Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War

17. 1994–2001: No War, No Peace

17 1994–2001 NoWar, No Peace ALIEV’S STABILITY In May 1994, both Armenia and Azerbaijan entered a state of frozen conflict, in which mass violence had ended but the political dispute was unresolved. Armenia spent the next few years in continuous political turbulence; Azerbaijan, unable to develop peacefully, was condemned to the suffocating order imposed by Heidar Aliev. President Aliev used the end of fighting to begin stamping his control on Azerbaijan. He gradually cleared the field of actual or would-be opponents, beginning with the army. In August 1994, a group of army commanders, including the former defense minister Rahim Gaziev and the Popular Front commander Arif Pashayev, were put on trial for allegedly having surrendered Shusha to the Armenians two years before. In October 1994, the president was in New York when he heard that assassins had killed the deputy speaker of parliament, Afiyettin Jalilov, and that elements of the paramilitary police force, the OPON (successor to the OMON), were in revolt. Aliev hurried back to Baku, where, with theatrical suddenness, he turned on Prime Minister Suret Husseinov and accused him of plotting to seize power. Husseinov fled to Russia to join Gaziev, who had mysteriously escaped from prison. In Moscow, the two men revealed where their deep loyalties lay by declaring support for the former president Mutalibov. Later both men were extradited to Azerbaijan and given long prison sentences. Having dealt with the pro-Russian opposition, Aliev turned on a different set of enemies. In March 1995, the OPON leader, Rovshan Javadov, who had been cleared of involvement in the previous coup attempt , seized a barracks in Baku and refused calls to disarm. Aliev sent in government troops to quell the rebellion. Dozens of men were killed, including Javadov, who died of blood loss on his way to hospital. The 251 shadowy backers of this uprising were never identified but appear to have included rogue elements of the Turkish security establishment and members of the “Gray Wolves” Bozkurt movement. Among those arrested and jailed this time was the local Bozkurt leader and former interior minister, Iskender Hamidov. By now Aliev had acquired a priceless strategic card to play in his drive to stabilize his country in Azerbaijan’s oil resources. In 1994, some experts began to predict another Baku oil boom. Some initial predictions that the Caspian Sea could be a new Persian Gulf were wildly optimistic , but more sober assessments suggested that it could at least become a second North Sea and eventually provide as much as 5 percent of world oil output. In 1993, shortly before he was overthrown, Azerbaijan’s then president , Abulfaz Elchibey, had been negotiating contracts with Western companies to develop Caspian oil fields. The talks resumed under Aliev but were hampered by demands for bribes by Azerbaijani officials (one reportedly asked BP [British Petroleum] for a 360-million-dollar down payment in return for a signature on the contract). In the autumn of 1994, the government eventually signed a contract to develop three oil fields with a consortium of companies that had joined together to form the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC). The deal was estimated to be worth eight billion dollars and was dubbed the “contract of the century.” The Azerbaijani president worked on building a broad international coalition of support for the new oil projects. Initially, Russia was central to his plans. He assumed that the oil would flow through Russian pipelines and the Russian oil company Lukoil was given a 10 percent stake in the AIOC consortium. However the lion’s share of the consortium belonged to Western companies, especially BP and Amoco, who began to change Aliev’s political agenda. At American insistence, Aliev had to withdraw an offer of a 5 percent stake in the AIOC to the Iranians. The AIOC was a success. Perhaps the high point of Aliev’s presidency came in November 1997, when, observed by guests from all over the world, the first “early oil” began to flow from the Chiraq field to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa. The ceremony, sending oil to Georgia rather than Russia, also marked Aliev’s full embrace of the West. Three months before, he had made a highly successful visit to Washington, where the Brezhnev-era veteran was feted by such former Cold War252 1994–2001: NO WAR, NO PEACE riors as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger. Anew goal had been...