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Passions And History Run Deep In Safarov Case

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  • Passions And History Run Deep In Safarov Case

    PASSIONS AND HISTORY RUN DEEP IN SAFAROV CASE

    EurasiaNet.org
    Sept 5 2012
    NY

    September 5, 2012 - 2:51pm, by Arife Kazimova and Daisy Sindelar

    A EurasiaNet Partner Post from: RFE/RL The details of the crime seem
    anything but heroic: a young lieutenant hacking a fellow soldier
    to death in his sleep, with an ax he had stealthily purchased hours
    before.

    But for many people in the South Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan,
    the picture is not so simple.

    Not when the assailant is an Azerbaijani whose hometown was brutally
    seized by Armenian forces while he was still a teenager.

    Not when the victim is an Armenian who allegedly insulted the
    Azerbaijani flag.

    And not when the circumstances that threw them together were conceived
    by Western officials who had failed to consider the depths of the
    two sides' regional animosity.

    So when Ramil Safarov returned home on August 31 after eight years
    in a Hungarian jail for the 2004 murder of Gurgen Margarian at a NATO
    Partnership for Peace exercise, many Azerbaijanis were unstinting in
    their welcome:

    "I think he was a hero, because he protected the honor and dignity of
    the Azerbaijani people," one woman told RFE/RL on the streets of Baku.

    Another resident of the Azerbaijani capital said Safarov "did the
    right thing" in killing Margarian.

    On the other hand, Safarov's extradition from Hungary last week
    outraged Armenians and surprised many onlookers with the lavish
    gestures that followed.

    The 35-year-old lieutenant was not only granted an immediate pardon
    from his life sentence, he was also promoted to the rank of major,
    promised back pay, and presented with a free apartment.

    Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev offered no rationale
    for the promotion, simply congratulating Safarov on his return to
    Azerbaijan and wishing him success in his future activities in the
    military sector.

    Anti-Armenian Invective

    Local newspapers added to the fanfare, with headlines crowing that
    Safarov's release "will improve the psychological mood of society"
    and calling him "a hero for the entire Muslim world."

    Safarov's conviction as a calculating ax murderer did little to temper
    most Azerbaijanis' enthusiasm. If anything, the gruesome nature of his
    crime only added to his appeal in a country where the public narrative
    has been shaped to portray Safarov as the victim and Margarian as
    the taunting aggressor.

    Many Azerbaijanis repeat the theory that Margarian had urinated on
    the Azerbaijani flag or used it to polish his shoes. Others allege
    that the Armenian was not even asleep when the attack took place,
    and that he had provoked the attack.

    No evidence from Safarov's 2006 trial in Budapest suggests either
    claim is true. But some Azerbaijani observers say the legacy of the
    Nagorno-Karabakh war and a steady diet of government anti-Yerevan
    invective have combined to cement an almost pathological hatred of
    Armenians in the minds of many Azerbaijanis.

    "It's not only the Armenian soldiers and officers who are occupying
    our land that Azerbaijanis consider their enemy," says Baku-based
    political analyst Zardusht Alizadeh. "It's not only the 'Armenian
    terrorists' who were killed in the fighting. Because of a very
    skillfully constructed propaganda campaign, it's all Armenians who
    are considered the enemy. That's why a man who killed an Armenian in
    his sleep is automatically categorized as a hero."

    The 1988-94 war over Nagorno-Karabakh -- an Armenian-majority region
    within Azerbaijani territory -- ended with the deaths of tens of
    thousands on each side and the displacement of hundreds of thousands
    more.

    It also left the region and surrounding territories under Armenian
    control -- for Baku, an unacceptable territorial loss of some 20
    percent.

    Nearly two decades later, the unresolved dispute remains the focus of
    international negotiations whose partners, including the United States
    and Russia, have frowned at Azerbaijan's zealous embrace of Safarov.

    But Azerbaijan -- whose dynastic leader, Ilham Aliyev, is seen as using
    his country's massive oil wealth to buy silence on his authoritarian
    practices -- has shrugged off such criticism as hypocritical meddling.

    Many in the country argue that the international community remained
    silent when a case similar to Safarov's unfolded years earlier
    in Armenia.

    In 2001, Yerevan granted an immediate pardon to Varoujan Garabedian,
    a Syrian-born militant who killed eight people in a 1983 bomb attack
    in a French airport.

    Garabedian was returned to Armenia after serving 17 years of a life
    sentence in France, and received his pardon while still in Yerevan's
    airport.

    'Radical Elements Are The Only Winners'

    Erkin Gaderli, a lawyer and a member of the Republican Alternative
    opposition group, says he believes "no one" in Azerbaijan "seriously"
    thinks of Safarov as a hero.

    But at the same time, he acknowledges that ordinary Azerbaijanis are
    confounded by the continued deadlock over Nagorno-Karabakh, and have
    fallen into a tit-for-tat relationship with Armenia, with each side
    looking to best the other on even insignificant issues.

    "There is an emotion growing in society, and it's a reflection of
    a deep frustration with the conflict in the occupied territories,"
    Gaderli says. "And there is a growing expectation that somehow,
    someday this must come to an end. Many people think that something
    needs to be done in response to Armenia. So whatever Armenia has done,
    for good or for bad, should somehow be retaliated."

    There are suggestions that Armenia may already be prepared to raise
    the stakes, with the parliament in Yerevan now considering a hastily
    submitted bill on recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent
    country.

    The outcome of such a provocation is worrisome to many who fear the
    countries will return to a war footing.

    Even without a resumption of violence, some observers find the Safarov
    case a depressing development in a year when Azerbaijan has attempted
    to buff its Western credentials by playing Eurovision host and joining
    the UN Security Council.

    In a piece published by the BBC's Russian Service, Thomas de Waal,
    a South Caucasus expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International
    Peace, wrote that the affair struck a blow to many activists and
    officials in Azerbaijan who have spent years quietly building a
    dialogue with Armenia.

    With Safarov's hero-sized welcome such critical efforts may now be
    lost. "After the authorities in Baku met the killer with open arms,
    the country's image has suffered enormous damage," he wrote.

    "Unfortunately, the only winners are the radical elements on both
    sides."

    Editor's note: Written and reported by Daisy Sindelar in Prague with
    additional reporting from Baku by Arife Kazimova

    http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65867

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