Azerbaijan: A Country Riddled With Issues

Azerbaijan is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and West Asia with a rich history and diverse culture. However, it has faced challenges in recent years, including poverty, corruption, and ethnic conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. While the country has made significant economic progress due to its oil and gas resources, these issues continue to plague its development. Additionally, there are concerns about the country's political system, with allegations of authoritarianism and human rights abuses under the ruling Aliyev family.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

The First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994)

In 1918, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh formed an unrecognised polity known as the Karabakh Council. However, due to Azerbaijani-British pressure, the council was forced to recognise the authority of Azerbaijan, pending the adjudication of international borders by the Paris Peace Conference. As the conference was inconclusive, the Azerbaijani governor-general issued an ultimatum to the Armenians of Karabakh in 1920, demanding their acceptance of permanent inclusion into Azerbaijan. This led to an unsuccessful rebellion, resulting in the massacre and displacement of the Armenian population of Shusha. In 1921, Soviet authorities took control of the region and formed the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within Soviet Azerbaijan.

Throughout the Soviet period, Armenians in the NKAO faced heavy discrimination. The Soviet Azerbaijani authorities suppressed Armenian culture and identity, pressured Armenians to leave, and encouraged Azerbaijanis to settle within the region. In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to dissolve, tensions escalated, and a 1988 referendum was held to transfer the region to Soviet Armenia, citing self-determination laws in the Soviet constitution. This act was met with a series of pogroms against Armenians across Azerbaijan, leading to the start of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

The war was fought between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, backed by Armenia, and Azerbaijan. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, entangled themselves in a protracted, undeclared war as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The war resulted in the deaths of thousands and the displacement of hundreds of thousands on both sides. By the end of the war in 1994, the Armenians were in full control of most of the enclave and also held approximately 9% of Azerbaijan's territory outside the enclave. A Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed in May 1994, leading to diplomatic mediation.

The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020)

Despite the ceasefire, tensions remained high, and border clashes continued to occur throughout the 2010s. In April 2016, heavy fighting along the Nagorno-Karabakh frontline left hundreds of casualties on both sides. The most serious clashes until the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War occurred in early 2016, resulting in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries.

In September 2020, large-scale fighting broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan, marking the beginning of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. The war was marked by the deployment of drones, sensors, long-range heavy artillery, missile strikes, state propaganda, and the use of social media in online information warfare. Numerous countries and the United Nations strongly condemned the fighting and called for a ceasefire. Three ceasefires brokered by Russia, France, and the United States failed to stop the conflict.

The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War resulted in thousands of casualties and a significant Azerbaijani victory. An armistice was established by a tripartite ceasefire agreement on November 10, 2020, resulting in Azerbaijan regaining control of all the occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as capturing one-third of Nagorno-Karabakh itself.

The 2023 Offensive and the Dissolution of Artsakh

Despite the 2020 ceasefire, border tensions continued to escalate, with Azerbaijan making numerous incursions into Armenian territory and violating the ceasefire agreement. In December 2022, under the guise of "environmental protests", Azerbaijan launched an illegal blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, severely impacting the region's economy and creating a humanitarian crisis.

On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in a ceasefire agreement the following day. The ethnic Armenian enclave of Artsakh was officially dissolved on January 1, 2024, and most of its population fled to Armenia. Azerbaijan now plans to "reintegrate" the region and its remaining population.

The Aliyev family rule

The Aliyev family has ruled Azerbaijan since Heydar Aliyev took control of the country in 1993, two years after it gained independence. Heydar Aliyev was an authoritarian leader, and under his watch, Azerbaijan became a corrupt petro-state. However, his regime is remembered as being different from that of his son, Ilham Aliyev, who became president in 2003. Ilham Aliyev's regime is considered more autocratic, with journalists, lawyers, and activists being jailed, fraudulent elections, and massive corruption.

The Aliyev family has enriched themselves through their ties to state-run businesses. They own significant parts of several major Azerbaijani banks, construction firms, and telecommunications firms, and partially own the country's oil and gas industries. Much of the wealth is hidden through an elaborate network of offshore companies.

Ilham Aliyev was first elected as deputy chair of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party in 1999 and became the party's first deputy chair in 2001. In 2005, he was elected as the party's chairman. In 2003, he became the prime minister of Azerbaijan and, shortly after, the country's president through an election defined by irregularities. Since then, he has been re-elected three more times, with the 2018 election being boycotted by the main opposition parties as fraudulent.

The Aliyev family's rule has been criticized for election fraud, high levels of economic inequality, and domestic corruption. They have also been accused of bribing foreign officials and journalists to promote their regime and legitimize their elections through a practice termed "caviar diplomacy."

In 2012, Ilham Aliyev was named Corruption's 'Person of the Year' by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. In 2017, he and his family were implicated in the Azerbaijani laundromat scandal, a complex money-laundering scheme to pay off prominent European politicians to promote a positive image of his regime.

Under Ilham Aliyev's presidency, Azerbaijan has hosted lavish international events, such as the 2015 European Games, the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games, the 42nd Chess Olympiad, and the 2016 European Grand Prix, using the country's oil wealth to make this possible.

Azerbaijan's human rights record

The country's human rights violations include:

• Arbitrary arrests, indefinite detentions, severe beatings, torture, and forced disappearances.
• Crackdowns on freedom of expression, with journalists, human rights defenders, and activists being arrested, harassed, and subjected to violence and arbitrary arrests.
• Severe restrictions on freedom of assembly, with peaceful protests violently broken up by the police.
• Discrimination against minorities, such as the Lezgin people, who feel forced to assimilate into Azeri identity, and the Talysh people, who have suffered cultural and educational rights deprivation and economic neglect.
• Curtailment of freedom of religion, with the secular and anti-religious government repressing all religions and forbidding clerics from running for political office.
• Lack of protection for LGBT individuals, who face ill-treatment, extortion, arbitrary detention, and discrimination.
• Failure to protect labour rights, with labour rights activists facing repression and restrictions on the right to strike.
• Child labour and human trafficking, with credible complaints of forced labour being dismissed and refused investigation by government officials.
• Corruption, with the ruling family suspected of using their wealth to bribe members and officials from international organisations.

Azerbaijan's relationship with Russia

Russia and Azerbaijan have a complex relationship that has evolved over time, with some periods of cooperation and others of tension. Here is an overview of their relationship:

Historically, relations between the two countries have been tense. In January 1990, during the dissolution of the USSR, the Soviet army violently cracked down on Azerbaijani nationalist forces in Baku, leaving a traumatic mark on the Azerbaijani nation. For many years, Azerbaijan also perceived Russia as a patron state of Armenia, its regional rival. Despite this, Azerbaijani elites maintained ties with Russia due to their educational backgrounds and connections with Russian elites.

In the post-Soviet era, Azerbaijan's foreign policy under Heydar Aliyev and the early years of Ilham Aliyev was marked by a "balanced politics" approach, where the country sought to maintain neutrality in the West-Russia clashes. However, relations between the two countries improved significantly after 1993 when Heydar Aliyev came to power and reestablished warmer relations with Russia. This was partly due to the shared KGB background of Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In recent years, Azerbaijan and Russia have developed closer ties, particularly in the military and energy sectors. Just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the two countries signed a wide-ranging political-military agreement, with Aliyev declaring that it brought their relations to the "level of an alliance". This was followed by an intelligence-sharing agreement a few months later. Russia is a major supplier of arms to Azerbaijan, and the two countries have also cooperated on the use of the Gabala Radar Station.

However, there have also been breakdowns in their relationship. In 2009, there were allegations that Russia made extensive weapons transfers to Armenia, which were unofficially admitted by the Russian defence minister. In the 2010s, there were several disputes, including the failed renewal of the lease of the Gabala Radar Station, the suspension of Azeri oil transit via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, and the holding of an Azerbaijani tanker in Dagestan.

During the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russia expressed reluctance to intervene on behalf of Armenia, despite their formal alliance. This was attributed to deteriorating Armenia-Russia relations and growing Russian ties with Azerbaijan. Russia facilitated peace talks, but its role in the region was diminished.

In summary, while Russia and Azerbaijan have a history of tense relations, they have also had periods of cooperation and alliance. Their relationship is complex and influenced by various factors, including energy exports, transport corridors, and regional rivalries.

Azerbaijan's relationship with Armenia

Azerbaijan and Armenia have had a tumultuous relationship, with five wars fought between the two countries in the last century. The two nations had formal governmental relations between 1918 and 1921, during their brief independence from the collapsed Russian Empire, as the First Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. However, due to territorial disputes, the Armenian–Azerbaijani War broke out between 1918 and 1920, and both countries were eventually annexed by the Soviet Union.

During the Soviet era, the relations between the Azerbaijani and Armenian authorities, including in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, were generally peaceful and friendly. In 1947, the communist leaders of both countries agreed to relocate 130,000 Azerbaijanis from Armenia to Azerbaijan, creating vacancies for Armenians coming from abroad. However, occasional confrontations did occur, and the Soviet Censuses of 1979 and 1989 showed a decline in the number of minorities living in each country.

The tensions escalated into a full-scale conflict with the outbreak of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1988, when the Armenians of Karabakh voted to secede and join Armenia. This triggered pogroms of Armenians in three cities of Azerbaijan: Sumgait, Baku, and Kirovabad. The war resulted in de facto Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding Azerbaijani territories, with a cease-fire in place since 1994.

The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War took place in 2020, with heavy fighting along the line of contact between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops. The conflict resulted in Azerbaijan reclaiming most of the territory it had lost, and a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia led to the dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh and the flight of almost all ethnic Armenians from the region.

Despite the long history of conflict, there have been recent efforts towards normalization and a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 2023, the two countries made a joint statement for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, agreeing to exchange prisoners. Additionally, Armenia supported Azerbaijan's bid to host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29), and Azerbaijan supported Armenia's inclusion in the COP's Eastern European States grouping.

In 2024, the de facto Armenia–Azerbaijan border was amended to give four villages in Armenia to Azerbaijan. The same year, the foreign ministers of both countries met in Almaty, Kazakhstan, for normalization talks. While challenges remain, these developments indicate a potential path towards improved relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

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