Azerbaijan: Aliev Sees Off Rivals

Azerbaijan’s authoritarian government has strengthened its hand and the opposition has been left in temporary disarray after a turbulent week in politics.

Details are still unclear about what actually happened last week, when the authorities arrested five top government officials and one prominent businessman on charges of planning a coup d’etat. But some analysts are already saying that President Ilham Aliev has come out as the winner, at least for the time being, after defeating one of the main threats to his one-man rule.

According to government officials, Economic Development Minister Farhad Aliev (no relation to the president) and his brother Rafik, president of the Azpetrol oil company, were the ringleaders in a coup plot that was supposed to unfold after the arrival of opposition leader Rasul Guliyev in Baku.

Guliyev, who is wanted on charges of embezzlement, had announced that he would return to Azerbaijan for the first time in nine years on October 17 to participate in the country’s upcoming parliamentary election.

However, the plane he had chartered turned around at the last minute under unclear circumstances, and landed at Simferopol in Ukraine, where he was detained by local authorities. Three days later, a judge ordered Guliyev’s release after turning down an extradition request from Baku.

In anticipation of his arrival, the Azerbaijani authorities had mobilised an unprecedented show of riot police in the capital and blocked access to the main international airport.

Guliyev’s failed bid to return sent shockwaves through the Azerbaijani establishment for the rest of the week. On October 19, officials announced that the Aliev brothers had been detained, and more arrests followed - Health Minister Ali Insanov; Akif Muradverdiev deputy head of the presidential administration; Fikret Sadigov, director of the state chemicals firm Azerkhimiya; and a district deputy police chief, Ilgar Ragimzade.

The arrested officials - together with Fikret Yusifov, a former finance minister arrested the day before Guliyev was due to arrive - are accused of establishing contacts with the exiled politician, and of planning the logistics and funding of “subversive groups to be used in mass unrest”.

In recent days, Azerbaijani television has repeatedly shown footage of jewels and packages of dollars allegedly found at the homes of Farhad Aliev and Insanov, and said to provide proof of the financial side of the plot.

Some analysts doubt this official version of events, and believe the officials concerned may not have been plotting with Guliyev, or with one another. Instead, President Aliev may simply have used Guliyev’s return as an excuse to purge politicians and other powerful figures whose wealth was allowing them to build up power-bases and thus become less reliant on presidential patronage.

Others observers, however, say a coup plot is entirely plausible. As evidence, they point to the widely-held belief that Guliyev – a former parliament speaker who is reportedly wealthy – has secretly maintained strong contacts with certain government officials throughout his years of exile.

“A resounding blow has been dealt to a covert group of Guliyev supporters within the government,” said Rasim Musabekov, an independent political analyst. “This undoubtedly has significantly weakened one of the opposition’s main areas of support.”

Musabekov says anti-government activists were hoping that Guliyev’s return would energise the opposition movement, which has been struggling to win ground in the campaign for the November 6 parliamentary election.

These different views - of a war among oligarchs, and of an attempted palace coup - are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Both fit with the perception among many observers that Azerbaijan’s ruling establishment is divided into two - or more - warring camps.

According to this scenario, Farhad Aliev and a group of allies have been locked in a struggle for money and power against another loose grouping led by State Customs Committee head Kamaladdin Heidarov, who is also reputed to be an oligarch.

The two men conducted a very public dispute at the beginning of the year over issues relating to import and export revenues.

The customs chief reportedly gained the upper hand in September, when President Aliev stripped the economics minister of one of his main sources of power - overseeing the country’s privatisation process. And now, say observers, Farhad Aliev and his fellow magnates have been dealt a death blow.

“A group of monopolist oligarchs have suffered disaster. They were using their financial resources to actively participate in the election process,” said Asim Mollazade, chairman of the centrist Party for Democratic Reform.

“I think these oligarchs were hoist by their own petard, by the very action they were preparing against the Azerbaijani government.”

News of the arrests has been welcomed by many ordinary Azerbaijanis, who view the purge as a blow in the fight against corruption, and as a result the move may help bolster President Aliev’s Yeni Azerbaijan party at the polls.

“They [the government] should have done this a long time ago!” said Taptyg Aliyev, a Baku plumber, reflecting a widely-held view. “Ministers steal, and nothing happens. They need to hand down long sentences to the bribe-takers, otherwise nothing will change in Azerbaijan.”

The wave of arrests, coupled with Guliyev’s inability to make his much-anticipated reappearance, seems to have thrown the opposition into confusion.

A demonstration the weekend immediately following the events was more subdued and attended by fewer people than previous ones.

Isa Gambar, chairman of the Musavat opposition party, one of three parties that make up the Azadlig (Freedom) election bloc, with Guliyev’s Democratic Party and the Popular Front, argues that it is the government rather than the opposition which has been left fractured and weakened by the furore.

The government’s actions, he says, are a sign of deep divisions, not strength, “Within the government there are very serious groupings which are prepared to fight to the death. They are fighting for influence and property, and this fight had to come to the surface sooner or later.”

Gambar concluded, “I believe this is a very serious crisis of power. The Azerbaijani people still have a number of surprises in store for them.”

Rauf Orujev writes for the Russian-language Ekho newspaper in Baku.