Thomas Goltz - Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporters Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic

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Azerbaijan Diary

Azerbaijan Diary

A Rogue Reporters Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic

Thomas Goltz

First published 1998 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1998 by Thomas Goltz. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goltz, Thomas.
Azerbaijan diary: a rogue reporters adventures in an oil-rich, war-torn, post-Soviet republic by Thomas Goltz.
p. cm.
Revised ed. of: Requiem for a would-be republic. 1994.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7656-0243-1 (c: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-7656-0244-X (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. AzerbaijanHistory1991. 2. Goltz, ThomasJourneysAzerbaijan.
I. Goltz, Thomas. Requiem for a would-be republic. II. Title.
DK697.6.G65 1998
947.54 dc21 97-27981
CIP

ISBN 13: 9780765602442 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765602435 (hbk)

For Hicran

Contents

Maps appear on pages
.

Photographs follow pages

History As Contact Journalism

The original intent of this book was to tell the story of the Republic of Azerbaijan from its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 to its decision to join the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1993. The working title of the draft manuscript, published obscurely in Istanbul in 1994, was Requiem for a Would-be Republic.

The reason I selected that thoroughly depressing title was that it fit with the tenor of the times. Azerbaijan looked like it was about to fall apart, and not too many people seemed to care. It was being held up as a classic example of a failed state, a place marked by such an appalling level of chaos, confusion, and self-destruction that it almost did not deserve to exist. It was not a pretty picture, but it was the way things were and it was from that eye-witness experience that the original Requiem emerged. And, because the historical facts have not changed, it is that experience which remains the flesh and bones of the current work, no matter how unflattering to many of the actors within it, the author included.

The change in the title of this edition of the book, however, should speak volumes. No longer a dirge for a dead country, it is now a diary account of the rebirth, in blood and agony, of a post-Soviet republic with a future. No one can be happier than I am that the prediction implicit in that first title was at the very least premature, if not down-right wrong, and the author thus wishes to be the first to express how delighted he is that Azerbaijan still is.

Indeed, Azerbaijan has now taken its place on the map and in the popular imagination in a way that was almost inconceivable a few short years ago. The reason, of course, is oil. Between November 1994 and November 1997, some $30 billion in contracts have been signed between the government in Baku and a veritable alphabet soup of oil companies, all of whom (along with the governments that back them) now have a large, vested interest in insuring Azerbaijans continued existence as an independent state and, one hopes, as a very prosperous one. A vast material difference is already evident between my Baku of the bad old days, when it was impossible to find a new toilet seat, and the current boom-town on the shores of the Caspian Sea, where Mercedes dealerships are springing up like hydrocarbon-fed mushrooms.

This is not to say that everything is completely rosy. Different power factions in Moscow continue to cajole and threaten Baku by turns, while Washington both claims the Caspian as part of the new American energy future and imposes sanctions against Azerbaijan. Article 907 of the Freedom Support Act, generated by the Armenian lobby in Congress, marks the country as a political pariah, undeserving of American aid and assistance. If not resolved, the outrageous contradiction between these two positions is bound to have future repercussionsespecially in light of the fact that Armenia continues to occupy some 20 percent of Azerbaijan, and nearly one in seven Azeris live as internal refugees in their own country.

The reason for this sad state of affairs, of course, was and is the ghastly eight-year war over the disputed territory of Mountainous (Nagorno) Karabakh, which resulted in over 30,000 dead (mainly Azeris) and untold misery before grinding to the no war/no peace situation that persists today. Detailing the progress of that tragedy from the Azerbaijani side of the lines is a major theme of this book, as is the intimately related rise and fall of the Popular Front government of Abulfez Elchibey.

So, too, is the amazing return to power of that amazing survivor, Heydar Aliyev. Through gutsy political realism, cynical manipulation, and just plain force of personality, Aliyev has effectively become the father of his modern country and a leader to be reckoned with in the Caucasus region, Central Asia, and the wider world.

This is an essential point, because it suggests not only the flexibility of Heydar and his ability to react to changing political circumstance, but also the dangers involved for people like myself who write about contemporary historythe old problem of shooting at a moving target, as it were. Not everything is always at it seems at first blink. Political actors do change their attitudes, and they often do not reveal their real intent early on. In the case of Heydar Aliyev, who is still referred to as a dubious Soviet holdover in much of the Western media, the attendant distortions between perceptions and reality are vast. In an effort to try and capture this dynamic of change, I have left the bulk of the original Requiem text essentially as it was, correcting it with a new Epilogue. The modifications I have made to the text consist of cutting back for the sake of space and incidental editing for the sake of clarity (and ridding the text of egregious typos). The original Requiem was cast as a sort of annotated diary, a journey of discovery on which the reader was invited to travel with the writer as his or her perhaps imperfect yet enthusiastic guide. I see no reason to alter that approach with hindsight.

* * *

The scholarly reader may take issue with the first-person style of writing and the virtual lack of academic-style footnotes. The reason for the paucity of reference to others is that I have seen far too many examples of bad sourcing in the press and in scholarly articles on Azerbaijan to believe anything not witnessed by me (or by someone whose honesty and integrity I can vouch for). That was so when I completed the first version of this book in 1994 and remains so today.

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