OCT. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan will increase spending on military kit again next year, media reported quoting the national budget. Since 2000, Azerbaijan, with its oil and gas fuelled economy, has increased spending on military equipment 10-fold.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Bank has approved a $53.25m loan to Azerbaijan’s agriculture sector, the head of its office in Baku Larisa Leshchenko told media. The loan will be used to improve agricultural businesses’ access to finance and to also modernise equipment. Azerbaijan has made boosting its agriculture sector a priority.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s envoy to the UN, Agshin Mehdiyev, accused Armenia of using refugees from Syria to bolster its hold on Nagorno-Karabakh, the sliver of land that the two countries dispute. Roughly 10,000 ethnic Armenians have fled a civil war in Syria. Reports have said that Armenia has resettled some of them in Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijanis will vote today in their sixth presidential election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
This election, like the last five, will deliver an Aliyev to the presidential palace. Supporters of Ilham Aliyev, 51, will celebrate his third victory but there is much work to do before they can congratulate themselves on building a genuine legacy to bequeath future generations.
Despite the massive resource-driven growth over the last decade, there are major problems. Some of these problems, especially the inequality gap and the human rights and media freedom environments, appear to be worsening.
As well as pushing through major new pipeline plans and continuing to pressure foreign investors, led by BP, to increase oil and gas production from the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan also has to confront major structural problems.
A lob-sided economy is skewed towards the energy sector, inflating Azerbaijan’s currency and making it harder for the non-energy sector to grow.
The World Bank’s Doing Business 2013 noted that excessive and turgid bureaucracy also held back Azerbaijan’s competitiveness position, a mid-ranking 67.
Another area it highlighted was weak infrastructure.
Azerbaijani society is also riven through with inequality and corruption. These two issues have generated frustration which has bubbled over. Earlier this year accusations of corruption against a regional official and his family triggered the worst violence in Azerbaijan for a decade.
Azerbaijan’s fledgling opposition and international pressure groups also accuse Mr Aliyev and his security forces of using repressive reactionary tactics against them, perhaps a reaction to the potential spread of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011.
People are getting richer in Azerbaijan but there are real problems that need to be mended in Mr Aliyev’s third term as president.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
SEPT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — An opinion poll commissioned by AzVision.az, a pro-government website, said 88% of people would vote for President Ilham Aliyev in Azerbaijan’s election. The poll is likely to be inflated but not substantially. Mr Aliyev is expected to win a third consecutive term in office at the Oct. 9 election.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Azerbaijan handed a five year prison sentence for possessing drugs, inciting hatred and treason to Hilal Mamedov, editor of the Talyshi Sado newspaper, a Talysh-language newspaper in the south of the country.
International human rights and media lobbyists said Azerbaijani authorities were using the courts to lock up the editors of newspaper that didn’t suit their agenda.
“I am saddened to see that the hostile environment for free media in Azerbaijan has not improved but is rather growing, as yet another journalist has received a lengthy prison sentence today,” said Dunja Mijatovic, the media representative for the OSCE, Europe’s governance lobby group.
The authorities have said that Hilal Mamedov was trying to destabilise the country. They have long been suspicious of the Talysh minority, a group of roughly 100,000 people who live along the border with Iran. The interior ministry has released a statement accusing Mamedov of undermining Azerbaijan’s security with inflammatory articles in the newspaper. It also accused him of spying for Iran.
Five years ago the then-editor of Talyshi Sado, Novruzali Mamedov (no relation to Hilal Mamedov) was also imprisoned on similar charges. He died in prison. Media groups said that he had been denied adequate medical treatment.
Azerbaijan has a poor media rights record and in her statement, the OSCE’s Ms Mijatovic said this was worsening in the run up to the Oct. 9 presidential election.
Ms Mijatovic may be right. Opposition journalists in Baku have been harassed and imprisoned while pro-government journalists have received new apartments.
Hilal Mamedov’s imprisonment is different, though, and it should be viewed as part of the dispute between the Talysh and the Azerbaijani state rather than through central politics.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
OCT. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — For the second time, Azerbaijan took over the presidency of the UN’s Security Council on Oct. 1.
Members of the UN Security Council, five permanent members and 10 non-permanent members, hold the presidency for one month at a time. It’s an organisational role but still a prestigious and important one.
Azerbaijan became the third former Soviet state, Russia is a permanent member and Ukraine has been a non-permanent member previously, to sit on the UN Security Council when it was elected as the East Europe region’s representative in 2011. Its term runs from Jan. 1 2012 until Dec. 31 2013.
It may be a rotating position but it is still much coveted. Kyrgyzstan unsuccessfully ran for a position in 2011 and Kazakhstan is openly campaigning for a place.
Azerbaijan held the presidency of the UN Security Council in May 2012. Syria and its chemical weapons will be top of the agenda this time round.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan plans to increase its gold reserves by a third next year, media reported quoting Shahmar Movsumov, executive director of SOFAZ, the state’s oil fund. Azerbaijan has been spending its oil wealth on gold, property, and foreign currencies.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
OCT. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A fresh unit of soldiers from Azerbaijan flew to Kabul for peacekeeping duties alongside a Turkish contingent. Media said there were 94 Azerbaijani soldiers in Afghanistan, part of the US-led coalition military fighting the Taliban. Their main roles are to guard the TV tower in Kabul and carrying out various patrols.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), half owned by the Azerbaijani government, released a new debit card with an in-built compass pointing to Mecca so that Muslims know which direction to pray. The new card may be a bit of a gimmick but Azerbaijan has been strengthening Islamic aspects of its banking system.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)