We think of the proximity of this cold grey street to the Villa Petrolea, with its lobby, offices and canteen – a world away and yet intimately connected. We think of the lines in Horizon magazine: The intent of the ‘contract of the century’ was to develop the country as well as the oil.12
AZADLIQ MEYDANI, BAKU, AZERBAIJAN
Back in town, we step off our bus into the vast space of Azadliq Meydani, or Freedom Square. Looming over this expanse of open ground is the massive bulk of the Dom Soviet, the 1950s government building of Soviet Azerbaijan. With its ten storeys, arches, pillars, and crown of finials, it is an iconic piece of Stalinist architecture, reminiscent of buildings in Moscow and Warsaw. We wander in its shadow, following the path of a military parade that took place in June 2008 to mark the ninetieth anniversary of a 1918 display by the troops of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic.
High on a podium stood all the senior military figures of today’s Azerbaijan: the defence and national security ministers, commander of the interior troops and a line of generals. They took the salute before an array of hardware: tanks and howitzers, armoured jeeps and air-defence missile systems, as fighter jets and helicopters conducted a fly-past over the square. Cadets from the Heydar Aliyev Azerbaijan Military High School marched before the podium, singing the national anthem adopted by the new Azeri state in the midst of the Nagorno-Karabakh war:
Azerbaijan! Azerbaijan!
You are a country of heroes!
We will die that you might live!
We will shed our blood to defend you!
Long live your tricolour banner!
Thousands of people have sacrificed their lives
You have become a battlefield
Every soldier fighting for you
Has become a hero.13
The state news agency enthused in advance of the parade about ‘the Smerch missile reactive volley systems – only Azerbaijan owns these systems among the South Caucasian countries. And for the first time in Azerbaijan’s history, unmanned spy jets will be demonstrated . . . Also armed soldiers in the Mercedes UNIMOG and Land Rover military vehicles.’ Intriguingly, they also noted that ‘The most interesting part of the training-parade was a march of the three special units of the Ministry of Defense equipped with the NATO modern small arms, uniforms and masks.’14
This display of prowess is a direct outcome of the conflict with Armenia and of the oil revenues passing through SOFAZ into the government’s budget. Military spending increased by 51 per cent in 2005, and then by another 82 per cent in 2006.15 By October 2010, Ilham was celebrating the special place of the military in the state expenditure: ‘Next year, our total military spending will be more than $3 billion. If we consider that the entire state budget of Armenia, which continues to keep our lands under occupation, is slightly above $2 billion, we can see that the task we have set earlier that Azerbaijan’s military expenses should exceed Armenia’s total budget has already been fulfilled. It is a reality today. Over time, we, of course, will further increase our costs.’16
Among those on the podium was General Vagif Akhundov, head of the Special State Protection Service of Azerbaijan, an elite unit responsible for guarding the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline and the South Caucasus gas pipeline. NATO had provided the service with several helicopters and vehicles in order to carry out this duty.17 Despite sanctions, the US also played a key role in strengthening Aliyev’s military. Secretary of State Colin Powell justified this as follows: ‘The Administration believes that building up the capacity of Azerbaijan is important in order to . . . secure the oil flow that is critical to US national security interests.’ To sidestep regulations prohibiting foreign troops in Azerbaijan, the US military hired Blackwater in 2004 to create a SEAL team to respond to crises ‘during the wee hours of the night’. Mike Anderson, chief of Europe Plans and Policies division at EUCOM, explained in more detail: ‘We’ve been equipping and training Azeri special forces with the ability to go out and take down one of their own gas and oil platforms if it was seized by terrorists . . . It’s good old US interests, it’s rather selfish. Certainly we’ve chosen to help two littoral states, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, but always underlying that is our own self-interest.’18 This is another element of the Carbon Web of BP’s operations in Azerbaijan – the role of the military. These training programmes and military arrangements would have been coordinated or discussed with BP, most likely with the company’s head of security on the project, former SAS commander Tony Ling.
We talk through the background of the Ninetieth Anniversary Parade. Such events are actively used by the Azeri state to build pride in its newfound military power and develop a distinct martial identity for the nation. The Aliyev regime proclaims a narrative of 2,500 years of war, invasion and expansion to bolster its legitimacy today. According to the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, established by the first lady, Mehriban, ‘The people of Azerbaijan have the most ancient traditions of state system establishment.’19
After defeating the Persian emperor, Alexander the Great appointed his commander Atropat to be king of Medea Minor, a region that covered territory including today’s Azerbaijan. Atropatena, as it became known, was described two centuries later by the Greek historian Strabo as ‘a great country as regards to its military power, because it can be represented by 10,000 horsemen and 40,000 infantrymen’.20 According to the Azeri embassy in London, ‘it is in Atropatena that the Azerbaijani identity began to be shaped.’21
The story continues that Turkic peoples who settled here became ‘the strongest leading military and political power and the main carriers of traditions of state organization of Azerbaijan,’ through the Seljuk, Sirvanshah and Safavid periods. It is this martial narrative that enables the likes of Azeri member of parliament Malahat Ibrahimgizi to declare proudly on National Salvation Day that ‘Azerbaijan has always defended its independence throughout history and regained independence in the early 1990s.’22
Those who tell this story of Azerbaijan generally perceive Azeri nationalism, and that of Armenia, as the eruption of a long-repressed primordial consciousness. Slumbering for seventy years, Azeri nationality just needed the right opportunity – Gorbachev’s reforms – to be fully released. When you juxtapose Azeris and Armenians, it seems only natural that the ‘old enmity’ between the two peoples will flare up again.
But this telling of the Azeri story is itself a dangerous political act. Nations – whether Germany or Croatia, Turkey or Azerbaijan – are actively constructed by individuals and parties, using historical narrative, language, rituals and territory. When the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declared independence in May 1918, national identity was largely absent among the wider public. The ADR leadership and associated intellectuals had come to identify as Azerbaijanis, after previously subscribing to pan-Islamism and Turkism. People generally saw themselves as Muslim or Tartar subjects of the Russian Tsar.23 Historians have argued that the majority identified primarily with ‘umma consciousness’,24 and the idea of an Azerbaijani nation-state did not take root among the masses – possibly explaining the surprising ease with which the republic was overthrown by the Red Army.25
Mainstream Azeri history describes Soviet power as an enemy of national identity, although ironically this period was in fact key to the formation of Azerbaijan as a nation. Across the USSR, the policy of korenizatsiia – ‘nativisation’ – used affirmative action to create national intelligentsias. Soviet ideology promoted ‘national self-determination’, although it opposed nationalism in politics. Being an ‘Azerbaijani’ within the territory of ‘Azerbaijan’ became an important fact of life, as the bureaucracy tried to achieve stability and to integrate this crucial oil province into the Soviet state. Cultural infrastructure like the Azeri national opera, academies of science and film studios were introduced, in parallel with the construction of new industrial cities like Sumqayit. The Oil Academy in Baku was renamed the Azerbaijani Industrial Institute in the 1930s, shortly before young Heydar Aliyev enroll
ed.
Although the pressure to Russify was real and the Russian language was associated with modernity, migration continued to make the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan ever more homogeneous in character, consolidating the alignment of ethnicity with territory. Having been a multicultural city during the early years of the Oil Road, Baku was transformed by seventy years of Soviet rule into a predominantly Azerbaijani city. In parallel, because in the Soviet Union the state constantly talked about matters in terms of class, this meant that class ceased to be an issue around which dissent could be organised. Instead, ethnicity became the most effective tool for mobilising opposition – with tragic consequences for Azeris and Armenians alike.
Eighteen years before the military parade, the square we are standing in was packed day after day with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. Still called Lenin Square, in January 1990 it was the focal point for mass rallies. The Dom Soviet building that loomed over the crowd no longer deterred anybody. These were heady days in the Soviet Union, soon after Ceauşescu was chased from power in Romania. The week before, Popular Front organisers had led crowds in dismantling frontier fences with Iran and burning border watchtowers, ‘reuniting’ northern and southern Azerbaijan: ‘Thousands raced across the border, and there were ecstatic scenes as Azerbaijanis met their ethnic cousins from Iran for the first time in years.’26
As the citizens in Baku protested, the Popular Front had already split apart. Social Democrats, including Zardusht Alizade, left in protest at the nationalist direction of the dominant faction. Before another vast crowd on 13 January, Popular Front leaders directed their anger towards Armenian residents. Zardusht remembered that at the rally ‘there were constant anti-Armenian calls and the last call was “Long live Baku without Armenians!”’ After dark, lists of addresses were distributed. Groups including refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh broke off to attack Armenians. Arzu Abdullayeva is quoted as pleading with a policeman to go to the aid of an Armenian being attacked, and being told, ‘We have orders not to intervene.’27
Assaults continued in the following days, as did a blockade of Soviet barracks. One week on from the pogrom, Gorbachev sent in the army. A state of emergency was declared and military armour rolled out of barracks into the heart of the city. Soldiers fired on fleeing civilians; tanks crushed cars, and even ambulances; 135 citizens were killed and hundreds injured during ‘Black January’. It was one of the worst scenes of repressive violence in the USSR, and effectively ended Moscow’s hold over Azerbaijan. The following day almost the whole population of Baku turned out for the funerals of the victims, while thousands burned their Communist Party membership cards. In Moscow, Heydar Aliyev made his famous pronouncement to the press: ‘The absolute majority of the population is behind the Popular Front.’ However, as Zardusht asserted in his BBC interview in 2009, Aliyev’s role in ‘Black January’ is still highly contentious.
By the 1990s, Azeri nationalism was able to mobilise hundreds of thousands. Yet with a limited history of true self-rule, maintaining allegiance to the new body politic required a constant remaking of identity. This endeavour intensified with Heydar Aliyev’s return to power, as he began building an Azeri state in his image. Today, his portrait stares out from billboards across the country, alongside quotes promising security, freedom and wealth. Government websites show the ‘Father of the Nation’ looking upwards, to the future, while streets, museums and factories have all been named after him. His personality cult emphasises past support for Azeri poets, musicians and writers, while his KGB role in repressing dissident artists is conveniently forgotten.
The social vision Aliyev promoted presented him as the saviour of independence, who resurrected Azeri culture and used the oil weapon to stand up to Armenia. Like any powerful national mythology, it weaves together contested realities into simple symbols that resonate with past experience. The shared trauma of losing the cultural heartland of Nagorno-Karabakh is emphasised, basing national identity on ‘misery, sorrow and perceived persecution’.28 Meanwhile the vision offers a grand future to make up for this suffering: oil revenues will transform Baku into Dubai.
Since soon after its arrival in Baku, BP has reinforced the role of both the Aliyevs and oil at the centre of this national story. Through its publications and statements, its telling of the past and promises for the future, this British company has played a significant role in shaping contemporary Azeri nationalism. The terminals that mark the beginning and end of the BTC pipeline in Azerbaijan and Turkey are both named after the elder Aliyev. European Union officials have also contributed to this narrative: even as dictatorships were being toppled across North Africa in early 2011 and calls emerged for an ‘Azeri Spring’, the EU Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, paid tribute to ‘Father of the Nation, Heydar Aliyev’.29
And this support has its rewards. BP’s oil operations – the offshore rigs, and especially the BTC pipeline – have been publicly identified by the Aliyevs as ‘national projects’. Those who raise concerns have been attacked as enemies of the nation, and associated with ‘foreign enemies of Azerbaijan’, particularly Armenia. At Baku conferences in 2002 and 2003, groups from a pro-BTC coalition claimed that ‘those who are against BTC are spies of Armenia’ – Armenians having acquired a noxious stereotype as manipulative and scheming. Echoing the use of anti-Jewish prejudices to undermine progressive causes elsewhere, the pro-BTC activists made allusions to Armenians to spread conspiracy theories that silenced dissent.
These virulent attacks, combined with media censorship, serve to undermine the possibility for any real debate over BP’s projects. While purporting to support free discussion and public engagement, the company sat back and allowed critics to be silenced. With BP’s social licence to operate in Azerbaijan intertwined with Aliyev’s nationalist social vision, press officers such as Tamam Bayatly have not publicly distanced the company from the anti-Armenian conspiracy theories.
CASPIAN PLAZA, CәFәR CABBARLI KUÇ, BAKU, AZERBAIJAN
These days, Baku is full of GoNGOs, CoNGOs and MaNGOs – local terms for the strange progeny of the growing Azeri civil society. A GoNGO is a government-supporting NGO, while a CoNGO is a computer with one person sitting behind it promoting their name but doing little else. A MaNGO, meanwhile, is a mafia NGO, often established by relatives of those in authority, which is used primarily to launder cash.
When Heydar Aliyev returned to power in the early 1990s, he was highly suspicious of NGOs. They had not existed in Soviet Azerbaijan, and seemed to be opposed to his rule. In due course, though, he came to understand that NGOs carried recognition in the West, and that they could help his international reputation. In subsequent years the Aliyev government created hundreds of imitation organisations that did little except support the internal and international standing of Heydar and Ilham Aliyev. When, in 2009, the government opposed Turkey’s rapprochement with Armenia, Azeri youth charities fired off supportive letters in all directions. Previously, when the regime needed to show the international finance institutions that there was public support in Azerbaijan for the BTC pipeline, an ‘Azerbaijan NGO Coalition for Supporting BTC’ was created. Sabit Bagirov, who as head of SOCAR had signed an agreement with BP in front of Margaret Thatcher, was appointed to lead it.
Arzu Abdullayeva had explained to us that the government had created a ‘public council to fund civil society’. She saw organisations that took this money as allied to the powerful. ‘Real NGOs never take these bribes, but GoNGOs do so with great pleasure. It means that real civil society is weak, weak, weak.’
We return to the Caspian Plaza tower, where we had previously visited Emil Omarov at the National Budget Group. Taking the elevator up to the ninth floor, we find a cluster of NGOs sharing airy and intersecting rooms. The offices of each organisation are light, with pale pine furniture, white walls and numerous computer terminals. Most people here speak fluent English, and many have a Masters degree from Stanford or Harvard Business School. The unifying factor between t
hese groups is that all are funded by the Open Society Institute – the OSI, a division of George Soros’s Soros Foundation. A friendly young receptionist introduces us to staff from the Public Association for Assistance to Free Economy and Caspian Revenue Watch. The latter group is the regional coordinator for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – EITI.
The EITI was launched by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2002. The initiative promotes disclosure of payments by multinational corporations to developing countries with natural resources, the rationale being that civil society will then be able to see how much money their governments are taking in. Driven by the UK’s Department for International Development and Norway’s equivalent, Norad, with backing from major oil companies, the initiative was supported by international NGOs.
Galib Efendiev, the director of Caspian Revenue Watch, tells us that ‘the local EITI NGO coalition has been in our trusted hands since 2006. EITI has been a very sexy topic for at least four years. And two months ago, at the world forum in Doha, Azerbaijan was announced as the first country to fully implement the initiative.’
When we ask whether EITI has made much difference in Azerbaijan, Galib twiddles his pen and assures us of its importance. ‘Sure, some people call EITI a toothless initiative, that we only get figures for income from extractives. But the issue of spending that income is outside the scope of EITI. It’s intended to be kept simple, to be a universal tool that can be employed in any country regardless of the local style of government.’
‘After three years of this process, we now have regular reports on payments. That’s why Azerbaijan was announced as a champion of EITI.’ Galib’s enthusiasm is echoed by other NGOs. ‘Since implementing EITI in 2003’, says a Global Witness report, ‘Azerbaijan has also experienced good progress in both development and poverty reduction.’ The report continues by quoting Ilham Aliyev: ‘We are very determined to use oil wealth to develop a strong economy, and not to depend on oil and oil prices in the future. To achieve that, we need to have a high degree of transparency in accumulating and spending oil wealth.’30
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