Given the Caucasus' long record of ethnic and religious violence, alarm bells are ready to go off any time there is a quarrel over borders or churches in this neck of the woods. Both items made headlines this week in a dispute between Georgia and Azerbaijan, perhaps the friendliest countries in a region where it’s all but de rigueur not to be on speaking terms with at least one neighbor.
Muslim Azerbaijan and Christian Georgia somehow managed to stay friends during the late-Soviet and post-Soviet period, but now the feathers in Georgia are increasingly ruffled after Azerbaijani border guards stopped letting Georgian pilgrims and monks into a section of the 6th-century Davit Gareja monastery, a beautiful complex that straddles the two countries' as-yet-unofficial border.
Rich with ancient Georgian frescoes and writings, the monastery is a major cultural and spiritual hub for Georgians, but some Azerbaijani officials and historians claim that the monastery was created by ancient Albanians, reputed ancestors of the Azerbaijanis.
Georgian politicos, keen to seize a prime PR opportunity ahead of the October parliamentary elections, hurried to the site to deliver some fiery speeches, while disputes raged online and in the media.
The Georgian government has urged restraint, but it also admitted that the Soviet-era demarcation of the then Soviet republics' borders left some two percent of the complex on Azerbaijan’s territory -- a fact duly noted by some Azerbaijani news outlets.
TeliaSonera's is a familiar logo in Central Asia and the Caucasus
Traveling to the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku this month? You might think twice before picking up an Azercell SIM card for your mobile phone, even though the company is one of the event's main sponsors.
An investigation by the Swedish public broadcaster, Sveriges Television (SVT), last month alleges that TeliaSonera, the Swedish-Finnish telecommunications giant, is helping authoritarian regimes in the former Soviet Union spy on their own citizens, making the company complicit in human rights abuses.
TeliaSonera has given dictatorships like Azerbaijan, Belarus and Uzbekistan – which rank among the world's worst human rights abusers – access to its systems in exchange for lucrative contracts, says the hour-long report, which aired on April 17 and is available online with English-language subtitles.
A former executive from the company said on condition of anonymity that TeliaSonera – which is 37 percent owned by the Swedish government – has granted security services in these countries real-time access to all telephone calls, data and text messages, which has facilitated the arrest of opposition members in Belarus and a savage attack on an Azerbaijani journalist.
In Azerbaijan, the security agency even has an office of its own in the Azercell building, said the report. TeliaSonera operates Azercell in Azerbaijan, Geocell in Georgia, Kcell in Kazakhstan, Tcell in Tajikistan and Ucell in Uzbekistan, among others. It also holds a major stake in Turkey's Turkcell.
“If there was a glitch [with monitoring calls], the security agency called. They’d want us to shut down the network until the problem was solved,” the former TeliaSonera executive said of his experience dealing with the Belarusian KGB.
Iranian media have reported that Azerbaijani tanks (made in Israel, naturally) have massed on the border with Iran, which Azerbaijan has called a "provocation." This comes as tensions between the two neighbors are high due to Azerbaijan's close relationship with Israel, which seems to be contemplating an attack on Iran.
Iranian television apparently started reporting the buildup of about 30 tanks in the middle of April, and residents of Imishli, on the Azerbaijan side of the border, started contacting media in Baku to see if the reports were true. One told Vesti.az, "We hear this news every day. This information has been repeated so often that we necessarily have to believe in it."
Vesti.az contacted the Azerbaijan Ministry of Defense spokesman Eldar Sabiroglu, who said it was a baseless provocation, and naturally brought Armenia into it:
"This is nonsense and stupidity. Naturally, the Armenian media immediately picked up the 'information' and raised such a howl, as if, Azerbaijan was 'going to war' not with Iran, but Armenia. They should worry that this day is not too far."
Now, the commander of the Iranian Army's Ground Forces, Brig. Gen Ahmad Reza Purdastan, has said that if there are Azerbaijani tanks on the border, they pose no threat to Iran, reports Mehr News (via BBC Monitoring):
In an interview with the agency, Purdastan noted that "I have no information about this issue. However, even if so, it is the usual thing and we do not have problems with our neighbours".
"We do not think that this move of the Republic of Azerbaijan poses threat to us," he said, adding that the movement of tanks was probably part of military drills.
So, that's settled. But as long as Israel is threatening war with Iran, we can probably expect regular attempts to drag Azerbaijan into it.
Its films did not feature the graphic violence of Pazolini’s “Salo” or the merciless satire of Sasha Baron Cohen’s “Borat." The single criticism of Armenia's "Stop" film festival was that its films were made in the enemy state, Azerbaijan. And, now, faced with a campaign of threats and abuse, the organizers have called the festival off.
Political forces across party lines, several NGOs and media companies issued a letter that warned organizers that there would be consequences in Vanadzor, too, and that the festival organizers would bear the responsibility.
A previous attempt to screen Azerbaijani films in Armenia also fell through in 2010. The organizers said they will keep trying to promote free thinking and help audiences on both sides of the 24-year-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan see through the veil of propaganda.
Politicians, who, in both countries, would rather leave unchallenged the image of a national enemy, exploded in anger at the “treasonous” event (sponsored, in part, by the British and American embassies), and the organizers found themselves stranded in a Gyumri press club surrounded by raging demonstrators. Claims were made that the films were all about Azerbaijan-centric propaganda on the two countries' 24-year-long conflict over the breakaway territory of Nagorno Karabakh.
In reality, these were short, “human-interest” stories that had little to do with the war. Previous attempts at cinematic exchanges between Azerbaijan and Armenia were foiled amid similar, politically fed outpourings of public anger.
This time, the authorities in Gyumri tried to pull the plug quite literally on the festival (called, ironically, Stop) by shutting off electricity in the entire area. Saying that security could not be guaranteed, city government and police officials pressured the organizers to cancel the event. The festival’s director, peace activist Georgi Vanyan, who has been the previous target of death threats and a campaign of vilification, was beaten during altercations with anti-festival protesters.
Ministry of National Security spokesperson Arif Babayev told EurasiaNet.org over the phone that “the operation against terrorists in Ganja is not over yet.” Babayev did not provide more details, but said that the ministry will issue an official statement in the evening.
Turan news agency reported that an explosion this morning in the residential area of Mahrasa Bagi in Ganja had killed two people. Unnamed local sources in the city told the agency that a suicide bomber with a grenade or explosives-laden belt had committed the act.
The Ministry of National Security’s involvement in the events in Ganja underlines the claim of terrorism, rather than an otherwise-explicable event. If the suicide-bomber version is confirmed, the explosion would rank as the first case of an attack by a suicide-bomber in Azerbaijan.
Local news wires, quoting unnamed sources in law enforcement agencies, report that the MNS was taking action against religious extremists (termed “Wahhabis”), originally from Azerbaijan’s northern Qakh region, who had rented an apartment in Ganja.
During the detention operation, one of the targeted individuals allegedly blew himself up, killing MNS Lieutenant-Colonel Elshad Guliyev in the process. The five people wounded included law-enforcement officers. The victims’ bodies have been flown to Baku by helicopter, the MNS said.
Amid the negotiations between Russia and Azerbaijan over the Gabala radar station, Armenia has stepped in and said they would be willing to host a Russian radar if a deal over Gabala falls through.
The current lease for the radar station expires in December, and Azerbaijan has gradually been raising the price it says it wants to charge Russia under a new agreement. The latest reports had Azerbaijan's price rising from $7 million now to a whopping $300 million. Another set of talks on the issue between the foreign ministers of the two countries took place this week, with no apparent resolution. But Armenia's prime minister, Tigran Sargsyan, said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant that Armenia would be willing to host a replacement radar, and that it could even be a better site for it than Azerbaijan:
“There may even be advantages, because Armenia is a mountainous country. Coverage can be broader,” Sargsyan said.
Meanwhile, the Russian and Azerbaijani public bargaining continued. Ali Hasanov, a top adviser to Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev, tried to emphasize that the negotiations were taking place on Azerbaijan's terms:
"Gabala radar station is our property. We decide on to whom and on what terms to lease it, taking into account the interests of the state. We take into consideration its cost, policy and its impact on relations with neighboring countries" Hasanov said.
And he downplayed the threat of an Armenian counteroffer:
"We do not have anything against that. Of course, why the Armenian outpost cannot be a radar post as well? If Russia needs to build this post in Armenia, we will not have any objections" he said.
Azerbaijani minister of defense Safar Abiyev meets Iranian defense officials this month in Tehran.
Israel has gained access to airfields in Azerbaijan, possibly so that Israeli aircraft could land there after attacking Iran, a new report in Foreign Policy magazine says:
[F]our senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear. "The Israelis have bought an airfield," a senior administration official told me in early February, "and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."
Senior U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Israel's military expansion into Azerbaijan complicates U.S. efforts to dampen Israeli-Iranian tensions, according to the sources. Military planners, I was told, must now plan not only for a war scenario that includes the Persian Gulf -- but one that could include the Caucasus.
A few weeks ago, when Azerbaijan's $1.6 billion arms deal with Israel was announced, this blog discounted the idea that Azerbaijan would get involved in a potential Israeli attack on Iran, arguing that the risks for Azerbaijan are too high and the potential gains unclear. The exception would be if Azerbaijan's influence were so discreet as to allow Baku some plausible deniability; then Iran probably wouldn't stand to gain from attacking Azerbaijan. According to the FP report, the most likely use for the Azerbaijan airfields would be so that Israeli aircraft could land there after an attack, obviating the need for mid-air refueling en route to Iran, which Israel isn't particularly experienced with and which would reduce the amount of weapons the planes could take on each sortie:
A nodding donkey in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken Province, near Uzbekistan’s Sokh enclave.
Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, is negotiating with authorities in Kyrgyzstan to set up a refinery in the country. While the project may help the Kyrgyz economy, it remains unclear whether it will help wean Bishkek off Russian energy supplies or force Kyrgyzstan simply to swap its dependence on Russian refined fuel for a dependence on Russian crude oil.
A delegation from SOCAR visited Bishkek in early March. According to Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Energy, the group was in Kyrgyzstan to survey locations in Chui Province, and discuss investment, tax, and trade regulations. Negotiations also touched on the country’s shaky electricity supply and its modest oil and gas reserves. The visit follows a January meeting between Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev and SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev in Bishkek.
Under the proposed deal, SOCAR would complete construction by the end of 2013, at a cost of $100 million. The facility would have an annual output of 2 million tons of refined products. At least 40 percent of this would exceed Kyrgyzstan’s domestic demand and be designated for foreign markets. Tajikistan would be an obvious destination, as it, like Kyrgyzstan, is dependent on Russia for refined oil products, but the Azeri-Press Agency (APA) has said that China is also a likely market.
Fed up with all the media's alleged tension-mongering, Iranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mahammadbagir Bahrami instructed journalists the other day to report only the good news about Iranian-Azerbaijani ties, strained though they may be. “[C]over the news conducive to the improvement of bilateral relations only,” he said at a March 9 Azerbaijan-Iran-Turkey meeting.
Granted, the get-together in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, precariously wedged between the three neighbors and the Azerbaijani-Turkish bête noire, Armenia, indeed marked a change of tone between Baku and Tehran.
Repeating an earlier line, Azerbaijan said that its territory can never be used as a launch pad for a strike against Iran. “Our brothers live there,” explained senior Azerbaijani presidential administration official Ali Hasanov, referring to the millions of ethnic Azeris in Iran. Post-meeting, Baku also made clear that if someone needs to worry about Azerbaijan’s new Israeli guns – a purchase that enraged Tehran – that should be Armenia (more details at The Bug Pit).
