azerbaijan as an international oil supplier and referred to oil as "the main and richest national wealth of the Azerbaijan Republic and Azerbaijani people."
--Nasser Sagheb and Masoud Javadi, "Azerbaijan's "Contract of the Century" Finally Signed with Western Oil Consortium"
More than ten years later construction has begun on a pipeline to take Caspian oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to a Turkish port on the Meditteranean. Neither the deal nor the pipeline would have been possible without the influence of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, which (check the link) is loaded with neoconservatives, and in particular former members Dick Cheney and recently retired Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (keep him in mind). The work of Baker-Botts has also been integral.
Contrasting Revolutions
In 2003 and 2004 the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine were met with cheers in the West. In both countries, Western governments and NGOs had helped to train and fund opposition activists, who are portrayed as resisting the external influence of Russia in their politics. Neocons hailed the peaceful revolutions as first dominoes in their theory of global democracy spurred by America's benevolent hegemony. William Kristol connected Iraq and the Ukraine in an article for the Weekly Standard:
Then, in December, came the crisis and democratic triumph in Ukraine. Elections stolen by a corrupt Ukrainian government with the connivance of Russia's ruler, Vladimir Putin, were reversed by a massive display of "people power" in the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. A new round of elections brought some 27 million Ukrainians out to vote--roughly three-quarters of those registered--in what will go down in history as the "Orange Revolution." "This is the people's victory," one man told a Washington Post reporter. "Ukraine will finally achieve what it wanted when it got its independence from the Soviet Union. Democracy will finally reign in this country. It won't happen overnight, but it's begun."
--William Kristol, "A Realligning Election"
The crowds of student protesters in Georgia and the Ukraine were truly inspiring, but student protesters in Azerbaijan during the autumn of 2003 met a very different fate. After an election labelled stolen by Human Rights Watch they received little support from the West and no attention from the Western media as their protests were repressed. David Case, reporting in the July/August 2004 Mother Jones:
Robbed of the opportunity to have their voices heard via the ballot box, Azerbaijan's democracy advocates pinned their hopes on pressure from the international community. From several quarters, it came. One group of 188 observers, fielded by the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, expressed "outrage at the election fraud, intimidation, and political repression," adding that "if the word 'elections' is to retain its meaning, the events of October 15 in Azerbaijan must be described by a different term."
The United States had spent more than $2 million to support fair elections in Azerbaijan. It hung posters throughout the country, bearing the U.S. Embassy seal and depicting ballot cheaters behind prison bars. But the American response to the violence was muted at best. The day after the protest, in a phone call to Ilham Aliyev, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage noted Ilham's "strong performance at the polls and reiterated [America's] desire to work closely with him and with Azerbaijan in the future," according to a statement. The call was widely reported by Azerbaijan's government-dominated media as a congratulatory handshake from the regime's patrons in Washington.
--David Case, "Crude Doctrine"
The State Department later claimed that "the bulk of the conversation consisted of Mr. Armitage reminding Mr. Aliyev of the importance of government restraint." However, despite their protestations that they had been pressuring the Azeri government for democratic reform, the aid given to Azerbaijan's government dwarfs the paltry $2mil in funds for the elections. Richard Armitage, in a 2002 speech before the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce which he began by saying that he was "delighted to be back with the Chamber" that was his "old home," never once mentioned democracy. Rather than building support for democratic movements in Azerbaijan, US officials have appeared to be most concerned with strengthening their business ties.
The contrast between the West's response to the revolutions in Georgia and the Ukraine and the lack of responsiveness to human rights and political repression in Azerbaijan starkly illustrates the oil curse. Georgia and the Ukraine do not have oil, while Azerbaijan does.
Lessons Not Learned
Reading about our foreign policy toward Azerbaijan remind me of what I've read about that handshake between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. George Washington University's National Security Archive, an institution that is indispensible to American democracy (such as it is), summarizes their findings from Reagan/Bush 1 era documents obtained under FOIA relating to Iraqi foreign policy:
The current Bush administration discusses Iraq in starkly moralistic terms to further its goal of persuading a skeptical world that a preemptive and premeditated attack on Iraq could and should be supported as a "just war." The documents included in this briefing book reflect the realpolitik that determined this country's policies during the years when Iraq was actually employing chemical weapons. Actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently not perceived to serve U.S. interests; instead, the Reagan administration did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.
Most of the information in this briefing book, in its broad outlines, has been available for years. Some of it was recorded in contemporaneous news reports; a few investigative reporters uncovered much more - especially after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. A particular debt is owed to the late representative Henry Gonzales (1916-2000), Democrat of Texas, whose staff extensively investigated U.S. policy toward Iraq during the 1980s and who would not be deterred from making information available to the public. Almost all of the primary documents included in this briefing book were obtained by the National Security Archive through the Freedom of Information Act and were published in 1995.
--GWU National Security Archive, "Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein"
When Azerbaijan's fortunate son and President shakes the hand of America's fortunate son and President later this month, I wonder if these thoughts will be on anyone's mind:
Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo.
Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.
--George W Bush, November 2003
The Azeri men and women who took to the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan just a month before that quote was uttered certainly won't be thinking about business opportunities.
Crossposted at ifthenkknots
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