Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06BAKU433
2006-03-22 07:23:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Baku
Cable title:  

EUR A/S FRIED DISCUSSES DEMOCRACY, IRAN, ISLAM

Tags:  PHUM KDEM PGOV PREL PINR KISL AJ IR 
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PP RUEHBC RUEHDBU RUEHDE RUEHKUK RUEHLH RUEHMOS RUEHPW
DE RUEHKB #0433/01 0810723
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 220723Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY BAKU
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 9905
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNIRA/IRAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNISL/ISLAMIC COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHAK/AMEMBASSY ANKARA PRIORITY 1550
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHDC PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
RUEKDIA/DIA WASHDC PRIORITY
RHMFISS/CDR USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE PRIORITY
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BAKU 000433 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/CARC AND NEA/NGA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/16/2016
TAGS: PHUM KDEM PGOV PREL PINR KISL AJ IR
SUBJECT: EUR A/S FRIED DISCUSSES DEMOCRACY, IRAN, ISLAM
WITH AZERBAIJANI CIVIL SOCIETY LEADERS

Classified By: Ambassador Reno L. Harnish, III, reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)
.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BAKU 000433

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/CARC AND NEA/NGA

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/16/2016
TAGS: PHUM KDEM PGOV PREL PINR KISL AJ IR
SUBJECT: EUR A/S FRIED DISCUSSES DEMOCRACY, IRAN, ISLAM
WITH AZERBAIJANI CIVIL SOCIETY LEADERS

Classified By: Ambassador Reno L. Harnish, III, reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)
.


1. (C) SUMMARY. In a meeting with Azerbaijan's civil society
leaders, EUR A/S Dan Fried discussed democratization, Iran,
and Islamic extremism. Many civil society leaders noted a
disengagement from politics by the population after the
November elections failed to meet their high expectations.
While some characterized Azerbaijan as becoming another
Uzbekistan, others would not go so far. The most important
actions the GOAJ could take, in their view, included
releasing political prisoners, punishing police misconduct,
reforming the election commissions to remove unfair GOAJ
advantages, and actually implementing its own election laws.
While Imam Ilgar Ibrahimoglu stoutly denied the existence of
any form of Islamic extremism in Azerbaijan and held
"provocative" Western actions entirely responsible for recent
Iranian policies, others noted attempts by both Iran and
Saudi Arabia to build up Islamic extremism in Azerbaijan.
Some of the civil society leaders also discussed their own
contacts with democratic elements among the ethnic Azeri
population in Iran, and their attempts to work with those
elements on democracy questions both in Azerbaijan and in
Iran. END SUMMARY.


2. (U) On March 14, Ambassador hosted a tea for leaders of
Azerbaijan's civil society to meet with EUR A/S Dan Fried.
Ambassador, EUR/CARC Director Rood, and EUCOM J5 Eurasia
chief COL Anderson were also present. The civil society
leaders were:

--Rasim Musabayov, independent political analyst
--Nazim Imanov, independent political analyst
--Murad and Rena Saddadinov, human rights activists
--Saida Gojamanly, human rights activist
--Leyla Yunus, human rights activist
--Saadat Benanyarly, human rights activist
--Novella Jafaroglu, human rights activist
--Imam Haji Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, leader of the Juma Mosque

Community

--------------
AFTER THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS
--------------


3. (C) A/S Fried began the meeting by thanking the civil
society leaders for coming and by described his trip so far.
The United States is watching the upcoming rerun elections
closely and Fried urged the civil society leaders to take an
active part in them. He added that recent events in Ukraine
are focusing renewed interest on Caspian energy. Finally,
the issue of Iranian policy and behavior is again in the news
in the region and in the United States. Fried asked for the
opinion of the civil society leaders on Azerbaijan after the
November election, and, noting that he would see President
Aliyev later that day, asked what issues would they like him
to raise with the Azerbaijani leader.


4. (C) Leyla Yunus said the elections had been damaging as
people's high expectations had been disappointed. President
Aliyev's two decrees had sparked hope, but the decrees had
not been carried out and ultimately were a Soviet-style
trick. Detentions had risen following the elections, not one
police officer had been tried for misconduct, and the courts
were taking no action. Azerbaijan, she said, is following
the path of Uzbekistan. The new Ministry of Emergency
Situations would likely become a new vehicle for repression,
she added. Given this situation, she feels it is hard to
decide if participating in the rerun elections is worth it.
As far as a message for President Aliyev, Yunus said he
should be told to punish police misconduct, release political
prisoners, and change the structure of election commissions
to remove the GOAJ's unfair advantage. Yunus then presented
A/S Fried with her list of political prisoners (NOTE: The
Council of Europe currently lists three political prisoners).


5. (C) Saida Gojamanly said her organization is awaiting the
2005 Human Rights Report with interest. She noted that an
official who engaged in direct suppression of the 2003
demonstrations is now serving as a Deputy Minister of the

BAKU 00000433 002 OF 004


Interior and might even become Minister. Where is the U.S.
reaction to this, she asked rhetorically (NOTE: This was
noted in the most recent Human Rights Report). Always, she
said, people have hoped that the "next" elections would be
better, but election laws have never been implemented. The
annulled elections, she claimed, are all in constituencies
where opposition candidates won. The still-unsolved murder
of journalist Eldar Husseynov is a frightening warning of
what can happen. President Aliyev, said Gojamanly, should
definitely be told to release political prisoners but should
also be told to watch his own officials closely and see that
they actually implement election laws and his own decrees.


6. (C) Novella Jafaroglu said bluntly that civil society
groups "have no influence" in Azerbaijan. As far as what to
tell President Aliyev, she said that protecting freedom of
expression would be a nice idea but that right in the
abstract does not do much. For example, journalists like
Elmar Husseynov are killed, others are wounded or
intimidated. The courts are not making fair decisions, she
added, whenever these matters are brought to judicial
attentions. There is a real downside for middle-class
persons trying to enter politics, she noted -- they can have
their assets and property "appropriated" by the GOAJ
overnight. This, she argued, is an effective tool to keep
them silent. The Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) issue is also
exploited to distract attention and keep the public in line.
In a sense, this is made easier for the GOAJ, she believes,
by the fact that Azerbaijan is a presidential republic, which
concentrates great power in a single individual. Jafaroglu
then presented A/S Fried with her organization's final report
on police misconduct during the November 26 demonstrations.


7. (C) Nazim Imanov believes that Azerbaijan's people have
lost interest in politics and have done so for two reasons.
First, their heightened expectations of the most recent
elections were not met -- and since the elections, the GOAJ
has not made needed changes or reforms. A second reason is
the lack of progress on N-K and the failure of the
Rambouillet talks -- people are getting more interested in a
military resolution because they believe a peaceful solution
is not possible any more. Gojamanly spoke up and reminded
the group of President Aliyev's donning of military fatigues
and visiting the line of contact after the Rambouillet talks
failed.


8. (C) Saadat Benanyarly said that the conduct of the
November elections greatly reduced the public's trust in any
future elections. Finger-inking and other innovations were
ultimately not crucial -- vote-counting was. The
middle-class also was substantially intimidated before the
vote. Nazim Imanov actually won a seat, but in the
vote-count his seat was stolen from him. Since the
elections, prices have risen and the standard of living has
decreased, said Benanyarly. This has hurt professionals
especially -- doctors, teachers, et cetera -- and contributed
to the souring of the public mood.


9. (C) Murat Saddadinov said that he does not see Azerbaijan
as another Uzbekistan -- to him, it is more like a second
Belarus and developing on the same pattern, with expansion of
Russian business interests in-country. When former Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright met with then-Minister of
Economic Development Farhad Aliyev during her visit last year
on behalf of NDI, the GOAJ spun the meeting as a planning
session for a revolution, similar to Belarus-style
propaganda. Civil society activists have to stick together,
said Saddadinov. Power in Azerbaijan is built on corruption,
he asserted. He agreed that the issue of political prisoners
definitely should be raised with President Aliyev.

--------------
IRAN AND ISLAMIC EXTREMISM
--------------


10. (C) Imanov noted how Azerbaijani society is constantly
discussing the issue of Iran and possible military action by
the United States. Imanov said that he himself does not
believe the United States will begin military operations
against Iran, but that a majority of Azerbaijanis do not want

BAKU 00000433 003 OF 004


to see such an operation because they worry about how it
would affect Azerbaijan. Imanov also noted that many Iranian
Azeris are buying houses in Azerbaijan proper -- as many as
50,000 families total. Why they are doing this is unknown.
Novella Jafaroglu noted that her organization has worked with
500 ethnic Azeri students from Iran, to bring evolutionary
change by teaching democratic values. She also said that her
organization has contact with pro-democracy Iranian Azeris in
Iran.


11. (C) Imam Haji Ilgar Ibrahimoglu said that he didn't like
the use of the term "Islamofascism" by some Americans and
noted with displeasure that twenty American states had
established "A Day Against Islamofascism." Ibrahimoglu said
that this kind of rhetoric, plus events in Iraq and at
Guantanamo, had affected Iranian public opinion. Liberal
under former President Khatami, Iran had now turned in a
radical direction because of this kind of behavior by the
West. Ibrahimoglu said that he has been fighting for
democracy, that in fact he was the only one of the civil
society activists who had been detained, and that there are
no organizations in Azerbaijan trying to advance
Iranian-style Islamic extremism.


12. (C) Leyla Yunus noted that her organization has spent six
years working on the issue of Islamic extremism and that both
Iran and Saudi Arabia have spent considerable amounts of
money in Azerbaijan. During the recent controversy over the
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, there were two large
rallies in Baku. Where did the people come from, she asked
rhetorically. Who organized this? Islamic extremism is
being built up in the Sunni north by Saudi Arabia and in the
Shia south by Iran. Yunus said that her organization has
compiled a report on this topic. A/S Fried expressed
interest in seeing the report.

--------------
WHAT THE POLLS SHOW
--------------


13. (C) Rasim Musaybayov said that his colleagues had made
some good points but that there is more to the story.
Azerbaijan is not Uzbekistan, he said. While the elections
were 100 per cent controlled by the GOAJ, they were not 100
per cent fraudulent. Regarding N-K, Musaybayov said that his
organization's polls show that many still believe a peaceful
solution is possible. Polls also show the United States in
third place as a "friend of Azerbaijan" -- behind Turkey and
Russia -- but the United States has never made the list of
"enemies of Azerbajan". Interestingly, Iran makes both the
list o "friends" and the list of "enemies" -- which
Musabayov notes as reflecting Iran's intense activity in
Azerbaijan. Saadat Benanyarly parenthetically noted that new
polls of N-K refugees show increasing radicalization
following the failure of Rambouillet.


14. (C) Musaybayov also noted that many of the officials who
talk privately about "managed democracy" still end up sending
their children to school in Western countries, not Russia.
Despite some dissatisfaction with the West, support for the
"Islamic model" has not grown. The underlying trends are
favorable, and a majority is behind democracy as the only
path to development. Novella Jafaroglu agreed that this is
true but that the public has not seen democracy yet. Leyla
Yunus agreed, saying that the trend is not towards the
development of democracy in Azerbaijan, but rather towards
increasing lack of respect for rule of law on the part of the
GOAJ. Saida Gojamanly noted that the large number of
official Russian visits to Azerbaijan has given the public
the impression that Azerbaijan is "between" the West and
Russia, not a part of the West.

--------------
A/S FRIED RESPONDS
--------------


15. (C) A/S Fried thanked the civil society leaders for
airing their views. On Iran, Fried stressed that the United
States is pursuing a diplomatic solution, and that a
diplomatic solution can work because Iranian society does not

BAKU 00000433 004 OF 004


appear to want to be isolated. The sensitivity the Iranian
regime has shown to the question of Iran being referred to
the UN Security Council, said Fried, suggests that they
really may be worried. The United States is not interested
in military operations but is interested in reaching out to
the Iranian people in a positive way. It is perfectly
legitimate, Fried added, for Azerbaijan to be concerned about
Iran -- and in his opinion, Iran is a much bigger security
threat to Azerbaijan than Armenia is. The United States
wants Azerbaijan to feel secure. Fried noted that he does
not use the term "Islamofascism" but that he does use the
term "Islamism", and that all religions are capable of
generating anti-democratic ideologies.


16. (C) Fried noted that the group had discussed several
major issues but had not touched on oil revenue management.
He said the issue is an important one, closely related to the
issue of corruption, and that he hoped civil society
organizations would engage the issue. On political reform,
Fried said that Azerbaijan is not a democracy but it is not
another Uzbekistan either, and that there is a difference
between the two. The United States must balance support for
reforms that do occur against criticism of antidemocratic
actions that also take place, and concluded by thanking the
group again for a frank and constructive dialogue.


17. (U) A/S Fried has cleared this cable.
HARNISH