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As Azerbaijan democracy struggles, Iran makes its weight felt

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  • As Azerbaijan democracy struggles, Iran makes its weight felt

    As Azerbaijan democracy struggles, Iran makes its weight felt

    AP Worldstream; Apr 30, 2006

    EDITOR'S NOTE _ Associated Press Correspondent Kathy Gannon is
    exploring Iran's relationships with its neighbors in an uneasy and
    often volatile region. This report examines the view from oil-rich
    Azerbaijan, where political Islam is challenging secular democracy.

    ASTARA, Azerbaijan (AP) _ After the Soviet Union collapsed and
    Azerbaijan went free, the oil-rich country was caught in a tug-of-war
    for influence between the secular, democratic West and Islamic Iran.
    Iran sent in preachers, built mosques and gave scholarships to the
    poor. But Azerbaijan turned West.

    Nowadays, however, the early rumblings of political Islam are being
    heard in the world's biggest Shiite Muslim republic outside Iran,
    aroused by frustration with rampant corruption, intractable poverty,
    and a sense that for the sake of oil, the Western democracies have
    chosen to ignore the taint of corruption in its elections.

    There are many signs that neighboring Iran is capitalizing on the
    discontent with a "we-told-you-so" message and winning some support
    in its confrontation with the West over its nuclear program.

    Ilham Aliyev, who took over as president from his dying father
    in 2003 in an election challenged by claims of widespread fraud,
    visited the White House last week, underscoring his friendship with
    the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. But many in
    Azerbaijan are wondering how long his overwhelmingly Muslim nation
    of 9 million people will stay in the U.S. orbit.

    "Azerbaijan will not become an Islamic country overnight, but
    the beginnings are here," said Arif Yunusov, author of "Islam in
    Azerbaijan" and chairman of the Institute of Peace and Democracy,
    an independent think tank in the capital, Baku.

    "People today in Azerbaijan don't believe America. People believe
    that the West does not want democracy in our country, it just wants
    our oil."

    Whether an Islamic surge is coming is open to question. Azerbaijan
    also has a strong Western-oriented camp, yearning for Europe's model
    of good governance and civil rights.

    In the cosmopolitan capital, the overwhelming affinity is with Europe,
    though attendance at mosque prayers is growing steadily, and human
    rights workers say they were surprised at how many young Azeris joined
    the demonstrations that swept the Muslim world over the publication
    of Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad.

    In the more conservative southern regions that border Iran, the return
    to Islamic roots is more noticeable.

    Azerbaijan is a "very complex country," says Fariz Ismailzade,
    a political science professor in Baku. "We have modern girls, but
    still there is a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. It is slow but it
    is happening."

    Secular opposition politician Eldar Namazov, says Azerbaijans are
    "the most European of people in the Islamic world, even more than
    Turkey. Yet I think you can say today that we see some Islamic
    renaissance and the ground is ready for an Islamic revival here in
    Azerbaijan....

    "Our society wants political change, but year after year people are
    disappointed with democracy."

    More than a decade after signing a multibillion dollar oil deal with
    a U.S.- and British-dominated consortium, most of the country remains
    miserably underdeveloped. Nearly half of the population earns less
    than US$1,000 (A800) a year. Unemployment hovers around 20 percent.

    Azerbaijan anticipates oil revenues of US$160 billion (A129 billion) by
    2025, and a US$4 billion (A3.2 billion), 1,750-kilometer (1,093-mile)
    pipeline is pumping Caspian Sea oil from Baku through Georgia to
    the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Yet outside Baku, gas
    supplies are erratic and the country runs on dilapidated Soviet-era
    infrastructure.

    All this, say critics, adds up to a new opening for Iran, the Shiite
    giant to the south.

    "Iran has always been active in Azerbaijan, but before they weren't
    getting the results they wanted," researcher Yunusov said. That's
    changing, however. "Now people think that Iran's words make sense,
    that the claims by Iran against the war in Iraq and against America
    are not so bad, that the West just wants our resources."

    Iran is reported to be financing Azerbaijan's opposition Islamic
    Party. Among Azerbaijan refugees from the 1990s war with Armenia
    over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran is the biggest provider
    of humanitarian aid, and it gains points from a perception among
    refugees that Azerbaijan was betrayed from all sides during the war
    and that the West has forgotten the refugees.

    Iranian television and radio, broadcasting in the Azeri language,
    are the leading sources of information in this border town of Astara
    and elsewhere in southern Azerbaijan. Azeri-language talk shows
    based in the nearby Iranian city of Tabriz are clogged with callers
    from Azerbaijan.

    "Everything we want to find out we find out from Iranian radio," said
    Mammadov Mazjtajab, a former reporter with Radio Liberty in Astara.
    Broadcast propaganda has increased, much of it directed at the United
    States, he said.

    Mazjtajab said propaganda has increased noticeably during the nuclear
    standoff.

    Tehran has threatened to strike back at any country that cooperates
    with an attack on its nuclear facilities. The Azerbaijan government
    has pledged its territory won't be used for military action against
    Iran, but people living along the border are nervous, pointing to a
    U.S.-built radar facility just outside Astara and the upgrading of the
    airport at Nakhchewan, also on the border with Iran, to accommodate
    NATO jets. Both projects are U.S.- financed.

    Iran's perceived attractions come out in an encounter at the border
    with Jamilya Shafyeov, an Azeri woman wearing three sweaters against
    the cold and bemoaning her inability to find work. "I think things
    are so much better over there," she said, gesturing through a small
    gray colored steel gate that opened onto Iran. "What do we have here?
    Nothing. No jobs. If I had a passport I would go there."

    Nail Farziyev, a retailer in Astara, drew cheers from fellow
    shopkeepers when he declared: "We can't turn our back on Iran and we
    won't turn our back on them."

    "Why is it that America thinks it can impose its will on everyone?"
    he asked. "Why can't Iran have peaceful nuclear energy? I want to
    know why."

    In Baku, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the north, Yunusov's
    think tank is sampling opinion nationally and discovering similar
    sentiments.

    In a survey he did three years ago, he said, "I asked about Iraq and
    Afghanistan and then everyone supported the United States and everyone
    agreed that (Osama) bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 attacks."

    But in a new survey he is conducting with the University of Minnesota's
    Department of Political Science, he asked about bin Laden and 9/11 and
    "it is all changed now. Some even say maybe the United States planned
    the attacks themselves in order to go after Muslim countries to get
    their oil."

    In Nadaran, about 65 kilometers (l40 miles) from the starting point
    of a pipeline regarded as an engineering marvel, Hajji Vagif Gasimov
    hunkered down in a municipal office with bitterly cold wind whistling
    through broken windowpanes. "Our situation is getting worse from day
    to day," he said.

    "My father was an oil worker, my grandfather was an oil worker. We
    are surrounded by gas pipelines and we have no gas. We think that
    this is America's fault because they want all our resources."

    In the 1990s, he said, "my dream was to have a democracy like the
    United States. Now we don't say we are against democracy; we are
    against America's democracy now."

    No one thinks an Islamic takeover is imminent. The Turkish Foreign
    Ministry says it welcomes good relations between Azerbaijan and Iran.
    Azerbaijan is one-twentieth the size of Iran, but some Turkish experts
    think that given the large ethnic Azeri population in Iran, Baku may
    have more influence over its neighbor than vice versa.

    "There are plenty of reports that Iran has helped encourage greater
    religious devotion," said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkish analyst with the
    Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The
    failure of the secular opposition to the Aliev regime ... has allowed
    the development of a religiously inclined opposition. But I think
    for the moment it is manageable. The question is what will happen if
    there is a confrontation between Iran and the West. This will make
    life very difficult for Azerbaijan."

    Rafik Aliyev, a government official charged with managing religious
    harmony in the country, said the corruption claims were exaggerated
    and he saw no big protest vote for Islamic parties.

    He saw Iran's influence as both natural and worrying _ an open border,
    propaganda broadcasts, Azeri students being educated in Iran; "Of
    course all these things can increase religious sentiments and we have
    been thinking about these issues and taking some measures."

    These, he said, include a countrywide refurbishment of
    infrastructure that has increased electrical supply to the south,
    and the establishment of Islamic teaching institutions to propagate
    a moderate brand of Islam.

    Namazov, the secular politician who was a powerful aide to Azerbaijan's
    late President Aliyev, said the Islamic Party made gains in his Baku
    constituency in the disputed November parliamentary election, while
    secular opposition parties won only a handful of seats.

    He says that when he met with European and American ambassadors
    afterward he told them: "It is true there is no danger today of there
    being an Islamic government here, but in five years, if we still have
    this system of total corruption, unemployment and severe human rights
    violations, then Islamic representatives will be elected."

    ___

    AP Correspondent Louis Meixler in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to
    this report.
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