Elmar Chakhtakhtinski, azerireport.com
If you ever wondered how life would be in a country entirely taken over and run by an organized crime cartel – look at Azerbaijan now. The recent events there indicate a complete transition from a post-Soviet nation into a feudal mafia state, ruled by a gang of unsavory, backwards, criminal-minded characters.- One leading ruling YAP party official and a member of the national parliament, Siyavush Novruzov, has recently said that a certain dissident does not deserve to be assassinated by the regime because “he is not important enough”.
The insightful US diplomats in Wikileaks cables have already described the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as someone resembling in his leadership style Sonny and Michael Corleone brothers from the famous mafia movie trilogy “The God Father”. As if trying to prove their point, the day-to-day behavior of top Azerbaijani officials increasingly seem to come straight from gangster movies.
Consider the following facts and judge for yourself:
– Another parliament member from the ruling party, Gular Ahmadova, was caught on hidden cam videos trying to sell a seat in the parliament for a million dollar bribe and, appearently, she was merely acting as a dealer for the head of Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev.
– One of the key witnesses on those videos, Sevinj Babayeva, who had been on the run ever since the online release of the videos, was found dead in Turkey under mysterious circumstances (“whacked”?).
– A local governor in Ismayilli region owned a hotel where he and his relatives had been running an illegal brothel. This became known to broader public after local residents, angry at the increasingly brazen behavior of the governor and his gang, burned down his house and that hotel during the uprising in January this year.
– In order to prevent the Council of Europe (CE), of which Azerbaijan is a member, from issuing unfavorable resolutions about Azerbaijan’s miserable record on human rights and democracy, the Aliyev regime implemented its own action plan, dubbed “Caviar diplomacy”, designed to bribe CE officials with caviar and other lavish gifts. The legitimate states, even authoritarian ones, have to bother with diplomatic efforts, sanctions and counter-sanctions, and other political headache. But mafia always chooses to circumvent these unnecessary formalities and resolve its problems by deploying its own, much “simpler” methods: if we can’t make you shut up, we will buy your silence.
– A leader of a pro-government party, a well-known attack-dog of the regime, Hafiz Hajiyev, has offered a $12,000 reward to any person who would cut the ear of the famous Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli. Mr. Aylisly fell out of favor with the regime after writing a pro-Armenian novel where he also portrayed the regime’s founder Heydar Aliyev (the father of the current “God Father” President Ilham Aliyev) in a very negative light. The executive secretary Ali Akhmadov and other “wise guys” from the ruling YAP party have questioned Aylisli’s ethnic identity, demanded tests on his DNA to check if he is a hidden Armenian, and called for the expression of public hatred towards him. Their calls were heeded at the government sponsored “protest rallies” culminating in calls for “death to Aylisli” and burning of the writer’s books. The word “mob”, indicating a primitive, rough-crowd mentality of organized crime groups, would, indeed, be a very appropriate term to describe these acts of Azerbaijan’s ruling gang.
– And, of course, more and more evidence is coming about the president Aliyev’s family owning an endless list of offshore secretive business holdings and undeclared properties within the country and abroad. This is matched by the similarly shadowy possessions of his oligarch-ministers who act as heads of family clans within the mafia enterprise.
Add to this the fact that all branches of government in Azerbaijan lack any pretense of legitimacy due to the total falsification of each and every election for the past twenty years – and you will get a complete picture of what kind of “state” Azerbaijan is.
President Ilham Aliyev’s recent speech, made after the Ismayilli riots mentioned above, is very instructive. Don Aliyev’s appearance before his associates – ministers, governors and other top officials – can only be classified as “State of the Mafia” address.
The Ismayilli uprising was sparked by a traffic accident, after which one of the parties, the son of the governor, started shouting at and insulting the people in the other car and the local residents that gathered around them to help. Therefore, in an angry tone, Ilham Aliyev warned the heads of the clans – his high level state officials – that they better restrain their children and not display so brazenly all the loot they collect by plundering the country. He offered himself as an example of modesty, apparently forgetting the lavish annual mass celebrations held for his own birthday, and millions of state money spent on his long-dead father’s birthday “flower festivals” and his controversial monuments erected around the world. Perhaps he meant himself as a role model of a mafia boss who succeeded in hiding most of the wealth he stole from the public eye.
“No more acts of hooliganism [by children of state officials] will be tolerated… Those committing such acts will be arrested and their fathers fired!”, he exclaimed. But don’t ask whether and why this “hooliganism” was fine up untill now, and what the law says about it. And never mind that firing a father from his government job for the trespasses of his son might be outside of legal framework. The God Father appoints them and he is entitled to get rid of them when he pleases. No need to bother with such formalities as justifying the state prosecutor’s charges, court proceedings, due process, rule of law. The Boss decides everything: who gets arrested, at what exact time certain crimes stop being OK, and who gets fired from their jobs.
On the other end of political spectrum, parents are already being punished for the actions of their adult children. Police has recently raided the homes of leading opposition youth activists’ parents to take away their hand-woven carpets, old TVs and other possessions as a fine for their children’s participation in pro-democracy protest rallies. Again, a typical mafia-clan approach” we will get your things, your home, you rfamily, if you go against us”.
All these bizarre, despicable events have taken place within a span of past several weeks, in the 21st century Azerbaijan – a country called a “strategic US ally”, “an EU partner”, a participant in NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” program, a member of the Council of Europe, the host of Eurovision song contest and European Olympics, and, in the words of one US Congressman Gerry Connolly, “a role model” for other countries.
Elmar Chakhtakhtinski is a chairman of Azerbaijani-Americans for Democracy (AZAD), a non-profit US organization promoting support for democracy and human rights in Azerbaijan.
