The Voice of Mirza Xazar

AZERBAIJAN: EVALUATING THE RADICAL ISLAMIC SECURITY THREAT
Rovshan Ismayilov: 11/30/07

The recent arrests of suspected Islamic radicals in Azerbaijan have spurred concern about possible terrorism incidents. Political analysts in Baku tend to downplay the threat. Meanwhile, moderate Islamic religious leaders contend that government security sweeps have created an “atmosphere of fear” among mainstream believers.

The terrorism scare began in late October, when the Ministry of National Security announced the break up of an Islamic militant group that had been plotting attacks against foreign targets in Baku. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The announcement prompted the brief closure of US and British diplomatic offices in Baku. Some group members who evaded arrest during the initial October 27 raid, carried out an attack against a Lukoil gas station three days later. The last member of the group at large, identified as Bakhtiar Orujov, was ultimately taken into custody November 20.

On November 6, authorities detained eight Islamic militants affiliated with a second group, including a foreigner, identified only as Abu Jafar, who was characterized in a ministry statement as an operative affiliated with the al Qaeda international terrorist organization. The arrests came after security forces engaged in a cat-and-mouse-like search for more than a month, painstakingly sifting information that finally led them to a safe house in Sumgayit, where the militants were seized.

The fact that the ringleader of the first group was a military officer, Lt. Kamran Asadov, prompted widespread concern that radical Islamic ideology, termed by many in Azerbaijan as Wahhabism, is gaining a foothold in state structures. On November 30, Eldar Safarov, chief spokesman for the Defense Ministry, adamantly denied that the military had become a hotbed of militant Islamic sentiment. “There are no radical religious groups under the title Wahhabism in Azerbaijani military units,” the Trend news agency quoted Safarov as saying. At the same time, he noted that the Defense Ministry had “reinforced measures” to prevent the infiltration of radical Islamic ideology into the military.

Since the first announcement about arrests in late October, government officials have sought to project a sense of normalcy and continuity. “There is total stability in Azerbaijan and law-enforcement agencies are keeping the situation under control. Not only foreign embassies, but all citizens have no problems with security threats,” Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov said at press conference on October 30.

The arrests began shortly after a sudden visit to Baku by CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden to Azerbaijan. Many local experts believe the CIA director may have shared information with Azerbaijani law-enforcement agencies that enabled them to launch the security operations. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Azerbaijani broadcast and print media outlets have devoted lots of attention to the arrests of suspected Wahhabis. Baku-based political analysts are urging caution in evaluating the security threat, suggesting that local media may be exaggerating the danger. One Baku expert, Rasim Musabekov, said the greatest threat perhaps was that a clampdown on suspected radicals would result in the restriction of civil liberties. Musabekov specifically worried that steps to heighten surveillance could end up imposing burdens on the legitimate expression of spiritual beliefs by those “who express their religious feelings in different forms from others.”

Recent events appear to have rendered Islamic leaders at Azerbaijani mosques with conservative reputations more sensitive to outside scrutiny. When queried about the arrests of militants, Gamet Suleymanov – the imam of the Abu-Bekr Mosque in central Baku, once described by a government official as a “den of Wahhabis” – refused to comment. “I have nothing to do with it,” Suleymanov said.

Meanwhile, Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, the imam at Baku’s Juma mosque, accused authorities of casting a net too broadly, thereby ensnaring devout believers along with a few militants. Security forces had created an “atmosphere of fear” among devout believers, the imam said. “Religious people of Sumgayit city have lived in fear during the last weeks. The Ministry for National Security conducted operations there, but residents were kept in the dark,” added Ibrahimoglu, an outspoken defender of religious rights in Azerbaijan. In 2004, he led resistance to government efforts to close the Juma Mosque, which is known for its progressive social activities. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Law-enforcement agencies instituted heightened security procedures in the wake of the arrests. Heavily armed police patrols were stationed at check points along the country’s main roads and around the outskirts of Baku, stopping vehicles and conducting searches.

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance journalist based in Baku.

/www.eurasianet.org/

AZERBAIJAN: EVALUATING THE RADICAL ISLAMIC SECURITY THREAT
Rovshan Ismayilov: 11/30/07

The recent arrests of suspected Islamic radicals in Azerbaijan have spurred concern about possible terrorism incidents. Political analysts in Baku tend to downplay the threat. Meanwhile, moderate Islamic religious leaders contend that government security sweeps have created an “atmosphere of fear” among mainstream believers.

The terrorism scare began in late October, when the Ministry of National Security announced the break up of an Islamic militant group that had been plotting attacks against foreign targets in Baku. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The announcement prompted the brief closure of US and British diplomatic offices in Baku. Some group members who evaded arrest during the initial October 27 raid, carried out an attack against a Lukoil gas station three days later. The last member of the group at large, identified as Bakhtiar Orujov, was ultimately taken into custody November 20.

On November 6, authorities detained eight Islamic militants affiliated with a second group, including a foreigner, identified only as Abu Jafar, who was characterized in a ministry statement as an operative affiliated with the al Qaeda international terrorist organization. The arrests came after security forces engaged in a cat-and-mouse-like search for more than a month, painstakingly sifting information that finally led them to a safe house in Sumgayit, where the militants were seized.

The fact that the ringleader of the first group was a military officer, Lt. Kamran Asadov, prompted widespread concern that radical Islamic ideology, termed by many in Azerbaijan as Wahhabism, is gaining a foothold in state structures. On November 30, Eldar Safarov, chief spokesman for the Defense Ministry, adamantly denied that the military had become a hotbed of militant Islamic sentiment. “There are no radical religious groups under the title Wahhabism in Azerbaijani military units,” the Trend news agency quoted Safarov as saying. At the same time, he noted that the Defense Ministry had “reinforced measures” to prevent the infiltration of radical Islamic ideology into the military.

Since the first announcement about arrests in late October, government officials have sought to project a sense of normalcy and continuity. “There is total stability in Azerbaijan and law-enforcement agencies are keeping the situation under control. Not only foreign embassies, but all citizens have no problems with security threats,” Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov said at press conference on October 30.

The arrests began shortly after a sudden visit to Baku by CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden to Azerbaijan. Many local experts believe the CIA director may have shared information with Azerbaijani law-enforcement agencies that enabled them to launch the security operations. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Azerbaijani broadcast and print media outlets have devoted lots of attention to the arrests of suspected Wahhabis. Baku-based political analysts are urging caution in evaluating the security threat, suggesting that local media may be exaggerating the danger. One Baku expert, Rasim Musabekov, said the greatest threat perhaps was that a clampdown on suspected radicals would result in the restriction of civil liberties. Musabekov specifically worried that steps to heighten surveillance could end up imposing burdens on the legitimate expression of spiritual beliefs by those “who express their religious feelings in different forms from others.”

Recent events appear to have rendered Islamic leaders at Azerbaijani mosques with conservative reputations more sensitive to outside scrutiny. When queried about the arrests of militants, Gamet Suleymanov – the imam of the Abu-Bekr Mosque in central Baku, once described by a government official as a “den of Wahhabis” – refused to comment. “I have nothing to do with it,” Suleymanov said.

Meanwhile, Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, the imam at Baku’s Juma mosque, accused authorities of casting a net too broadly, thereby ensnaring devout believers along with a few militants. Security forces had created an “atmosphere of fear” among devout believers, the imam said. “Religious people of Sumgayit city have lived in fear during the last weeks. The Ministry for National Security conducted operations there, but residents were kept in the dark,” added Ibrahimoglu, an outspoken defender of religious rights in Azerbaijan. In 2004, he led resistance to government efforts to close the Juma Mosque, which is known for its progressive social activities. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Law-enforcement agencies instituted heightened security procedures in the wake of the arrests. Heavily armed police patrols were stationed at check points along the country’s main roads and around the outskirts of Baku, stopping vehicles and conducting searches.

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance journalist based in Baku.

/www.eurasianet.org/

SUMGAYIT JOURNAL: WITH MORE JOBS, MORE SMOG

Khadija Ismayilova

10/27/07

Amidst a hydrocarbon-fueled economic boom, the factories in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgayit, a former capital of the Soviet Union’s chemical industry, are back at work again, with questionable environmental results.

Built in the 1950s to the north of Baku, Sumgayit in Soviet days produced a cocktail of toxic chemicals ranging from lindane to (until 1981) DDT. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sumgayit became little more than an industrial cemetery. Tens of thousands of its inhabitants left.

Today, the city’s official population stands at 270, 000 and jobs are beginning to return: between 2003 and 2006, some 25,000 new positions were created, according to government statistics. Most of the work centers on the manufacture of chemical products for use in oil refineries, pipes and polyester.

But concurrent with the return of jobs, there has been a reappearance of "gazovka," or smog.

Twenty years ago, it would have passed unnoticed, one 55-year-old Sumgayit resident claims. "[W]e did not know the difference," commented Arifa Aliyeva. "But after the factories stopped working in the early years of independence, we saw the difference between polluted and clean air."

Considerable debate now surrounds how "clean" Sumgayit’s air has actually become, and whether sufficient safeguards are in place to prevent a return to Soviet smog levels.

For its part, the government maintains that current emissions are a fraction of rates from the late Soviet era. The Ministry of the Environment reports that over 11,000 tons of waste from natural gas emissions were released into the atmosphere in 2006 compared with just over 74,003 tons in 1990. Production of solid wastes has dropped from 165,144 tons in 1990 to 2,198 in 2006. Meanwhile, the government claims that wastewater emissions by the city of Sumgayit into the Caspian Sea have decreased nearly three-fold, to 76.9 million cubic meters in 2006.

"The situation is much, much better now," asserted ministry spokesperson Irada Ibrahimova.

Not all pollution activists agree. In 2006, the Blacksmith Institute, a New York City-based environmental watchdog, listed Sumgayit among the 10 most polluted sites in the world, including Ukraine’s Chernobyl and Russia’s Norilsk. The government says that the data used is 10 years out of date.

Azerbaijani environmental watchdog groups agree that Blacksmith’s data is old, but add that more recent information and statistics are largely inaccurate or incomplete. Serious problems still exist, they say.

Arif Islamzade, director of the Center for Environmental Rehabilitation of Sumgayit, one of the more serious health problems is connected to the use in local factories of sodium hydroxide, a material used in petroleum production. Islamzade claims that high quantities of metallic elemental mercury are used to produce the sodium hydroxide, and remain in waste released into the atmosphere. Mercury vapor can have severe effects on the respiratory system.

Islamzade claimed that local factories have stopped using a government-run disposal unit for sodium hydroxide since they cannot afford the usage fees charged. Ministry officials said that they had no such information.

Part of the problem is that most Soviet-era factories still in operation have been allowed to continue functioning without official certification that their operations meet environmental regulations. "They were approved when they started working back in Soviet times," said Gahraman Khalilov, head of the Ministry of the Environment’s industrial department. "We certify only new production sites."

Residents name Sumgayit’s Aluminum and Composite Design factories among the chief polluters. Composite Design, a new factory, is the main supplier of plastic pipes for a new water pipeline project between Baku and Gabala in northeastern Azerbaijan. The Aluminum Factory has existed since Soviet times.

Gazanfar Aliyev, head of the Environment Ministry department that oversees Sumgayit, says that repeated warnings to the aluminum plant about its emissions have gone unheeded. The Composite Design production line, however, is "clean," he claims.

Aluminum factory officials could not be reached for comment.

Identifying the location of land waste dumps from the Soviet past only adds to the problem. Ten houses have recently gone up on land between Sumgayit and Baku deemed uninhabitable by the Environment Ministry. Ministry officials state that they had notified city authorities to stop the land sales, but to no avail.

But most of Sumgayit’s inhabitants, however, do not understand the potential threat posed by the factories, Islamzade adds. The younger generation "is more interested in having jobs than in the environment," he says, adding that older residents’ criticism "does not go beyond conversations in coffee shops."

To domestic and international environmental activists, the red flag for Sumgayit’s pollution problems has long been its infant mortality rate, the highest in the country. Azerbaijan’s State Statistics Committee puts the rate at 20.8 children per 1,000 live births, compared with the national rate of 9.8.

Data from the United Nations shows an even higher death rate: 74 children per 1,000 live births in 2000, the latest year for which data has been released, according to the organization.

Yet environment ministry spokesperson Ibrahimova argues that Sumgayit’s high infant mortality rate is "not necessarily" the result of pollution. It is up to health officials to find out the real cause, she asserts. Meanwhile, Sumgayit residents are holding on. "We understand that the country is developing and that now the situation with unemployment is not as bad as it used to be," commented 70-year-old retired schoolteacher Zuleykha Gasimova. "But I hope they will also think about people’s health and do something about pollution."

Editor’s Note: Khadija Ismayilova is a freelance reporter based in Baku.

(www.eurasianet.org)