Yesterday, the Azerbaijani Americans for Democracy (AZAD) held a policy discussion forum titled “Azerbaijan’s Untapped Potential for the West: Engaging Azerbaijani Society as a US Ally.”
Elmar Chakhtakhtinski, chairman of AZAD, made an opening speech introducing the guest speakers of the event – Ambassador Richard Kauzlarich, the former US ambassador to Azerbaijan, deputy director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center of the George Mason University, and David Satter, Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute, Foreign Policy Fellow of SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. Elmar Chakhtakhtinski briefly outlined the topic of the event articulating the importance of developing the cooperation and ties between the Azerbaijani and American societies separately from the inter-governmental relations. Chakhtakhtinski noted that when the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s regime crumbled under the popular protests soon, as one American columnist put it, the US discovered that it never had an Egyptian policy, but instead it had a “Mubarak policy.” Relying on the good will and the endurance of a dictator is not the safest way of securing the stability of the relations between nations, noted Chakhtakhtinski.
Ambassador Richard Kauzlarich spoke about the importance of developing the ties between the Azerbaijani and American societies by founding those relations on common values and goals of the societies. Ambassador Kauzlarich also spoke about the impediments to the development of those relations naming the restrictive Amendment No. 907 to the Freedom Support Act as an impediment to such cooperation on the American part, while noting the pervasive corruption as a major impediment on Azerbaijan’s part.
Ambassador Kauzlarich noted that one problem for the United States was that “we got the human rights issues often tied up with security and energy issues. And it becomes very hard to sort through those on a government-to-government basis. I think, incorrectly, the US government believes that if there is a security relation, this increases the leverage on human rights and press freedom. I think, what it really means, in reality, is that when confronted with the priorities relating to security or energy, human rights, including free elections, tend to be downplayed.” Ambassador Kauzlarich said the time had come to look for new opportunities for the Azerbaijani and American societies to address these issues.
David Satter spoke about the influence of the communist legacy of the Soviet era on the behavior of the new governments in post-Soviet countries. He described how the criminal syndicates in the former Soviet Union essentially became intertwined with the state bureaucracy. In case of Azerbaijan it ended with one-man rule by the former KGB general and communist leader, whose family has been ruling the country with a brief interruption for several decades.
He noted that in a long term the US interests could not be identified with the ideas of supporting unstable dictatorships in the region, “who are destined to be overthrown by their own people”. As a vivid example, he pointed to the former US foreign policy priority in Kyrgyzstan, where the US government leaned too much towards its relations with the corrupt son of the Kyrgyz leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Mr. Satter noted that when the angry Kyrgyz people revolted and burned Bakiyev’s houses, the US foreign policy in Kyrgyzstan was exposed as a complete failure.
He also compared Azerbaijan and Belarus and the different approaches to essentially very similar post-Soviet dictatorships. Mr. Satter pointed out that US pre-occupation with Iran problem and Azerbaijan’s importance in that issue might explain the difference. It is hard to ignore how “the strategic roles of Azerbaijan and other post-Soviet countries are being used by their dictators and their families to justify their misrule and the pillaging of their oil rich country”, said David Satter.
He said that relying on brutal corrupt local leaders did not work in Russia’s North Caucuses regions, where Islamic radicalism actually spread. And there is a danger to the US interests in relying on a similar regime in Azerbaijan in the standoff against Iran. Mr. Satter pointed out that it is time to work more on relations with civil societies not just the regimes, “because the regimes change, but nations remain”.
David Satter briefly touched on the recently passed Magnitsky laws which imposed visa restrictions and financial sanctions on the Russian officials who were suspected of being involved in notorious human rights violations in Russia. He said Magnitsky Act was an example of the power of the American civil society and American moral conscience. He said this was an act without calculations and was made on moral grounds “against the regime which offended the sense of decency of the American people.” Later, during the discussions, when asked a question whether a legislation similar to the Magnitsky law could be adopted to spotlight the Azerbaijani government officials involved in human rights violations, Satter responded by saying that it is an applicable approach and enough lobbying with the US Congress could produce a similar legislation spotlighting the Azeri human rights violators.
Gorkhmaz Asgarov, vice chairman of AZAD, kick-started the discussion part of the event. Asgarov noted that Azerbaijan was an authoritarian country with an abusive regime and the abused people. “The case of Azerbaijan is the case of abused people. And there is a significant degree of bitterness entrenched in the minds of many Azeris. The narrative, from the standpoint of an average Azerbaijani citizen, is that the abuser – the Aliyev government – gets away with what it is doing because of oil. That the West will continue supporting the Aliyev regime until Azerbaijan runs out of oil.”
Asgarov noted that in order to support that narrative Aliyevs spent millions of dollars to have the acclaimed Western media publish articles favorable to the Aliyev regime, organize events where “high level officials of the US government or European countries rub shoulders with the so-called Azeri Diaspora organizations with clear ties to the Azerbaijani government,” cultivate ties with scores of foreign policy experts in DC who spoke a lot on geopolitics and consciously ignored the human rights issues.
Asgarov questioned whether the Western democracies could reach out to the people of Azerbaijan and do it in a way which looked genuine enough not to discount such efforts as a mere lip service to the ideals of democracy.
During the discussion part, the participants of the activity discussed a number of issues influencing the Azerbaijani-American relations and the impediments to the development of democracy in Azerbaijan. Section 907 to the Freedom Support Act, applicability of the Magnitsky law’s approach to taming the human rights violators in Azerbaijan were among the hot issues debated during the discussions.
Garabagh war was discussed in the light of the fact that the Azerbaijani government used the state of war with Armenia as an excuse to stall the democratic development of the country. “20 years after the ceasefire, the ‘war argument’ is simply an excuse,” was Ambassador Kauzlarich’s reaction to the idea of delaying the democratic developments due to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.