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Could This Be ISIL's Next Target?

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  • Could This Be ISIL's Next Target?

    COULD THIS BE ISIL'S NEXT TARGET?

    The National Interest Group
    Oct 29 2014

    Audrey L. Altstadt

    October 29, 2014

    Could ISIL gain traction in Azerbaijan? Amid the welter of analyses
    about ISIL in Syria and Iraq, little attention has been paid to the
    potential impact of ISIL or other Islamic extremist movements in
    another important area--namely, the strategically sensitive south
    Caucasus region and especially energy-rich Azerbaijan. The anti-ISIL
    plan for a Kurdish autonomous entity has even greater implications
    for the south Caucasus and its several secessionist movements.

    First, the matter of ISIL. Located just northeast of Iraq, Azerbaijan
    has a mostly Shi'ite population with a Sunni minority. The state is
    secular, but President Ilham Aliyev has raised the specter of Islamic
    extremists in the north where his country borders Russia along the
    Caucasus Mountains. Twenty-six alleged fighters for Islamist groups,
    ISIL among them, were arrested last week on their return to Azerbaijan.

    Is Azerbaijan an Iraq-in-the-making? How real is the threat? How can
    we tell?

    Azerbaijan is unlike Iraq in numerous meaningful ways. Neither
    religious identity nor rhetoric has been a factor in Azerbaijani
    politics for over a century. The leader of one Azerbaijani opposition
    party commented that sectarian politics like those in Iraq are
    "primitive." The population of Azerbaijan though mostly Shi'ite
    is Turkic. Its history of Shi'ite-Sunni cooperation, societal
    modernization and emergent secularism goes back to the 19th century.

    Azerbaijan's reformers achieved short-lived victory in their republic
    of 1918-20.

    The arrival of the Bolsheviks in April 1920 led to the imposition of
    violent, if sporadic, anti-religious campaigns, which were distinct
    from the evolutionary secularizing efforts of the native elites. Thus,
    the comparison between today's Azerbaijan and Iraq, where secularism
    was imposed mainly by the Ba'ath party since the late 1960s, shows the
    greater longevity and depth of secular life in Azerbaijan. Tolerance
    of religious difference, especially in Baku, is shown not merely by
    the presence but by the growth over time of such non-native groups as
    the Jewish community which grew rapidly in the early 20th century as
    Jews fled pogroms in Russian and Ukraine. It remains active today. The
    disappearance of the Baku's long-established Armenian community and
    closing of its church can be traced to the bitter and unresolved
    conflict over Nagorno-Karabagh rather than a general intolerance of
    Christians. Overall, religious expression is considered a personal
    matter in Azerbaijan, and in society as a whole, people who attend
    a mosque or wear the hijab are neither feared nor ostracized.

    At the same time, it would be premature to suggest that Azerbaijan is
    immune from Islamist appeals. The Sunni population in the north can
    hardly be insulated against the radicalism of the north Caucasus,
    but the nature of the spill-over remains murky. Some experts have
    suggested that sectarian conflicts in the region have encouraged or
    deepened divisions within Azerbaijani society, especially in rural
    areas. But hard evidence is illusive.

    The Aliyev regime's designation of all sorts of religious people and
    groups as Wahabbis or Salafis is unhelpful. Religious individuals are
    persecuted without differentiation. Such broad-brush treatment impedes
    efforts to get a clear reading on the type and depth of political uses
    of Islam and the potential for future radicalism among Azerbaijanis.

    Piety does not make a Muslim a radical.

    If an extreme Islamist faction did exist, it would not have to be
    large to be dangerous. Two factors could make it more dangerous.

    First, discontent born of poverty or injustice feeds radicalism.

    Despite oil wealth and the modernization of Baku, lingering
    economic, social and political inequality contribute to Azerbaijan's
    vulnerability to Islamist appeals. Outside central Baku, poverty is
    evident. People with Soviet-era educations cannot take advantage of
    jobs in new industries and often cannot provide better education for
    their children.

    How many are affected? What are their alternatives? Is there an
    emerging middle class, as the regime insists? Data on these matters
    are not sufficient or sufficiently reliable to draw a definitive
    conclusion. Bribery is endemic, and citizens report pressure to give
    bribes even to get low-level jobs. A perception that the regime is
    corrupt and unjust can push the populace toward a traditional pole
    of morality, religion. Radical leaders could take advantage of such
    a climate, and Azerbaijan's ruling circles are missing opportunities
    to address these problems.

    Second, a regime that quashes open discussion and even mild dissent is
    cutting off peaceful discourse and thereby fostering extremism. Recent
    years have been marked by increasing government repression including
    the marginalization of the genuinely democratic opposition parties.

    Their offices and publications have been pushed out of the city center
    or shut down. Election rallies have been blocked. Parliamentary
    elections of 2010, which were deemed by international observers to
    be neither free nor fair, led to the complete exclusion of opposition
    parties from the National Assembly. With the failure of the democratic
    opposition to protect itself, much less effect needed change, popular
    interest in Islamist groups cannot be ruled out.

    Nor are there other means for peaceful redress of grievances.

    Independent human rights activists, journalists and bloggers have
    been harassed, beaten, and arrested. This summer so many human rights
    activists were arrested that one account characterized the list as a
    "who's who" of important civil society figures. Particularly shocking
    are the beatings and torture of activists in jail, most recently Leyla
    Yunus, a petite and diabetic woman with an international reputation.

    NGOs including scholarly organizations have had bank accounts
    frozen and offices raided and closed. Critical reports from Amnesty
    International, Freedom House, the OSCE and other groups are dismissed
    by officials in Baku as "anti-Azerbaijani."

    The regime stresses its security requirements, its need to maintain
    independence, especially against Russia, and defend against
    terrorists. These are real challenges. But it's hard to see how
    election monitors, human rights groups, and bloggers threaten
    Azerbaijan's independence.

    Nor is religious extremism the only potential danger. Kurdish autonomy
    is being considered a tool to contain ISIL and the "treatment"
    here may be as volatile as the disease. Few Western analysts have
    explored the broader implications of Kurdish autonomy and certainly
    not for the south Caucasus. Such an arrangement for Iraq's Kurds not
    only affects Turkey's Kurds, as all have conceded, but could lead
    also to comparable demands by Iran's Kurds living in the northwest
    of that country bordering Iraq. As a frequently oppressed ethnic
    and sectarian minority (Kurds are mostly Sunni) Iranian Kurds might
    find autonomy flimsy and press for secession. Secession movements,
    an urgent topic despite the outcome of Scotland's referendum, affect
    each state of the south Caucasus.

    All demands for secession are used by Armenians to bolster arguments
    for the self-proclaimed republic in Nagorno-Karabagh, in Soviet times
    an autonomous region inside Azerbaijan populated mainly by Armenians.

    Since the 1994 cease fire to a 6-year war, Armenian forces
    have occupied that area and surrounding regions totaling about
    17% of Azerbaijan's territory. Azerbaijan has rejected the
    secession-as-self-determination demand on the basis of preserving
    its territorial integrity.

    Here Azerbaijan must be wary of Russian meddling since Moscow has
    both a military and more recently commercial treaty with Armenia.

    Azerbaijan's major ally is NATO-member Turkey that is itself on guard
    against both Kurdish and Armenian territorial claims. Renewed fighting
    over Nagorno-Karabagh could turn into a truly ugly regional conflict.

    Neighboring Georgia likewise resists demands of ethnic minorities
    that are supported by Russia. Both of Georgia's secessionist regions,
    Abkhazia and South Ossetia have Russian support, including the invasion
    of Georgia in "defense" of the Ossetians in 2008. Russian President
    Vladimir Putin's revanchism early this year in Ukraine affirmed that
    Russia can with impunity seize the territory of a neighboring sovereign
    state using the pretext of claims to protect ethnic Russians. Neither
    Georgia nor any other state of the south Caucasus has a significant
    Russian minority but Russia has already claimed to protect Ossetians
    and may well do the same for its Armenian allies or others. Secretary
    of Defense Hagel's trip to Tbilisi after the September NATO meeting,
    reflected this linkage by discussing Georgia's entry into NATO.

    Nor is the impact of secession confined to the states of the south
    Caucasus. Even the whiff of secession from Iran's Kurds could, Tehran
    surely fears, inspire a similar demand from the neighboring Turkic
    population of Iran's east Azerbaijan and Ardebil provinces. The
    movement for reunification of Iranian ("southern") Azerbaijan with
    northern (now independent) Azerbaijan has been simmering since
    the Soviet collapse. It is encouraged by groups and individuals in
    the north. The vigorous support for the movement by Azerbaijan's
    first post-Soviet president Abulfez Elchibey was a particular point
    of contention between Baku and Tehran. Iran stands to be hurt by
    secessionist movements in its northwest, and paradoxically, it is
    all that stands between a possible IS drive from Mosul to Baku.

    Neighboring Russia and the Middle East, the entire south Caucasus is
    vulnerable to events in both. The potential autonomy or secession
    of the Kurds affects each of the three states, though differently
    - Georgia and Azerbaijan stand to lose territory from successful
    secessions bids while Armenia stands to gain. Similarly, Russia, which
    has just used the secession-by-self-determination card in Ukraine
    /Crimea can throw its weight on the same side of that argument to
    weaken Georgia and Azerbaijan and support Armenia. Indeed, of the
    various threats. Russian meddling is perhaps the greatest for the
    region and especially for Georgia and Azerbaijan. But the danger of
    Islamic extremism cannot be clearly assessed without more realistic
    information from Azerbaijan. The attraction of radicalism itself
    could be reduced if the Aliyev government were to establish and
    protect civil society.

    Audrey Altstadt is a fellow at Woodrow Wilson International Center for
    Scholars and a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts
    Amherst. The opinions expressed in this piece are solely those of
    the author.

    http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/could-be-isils-next-target-11563

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