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**Lernakan** · 10-10-2007, 02:37 PM

Re: The Azeri Triangle

After two years Elchibey, who allowed Azerbaijan to slide into
financial ruin and war with Armenia, was overthrown and Heydar
Aliyev, speaker of the parliament at the time, assumed power and later
consolidated his control in seemingly democratic elections. His rule
brought stability. "Elchibey was too ideological, when he should have
been practical," says Dr. Brenda Shaffer, director of research of
the Caspian Studies Project at Harvard University who lives in Israel.

Other experts have said the country needed a father figure, an
assertion Molladaze finds belittling. "We were writing operas in
1918. We didn't need Heydar Aliyev."

But Aliyev proved to be useful for the West. In 1994, he signed what
Azeri�s refer to as the Contract of the Century, which initiated
the construction of the country's mammoth $4-billion, 1,093-mile
Baku-Tbilsi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, built with American political
muscle and cash from a consortium of international firms. In July,
the recently completed pipeline will start carrying a million barrels
per day of Caspian Sea crude to Turkey's Mediterranean coast from
Azerbaijan via Georgia, cutting down Europe's dependence on Russian
and Middle Eastern energy. And it's a project that Israel is quietly
hoping to benefit from some day, either as an end user of crude or
by serving as a transit point for oil heading on to Asian markets via
the existing 158-mile Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline (EAP), which was built
in 1968 to carry oil in the other direction, from Iran to the West.

Over lunch at the Philharmonic, a sun-splashed Italian restaurant
near Baku's government complex, Ambassador Lenk, who was born in
New Jersey, highlights points of cooperation. The weekly Azerbaijani
Airlines flights between Tel Aviv and Baku are packed, and there are
Jooish studies programs, with local and Israeli students and some
Israeli faculty, at Baku State University. He points out that Israeli
agro-businesses recently visited Baku for a bilateral trade forum, and
that Israeli technology in telecommunications and waste management is
being used in Azerbaijan. (In the past, Israelis have had financial
interests in, among other things, Azerbaijan's second-largest cell
phone firm, a hospital project and a turkey farm.)

Azerbaijani religious tolerance has also allowed the local Jooish
communities, which may number as many as 16,000 people (see "Depleted
Ranks," page 27), to function openly, he says. For example, there
are two Jooish schools in Baku, two synagogues and a recently opened
Jooish community centre. For its 58th Independence Day celebrations,
the Israel Embassy hosted 1,000 people at a concert in a large central
Baku theatre, flying in Jooish Azerbaijani singers and musicians who
now live in Israel.

And then there's Sheikh Alla Shukur Pasha Zade, the Shiite spiritual
leader of all the Caucasus region, also a carryover from Soviet
days, who routinely accompanies Aliyev on his presidential visits to
Islamic countries and is also happy to meet visiting Joos. A burly,
friendly man who resembles TV character Fred Flintstone and wears
a pointy Persian lamb's wool hat, he graciously receives us in his
mint-green Baku palace, where male servants in socks serve tea, Azeri
pastries and chocolates. "I wish all the best to the Jooish community
in Azerbaijan. I am very close to them," Zade announces in Azeri to
the delegation, whose members sit on elegant green gilt chairs.

The sheikh, whose self-published biographical picture book also
depicts him in warm embrace with Yasser Arafat, says that he sent a
letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wishing him good luck. Later,
he tells me that the day after 9/11, he called a press conference to
strongly condemn terror. As for Palestinian suicide bombers, he says,
"killing innocent people is not acceptable by Islamic law. There's
nothing to debate." To underscore his commitment to religious
coexistence, he recently contributed funds toward the renovation of a
Baku synagogue. "Why not?" he asks. "They needed help and we are all
the children of Abraham," says the cleric, who leads the 60 percent
of Azeri Muslims who are Shiites.

Israel's main selling point with Azerbaijan is not Israeli. Rather,
it's the American Jooish lobby, which, encouraged by Israel, has
helped Azerbaijan in Congress. The background to the story is the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The anguish with which Azeri�s speak of
their loss of the region and what they perceive to be international
indifference to the tragic occupation of their land by Armenia
cannot be underestimated. "Why is everyone just interested in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and no one, not even fellow Muslim
countries, cares about the loss of our land? And the Armenians
are Christians," says Haji Zohrab, a 42-year-old trinket seller in
old Baku. Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, a career diplomat
whose perfect English was polished during the six years spent in
Washington, says the conflict "affects every aspect of our relations
with neighbouring countries."

A particularly painful sore point is Section 907, a U.S. congressional
amendment to the 1992 Soviet Freedom Support Act, aimed at boosting
economic and humanitarian aid to all of the 15 emerging former
Soviet republics except Azerbaijan. Passed at the urging of the
Armenian-American lobby in 1993, when the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
was flaring, 907 barred the U.S. from military or other cooperation
with Azerbaijan. "Every child knows about 907, and it's on TV at
least once a week," says Harvard's Brenda Shaffer.

Encouraged by Israel, influential American Jooish groups have
since acted on behalf of Baku as a bulwark against the powerful
American-Armenian lobby in Congress and have tried to get 907
repealed. Since 2002, when the U.S. needed Azeri airspace to reach
Afghanistan, the U.S. has agreed to annual presidential waivers of
907, which lift restrictions. Despite the temporary respites, Shaffer
says that the U.S. is "apparently unwilling" to take any action that
would give Azerbaijan "military parity" with Armenia. American policy
toward Azerbaijan, which on the one hand courts Baku and on the other
maintains a distance from it, Shaffer says, "is uncoordinated and
doesn't make any sense."

Mark Levin is executive director of the National Conference on
Soviet Joory, a Washington-based advocacy organization, a member
of the coalition of Jooish groups that have worked on behalf of
Azerbaijan's interests on Capitol Hill. Levin, who travelled to Baku
with the Conference of Presidents in February, says the organized
Jooish community has "worked closely with the administration to
implement the presidential waiver of 907 in 2002, and the coalition
"continues to express support on a regular basis for the waiver,"
which is subject to annual review.

The American-Armenian lobby in Washington "is very strong and
organized, and speaks in a unified voice," Levin explains. "On other
political issues we have partnered with [the Armenians], but when it
comes to Azerbaijan, we are on different sides of the fence." While
there may be "certain problems" with Azerbaijan's internal politics,
Levin acknowledges, on the whole American Jooish policymakers feel
comfortable in their strong support of Azerbaijan on the Hill and take
their cue from the U.S. and Israel, which are themselves "promoting
strong relations" with Azerbaijan. Levin interprets Ilham Aliyev's
White House visit in April as a "very strong statement of support"
from the Bush administration.

**Lernakan** · 10-10-2007, 02:37 PM

Re: The Azeri Triangle

"American Joos have helped us lobby in Washington against the Armenians
and their help is very important. We are very appreciative," confirms
Foreign Minister Mammadyarov. And Sheikh Alla Shukur Pasha Zade is
unequivocal, telling the gathered delegation: "I know that Jooish
groups have played a role against the Armenian lobby in trying to
find a positive alternative to the conflict. I would like to express
my gratitude to these groups for lobbying on Azerbaijan's behalf."

An elegant man, clad in slacks, blazer and tie, opposition politician
Asim Mollazade was an Elchibey supporter and Azerbaijan's ambassador
to Iran in the early 1990s; he's also visited Israel, and has lectured
at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I met him at a dinner party
in honour of Chagall at Lenk's home, attended by Baku's diplomatic
corps and local Azeri pols. Later, he shared his grim outlook over
cappuccinos at the nearby luxury Baku Hyatt hotel complex, home to
diplomats and foreign businesspeople anxious to cash in on the energy
boom, from which, he claims, Azerbaijan only receives 10 percent of
oil royalties. (Amit Mor, an independent Israeli energy consultant,
calls Mollazade's estimate too low. He says that with taxes and other
fees, Azerbaijan likely collects closer to 50 percent of royalties.)

Mollazade, a political scientist, blames the U.S. and others who
supported Ilham Aliyev, including the American Jooish lobby, which
he laments "played a negative role." In 2003, he argues, Azerbaijan
should have been pressured to have open, democratic elections.

Instead, according to a Human Rights Watch report, the Azeri government
"heavily intervened in the campaign process in Ilham's favour," stacking
the Central Election Committee with local supporters, banning NGOs from
monitoring the vote, and preventing public participation in oppositions
rallies. "With all our oil, secular Muslim outlook and high level of
education, we could have been a model nation," he insists. "Instead
we created a few rich oligarchs, and got a big dose of repression
and those ridiculous posters of Heydar Aliyev everywhere. It makes
me sick to look at them."

Mollazade recalls a violent October 16, 2003, crackdown on opposition
groups by pro-government forces two weeks before Ilham Aliyev's
election. And he says that academics supporting the opposition
(which he says boils down to just five or six people in the 125-seat
National Assembly) are still blacklisted from university positions;
he includes himself in this category. "I am barred from teaching in
the university here," he says.

In drawing parallels with Iran, Mollazade says that in the second
half of the 1970s, Iran had $22 billion in annual oil revenue but
it only benefited the Shah and his government. "The same thing is
happening here." Azerbaijan, he says, is taking $1 billion in annual
oil revenues, a figure expected to reach $5 billion by 2010, "but
nothing has trickled down." The average take-home wage in Azerbaijan,
he points out, is a meagre $50 per month; 42 percent of the country
lives below the poverty line; health insurance is practically
nonexistent; and roughly 3 million Azeri�s have emigrated, mostly to
Russia. And while Azerbaijani law bars religious parties from running
for office (including the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, formed in 1992),
Mollazade says the writing is on the wall. He predicts that "trouble
will come from Islamic extremists. Go to the mosques on Friday. They
are getting fuller each week."

Azerbaijan has also felt the presence of world jihad. In April,
according to the Anti-Defamation League, an Azeri court convicted
16 Al-Qaeda militants of premeditated murder and other charges in
the killing of an Azeri policeman. The terror cell, which reportedly
trained in nearby Georgia, was apparently headed for operations against
the Russian forces in Chechnya, another of Azerbaijan's neighbours.

Mollazade believes that "the magic moment for democratic change
passed and we lost time," and that in a few years, he himself will
be against democratic elections in Azerbaijan because that will bring
on the ayatollahs. Look what happened in Palestine and in Iraq."

But Shaffer, who knows and likes Mollazade, think his pessimism
is overstated. Speaking broadly, she says oil-producing societies,
such as Azerbaijan, often have problems of corruption. "It happens
in democratic societies too. There's just too much money floating
around." Aliyev, she points out, is taking steps in the right direction
and she is particularly encouraged by his "professional" appointments.

Ticking off a list, she says, "The head of the state oil fund
is a Harvard grad, full of motivation and a gem. The minister of
communication studied all aspects of the issues, even coming to Israel
to study privatization here. The foreign minister is a savvy diplomat
who knows Washington." Shaffer says corruption is hard to measure in
countries like Azerbaijan, where there is a strong cultural imperative
to assist one's relatives, a concept Westerners view as corruption,
but Azeri�s consider a moral duty. Also, she points out that high
corruption ratings in international indices are sometimes indicative
of an open society where people don't fear telling the truth. "In
Syria there's no corruption," she says ironically.

Shaffer agrees that much of Azerbaijan, especially in the periphery,
is poor and that more rural people are leaving their homes to try
their luck in the cities. But one indicator signalling that life
has improved somewhat is reflected in the lifestyle of a socially
"unconnected" Azeri family with whom she has lived intermittently for
over a decade. "They didn't have running water in 1997; now they own a
large apartment with a computer, and their son studies at university,"
she says.

The 42-year-old San Francisco-born Shaffer, who immigrated to Israel at
age 18 and developed a passion for Azerbaijan because of its tolerant
Muslim ethos, also disputes Molladaze's assertion that Israeli
and American Jooish support was misguided. "Azerbaijani religious
tolerance," she says, "is real, and considering what's going on in the
world today, is extraordinary. Not only is it Muslim Shiite, it's
one of the few places in the world where a Joo or Israeli can visit
and feel completely normal and accepted." Indeed trinket-seller Haji
Zohrab, a religious Muslim who recently returned from the pilgrimage to
Mecca, is hard-pressed to say anything anti-Israel. "I watch CNN and
see the bloodshed" between the Israelis and Palestinians, he told me
in the course of a lengthy conversation in his cluttered, rug-filled
Baku shop. "I am pained to see the loss of life on both sides."

Foreign Minister Mammadyarov, for his part, doesn't deny that
Azerbaijan is plagued by corruption or the perception that it lacks
democracy. "We have problems and we are trying to confront them. We
are a young country." Lenk too prefers to dwell on the pragmatics
of Azerbaijan's political reality. "They are a small state in a very
difficult neighbourhood," he says, adding, "not unlike Israel."

Historian Fuad Akhudov, like Molladaze, takes pride in the Azerbaijani
renaissance of the early 1920s. He and I spend an afternoon wandering
around downtown Baku, where many sidewalks are crumbling and traffic
lights are practically nonexistent, making it dangerous to cross
a street. His passion for Baku is evident in the heavy folder
of historical postcards he carries. The propensity for accepting
authoritarian regimes, from the Russians of the 19th century to the
Soviets and others of the 20th, he says, is a tragedy rooted in the
national character, which he calls, "peaceful and accepting."

Akhudov and I sit in a park studying the elegant structures erected
in the late 19th century by oil baron and philanthropist Zeinalabdin
Tagiev, which are now part of a local Baku college. We also explore
the baronial home of Shamsi Assadullayev, on Gogol Street (in fact,
most Russian street names have been replaced), and are shown around
by a Russian woman who lived there in Soviet times, in a communal
apartment carved out of a grand dining room. "A Jooish family once
lived there," she says, pointing to a room near the kitchen, "but
they left for Israel." The woman has since managed to consolidate the
apartment, which she rents for "many hundreds of dollars" per month,
attesting to the growing demand in Baku for attractive housing.

At the trendy Picasso cafe, Akhudov, who respectfully put on a skullcap
when visiting the local synagogues with me, says he feels "indebted"
to Azerbaijan's Joos. "They were the intellectual elite in Baku,
the best doctors, musicians. But most have gone. It's sad."

Shaffer notes what she calls "positive anti-Semitism," in which Joos
are idealized, is widespread in Azerbaijan. "Joos are assumed to be
the smartest in the class." With most of Azerbaijan's Joos now gone,"
she says, a whole generation of Azeri�s will grow up without knowing
them or valuing them. It concerns me."

Akhudov says he's now planning to emulate the Joos and emigrate too.

He's thinking of Canada. He doesn't speak directly against the
government but says he feels as if he has no future in Azerbaijan.

Their pace of improvements, he says diplomatically, is too slow. "And
we Azeri�s are too patient."

**Lernakan** · 10-10-2007, 02:38 PM

Re: The Azeri Triangle

Depleted Ranks

By Netty C. Gross

Three hundred students, 80 percent of them Sephardi, are enrolled at
the Orthodox co-ed Or Avner Chabad Educational School, which opened
in 2002 in a walled-off complex in Baku, where most of Azerbaijan's
estimated 16,000 Joos live. The school - whose $1-million budget is
covered in full by Israeli tycoon Lev Leviev - is popular, in part
because of its full-day mixed secular and Jooish curriculum, and its
freshly cooked lunches, but also because it charges no tuition.

Admission requirements are liberal, though applicants are asked if
their mothers are Jooish. Forty percent of the pupils are of mixed
Jooish-Muslim parentage, creating some unique problems, reports
school rabbi Meir Bruk, who is also Azerbaijan's chief Ashkenazi
rabbi. Two years ago, about a dozen students "fasted on Yom Kippur
for their mothers, and during Ramadan for their fathers," and last
year two maintained both fasts. "Kids who study here have a more
pronounced Jooish identity," he says.

In fact, the mixed-marriage pupils get a break when it comes to
prayer, which is forbidden at all schools by Azerbaijan's laws
separating religion and state. Surprisingly Bruk, who says his
pupils are generally not from observant homes, isn't bothered by the
restriction. "Those rules are directed at Islamic fundamentalists
who are trying to stir up trouble here, not us. We are very patriotic
Azeri’s."

At the same time a pronounced nationalist and Zionist ethos,
underscoring the close ties between Azerbaijan and Israel, wafts
through the cheerful corridors of the immaculate main building. Walls
are covered with student artwork relating to Israel; flags of
Azerbaijan and pictures of its president are proudly displayed.

There's also a prominent memorial dedicated to Albert Agranov, a young
Azerbaijani Jooish conscript who died in 1992 in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict.

With support from overseas provided in some cases by Azeri Jooish
emigrants or American Joos, several new Jooish projects have opened
in recent years. The American Jooish Joint Distribution Committee,
for example, has raised millions of dollars for a new JCC-style Jooish
Community House in Baku, which also received Holocaust restitution
grants from the New York-based Claims Conference.

According to its director, Meir Zizov, 110 elderly Holocaust survivors
or refugees from the Nazi regime and from other parts of the former
Soviet Union receive assistance. In 2003, Leviev and others renovated
Baku's Ashkenazi synagogue, which is mainly used by foreigners and
visitors.

Against all this vibrancy stands the old Mountain Joo synagogue in
Baku, which once served the city's dominant community of Joos from
the Caucasus. Unlike its Ashkenazi counterpart, the synagogue is old
and traditional; the beadle, or shamash, politely asks me to don
a headscarf before entering the main sanctuary, with its ornately
decorated Torah ark. Though neat and well-cared for, there is a
sadness here. Each seat in the U-shaped pews is marked by a miniature
hand-woven carpet, but the shamash laments that "our community is
almost gone." Of his 10 siblings, he's the only one left in Baku;
all the others have moved to Israel.

His lament takes on special poignancy when I visit the Jooish Agency
headquarters in Baku, a large, airy building with sky-blue walls.

Wandering around the cheerful structure, which is staffed by young,
hip-looking Azeri Joos in jeans who listen to loud American rock music
while they work, I find a packed classroom of adults who are studying
Hebrew with an eye toward aliya. One man says that he knows the dangers
of life in Israel, "because your Muslims are not peaceful like ours,"
but he wants a "better life for my children. There is no future here."

Emigration to Israel, Russia and Germany has decimated the Jooish
community of Azerbaijan - there are today an estimated 10,000 to
16,000 Joos, down from some 80,000 until the early 1990s. Indeed,
the dilemma facing those remaining is whether to stay behind and
help bolster Jooish identity or to emigrate. One of the ironies of
the Jooish exodus is that Joos "have more options than ever here,"
says Prof. Michael Chlenov, Moscow-based secretary general of the
Euro-Asian Jooish Congress.

There are about twice as many Mountain Joos as Ashkenazim, and Baku
also has about 500 Joos from nearby Georgia. Local legend has it that
the Mountain Joos, who speak their own dialect called Judeo-Tat, are
descended from the 10 lost tribes who were exiled from Israel in 722
BCE and settled in the Caucasus Mountains. Some local Mountain Joos
tell a different story: that their forefathers emigrated from what
is now Iran in the mid-18th century and established Krasnaya Sloboda,
around the city of Quba in the highlands of northern Azerbaijan.

According to some accounts, all-Jooish Krasnaya Sloboda once had a
population of as much as 18,000; after World War II and emigration,
only 4,000 remain. Occasional anti-Semitic acts, including a pogrom
in the 1920s, have marred generally peaceful relations.

European Ashkenazim arrived in Baku in the early 19th century, after
the annexation of Azerbaijan to Russia. Members of the professional
elite, most of the Ashkenazim live in Baku. Mountain Jooish businessmen
who prospered in the capital have moved on to Moscow, Chlenov says.

Joos started drifting out of Azerbaijan in the mid-1970s but emigration
reached its peak in the early 1990s. The Azeri government says it
still keeps an eye out for its native sons and daughters.

Over an elegant fish dinner at the chic Aqua Marine restaurant in Baku,
Nazim Ibrahimov, the dapper Muslim chair of the state's committee
on Azerbaijanis living in foreign countries, says his office gets
regular updates on Joos in Israel. "I know they have some problems
and we have it on our agenda," he says vaguely, referring to the
immigrant experience of Mountain Joos in Israel, which has been
plagued by unemployment, crime and other social ills.

I ask how safe Joos are in Azerbaijan, pointing out that all the
Jooish institutions in Baku appear to be protected by armed guards.

Ibrahimov says the security is "just a precaution." Matvey Elizarov,
vice president of the World Congress of Mountain Joos, adds that Joos
walk freely around Baku with kippot on their heads. "The tolerance
is real," he says. And even if it isn't, says another well-connected
dinner participant, "it's good for the Azeri’s to think it is."

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