Earlier in October, Azerbaijani news media reported the death of a professional Azerbaijani wrestler, Rashad Bakhshaliyev, who was killed in Syria while fighting for the Islamic State. The news, which came as a surprise to many in Azerbaijan, underscores an emerging security threat for Azerbaijan.

Hundreds of Azerbaijanis are known to have joined Islamic State (IS) forces in Syria. Concern is starting to build that these battle-hardened jihadists could one day set their sights on challenging President Ilham Aliyev’s administration in Azerbaijan.Salafis have a solid foothold in Azerbaijan, and at least some of them are prone to radicalisation, as the steady stream of Azeris who have left their homeland to go fight in Syria and Iraq demonstrates.

Some prominent militants now fighting in Syria, most notably field commander Hattab al-Azeri, have already started verbally attacking the Aliyev government for its secularism and corruption.

Azerbaijan would seem to make an attractive target for IS jihadists. It is one of the few countries in the world with the Shia Muslim majority population, and the IS is virulently anti-Shia. On a geopolitical level, going after Azerbaijan would also seem attractive for the IS, given Baku’s links to Russia, the United States and Iran, three countries that are among the IS’ chief antagonists.

Azerbaijan itself would seem to present a vulnerable target. While it has a strong security apparatus, widespread corruption has weakened many state institutions in the eyes of the population.

In addition, Azerbaijan is home to a substantial, indigenous community of Salafis, followers of a particularly puritanical interpretation of Sunni Islam. While not all Salafis are apt to become jihadists, jihadists have come from Salafi ranks. There is a danger that at least some non-violent Salafis may sympathize with the goals, if not tactics, of the jihadists and become radicalised.

Virtually unheard of in Azerbaijan until the early 1990s, Salafism has spread rapidly since. No credible data exist on the number of Salafis in Azerbaijan today, but their presence is relatively strong in the Sunni-majority northern parts of the country, the capital city of Baku and the town of Sumgait.

Several factors explain the rise of Salafism in Azerbaijan. First, the long legacy of official Soviet atheism warped the popular understanding of traditional Shia tenets, which for centuries had formed the moral and ethical bedrock of Azerbaijani society.

The Bolsheviks created a spiritual void and inadvertently paved the way for more extreme religious beliefs to fill it once the communist system collapsed in 1991. It is noteworthy that in their efforts to denigrate the Shias, Salafis have made prolific use of derogatory depictions of religious figures, almost entirely Shia, in early Soviet films.

Soviet atheists and post-Soviet Salafis may be strange bedfellows, but, working in tandem, they have succeeded in destroying the traditional religious underpinning of Azeri society.

Anti-Iranian policies carried out by various Azerbaijani governments since the 1990s have contributed to the spread of Salafism. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, isolating Iran was one of the explicit policy goals of successive American administrations.

Officials in Baku at the time believed an alliance with the United States was essential for achieving their own strategic goals, namely regaining control of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. So Azerbaijan readily aligned its policies with a US-promoted regional framework that excluded Iran. This enabled Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, through the establishment of charities and banks, to foster the spread of Salafi beliefs in Azerbaijan.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Azerbaijani authorities saw no reason to take action to check the spread of Salafism. If anything, they saw its proliferation as a healthy counterbalance to Iran’s efforts to export its influence to Azerbaijan. While pro-Iranian Shia elements have been openly critical of the Aliyev administration, Salafis in Azerbaijan have tended to emphasise loyalty to the government and have shied away from political activism.

In recent years, authorities have awakened to the potential Salafi threat. But addressing it now is infinitely more challenging than it would have been a decade ago. Salafis have a solid foothold in Azerbaijan, and at least some of them are prone to radicalisation, as the steady stream of Azeris who have left their homeland to go fight in Syria and Iraq demonstrates.

It is clear that jihadists, especially those now engaged in Syria, do not recognise state borders and consider the entire Muslim world as fertile ground for the expansion of their self-proclaimed “caliphate.” Thus, no Muslim-majority state should feel secure enough to ignore this threat.

The Aliyev administration in recent years has ruthlessly persecuted independent journalists and civil society activists, and the pace and scope of its crackdown has intensified in 2014. Over the same period, Baku has occasionally clashed with the United States and European Union, in particular Germany, over what Azerbaijani officials contend are the West’s “double standards” on human rights.

These policies merely weaken Baku’s ability to address its most serious security threat – the metamorphosis of Salafism into militant Islam. Stability in Azerbaijan would be much better served if Baku focused on taking action that would diminish the potential for international and homegrown jihadism.

Editor’s note:  Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament. He writes in his personal capacity. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

At a cabinet meeting in mid-July, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev lashed out at the European Parliament for supposedly conducting a “dirty campaign” against Baku. The shrill tone of Aliyev’s comments indicates that European pressure on Azerbaijan to respect basic rights is stinging the Aliyev administration.

The latest EU parliamentary resolution critical of Azerbaijan came in June, when European officials called for the release of Ilgar Mammadov, a jailed leader of the opposition Republican Alternative movement.

Euro-criticism in 2012 included the loud and public condemnation by European MPs of an officially orchestrated smear campaign against independent investigative journalist Khadija Ismailova. [Editor’s Note: Ismailova has worked as a contributor to EurasiaNet.org].

Aliyev, who is expected to travel to Brussels to confer with top EU officials in the fall, showed himself to be sensitive to criticism. At the July cabinet meeting, he dismissed the recent European assessments of Azerbaijani policy as the work of a jealous few.

“There are still prejudiced people, [European] parliamentarians who do not accept Azerbaijan’s success, and they are systematically trying to make attacks on Azerbaijan,” he groused, according to comments broadcast on state television.

While official statements critical of Baku’s behavior have succeeded in vexing government officials, if European criticism is actually going to be effective in getting Aliyev & Co. to change its authoritarian ways, it’s important for European officials to dispel some persistent myths among Azerbaijani policymakers surrounding EU actions.

Here are a few widely held assumptions in Baku that European officials should keep in mind as they consider taking the next steps:

1) European criticism of Azerbaijan´s human rights record is the work of the pro-Armenian lobby and other actors who wish to undermine Azerbaijan´s “independent foreign policy”.

Not true. There is no evidence that the members of the European Parliament who are critical of Azerbaijan´s rights practices have any connections to the Armenian lobby or to Russia, which is believed to want to re-integrate Azerbaijan into its own sphere of political and economic influence.

In fact, some critical Euro MPs, such as the Austrian Green Ulrike Lunacek, are on record as demanding the withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.

The reason for European criticisms is simple: the situation of the human rights is deteriorating, in spite of the commitments undertaken voluntarily by Azerbaijan. When the EU offers criticism, it is simply assessing the country on its own merits.

2) Demands for democratisation and respect for human rights are nothing but a smokescreen to promote the regime change.

Not by a long shot. The last thing the EU wants is a new source of instability in an already combustible part of the world. In fact, the EU is quite comfortable with the Aliyev administration, as long as it delivers on energy cooperation and regional security – particularly counter-terrorism, Afghanistan and Iran.

But for the sake of its own credibility, the EU cannot completely ignore human rights issues. It is also in the EU’s self-interest: it needs a government in Baku with enhanced domestic legitimacy as its partner.

Its message to Aliyev seems to be: better to start reforms today, while you can manage a controlled transition from a position of strength, rather than to risk a popular explosion tomorrow. But if the government persists in tightening the screws, and in the meantime, a viable opposition emerges, the calculus might shift in favour of the latter.

3) Azerbaijan is unfairly singled out and is a victim of double standards.

Yes, there are double standards, but they actually work in favour of Azerbaijan. For instance, the European consensus holds that Belarus has nine political prisoners. In Azerbaijan, there are at least several dozens of them.

Yet several Belarussian officials are subjected to EU travel bans and an asset freeze, while the EU has never even considered similar measures against Azerbaijani officials.

Furthermore, ODIHR, the OSCE’s democracy watchdog, has never recognised presidential and parliamentary elections in both Belarus and Azerbaijan as free and fair. But it is only the Belarussian parliament that is not recognised as such by the European Parliament, and which is banned from participation in EURONEST, the parliamentary dimension of the Eastern Partnership.

Azerbaijan´s Milli Mejlis delegation, on the other hand, enjoys full participation rights in inter-parliamentary bodies.

4) The EU ignores the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani lands and the human rights of Azerbaijani IDPs.

Not true. The European Parliament adopted a resolution in 2010 on the need for an EU strategy in the South Caucasus (known as the Kirilov Report) in which it clearly calls for the withdrawal of Armenian forces from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan, and upholds the right to return for Azerbaijani IDPs.

In 2012, in addition to these demands, the European Parliament for the first time linked the conclusion of association agreements with Armenia to progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks, including the withdrawal from occupied territories of Azerbaijan and return of IDPs.

Of course, Azerbaijan could have won more converts to its cause had it stopped sending wrong messages, such as the pardon and promotion of Ramil Safarov, an army officer guilty of the murder of an Armenian counterpart, and the state-orchestrated campaign against Akram Aylisli, a writer who dared to depict a more nuanced picture of the Azeri-Armenian conflict than is usually accepted in Azerbaijan.

5)  There is no point in satisfying EU demands, since Azerbaijan will never be admitted to the EU anyway.

Too simplistic. It is true that the EU has lost its appetite for enlargement, and the example of Turkey’s stalled candidacy lends credence to this assertion. But current fiscal troubles will not last forever, and Europeans might still change their mind on enlargement.

Meanwhile, there are other forms of association with the EU that can be beneficial for Azerbaijan, such as association agreement, free-trade agreement and visa liberalisation.

Most importantly, reforms that conform to EU norms are needed not to satisfy Brussels, but to improve the quality of life of Azerbaijanis. If implemented consistently, they might even help Azerbaijan to win over hearts and minds of the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, and solve the long-festering conflict on terms that are more favourable to Baku.

Editor’s note:  Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament, who writes in his personal capacity. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Kseniya Sobchak, a well-known Russian political activist and social butterfly, is an outspoken critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But, curiously, she seems to be taking a much softer line on Azerbaijan’s authoritarian-minded ruler, Ilham Aliyev.

After visiting Baku last April, Sobchak marveled at the transformation of the Azerbaijani capital, comparing it favourably to Moscow. To her credit, she did mention the non-democratic nature of the Azerbaijani regime in comments that were published in Snob, a leading Russian cultural magazine.

Yet overall, after reading her take on Baku, one is left with an impression of a country ruled by a benevolent “Oriental ruler” who, although occasionally harsh, cares about the well-being of his subjects. Her somewhat glowing review of Aliyev’s leadership is especially ironic when set against her views on Putin.

Also recently, when a senior European diplomat was confronted with the seeming inconsistency of the EU’s policy toward authoritarian regimes in Belarus and Azerbaijan – sanctions and isolation in the case of the former, cooperation and engagement with the latter – he replied that there are two major reasons for the discrepancy.

First, while Belarus is at the centre of Europe, Azerbaijan is located “between Chechnya and Iran,” he explained, the implication being that the democratic bar is set higher for Belarus; secondly, the diplomat bluntly stated that there are important strategic interests in relations with Azerbaijan, such as cooperation in energy sector and regional security issues, not least in containing Iran, which is widely believed to be pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

While perhaps distasteful, the “strategic interests” argument is easily defensible. It’s simply prudent policy to work with a government that is prepared to cooperate with the West on a whole range of strategic issues.

Such pragmatism may not please human rights defenders in Azerbaijan and elsewhere, but it’s only realistic to accept the fact that foreign policy is not exclusively shaped by human rights issues.

At the same time, the double standard inherent in the diplomat’s comments, and more subtly contained in Sobchak’s assessment, is damaging. The “geographic argument” endorses a concept in which a less than perfect democracy is acceptable for an “Oriental” country like Azerbaijan.

Such thinking represents a serious misreading of the emerging public mood in Azerbaijan that could end up harming U.S. and EU strategic interests down the road.

There are plenty of people in Azerbaijan who yearn for a full-fledged democratic system. Tolerating anything less, then, means that the United States and EU are prepared to sell these Azerbaijani citizens short. Azerbaijanis want good governance, transparency and accountability from their rulers, just like people in Europe and elsewhere.

Evidence of widespread popular discontent with the current system is mounting in Azerbaijan. Over the past year, the country has experienced rallies against the deaths of the conscripts in the army, riots of traders over exorbitant taxes, protests of Muslims over what they see as curtailment of their religious rights, and explosions of unrest in provincial towns of Guba and Ismayilli.

Social networking and pro-democracy youth movements such as NIDA played an increasing role in harnessing discontent and mobilising it into protests.

Television viewing preferences also indicate that the population wants much more than what they are now getting. Since authorities tightly control the national media, more people, especially in the provinces, tune in the Turkish TV-based programme Azerbaycan Saati (Azerbaijan’s Hour), which provides a more pluralistic coverage of the events in Azerbaijan.

This two-hour programme has proven to be so popular that local officials in some provincial areas are said to ordering the closure of teahouses for the duration of the programme, in order to prevent people from gathering and watching it. Many Baku-based experts agree that the people increasingly are losing fear to speak out against what they see as the regime’s abuses.

Where the argument of bad geography rings superficially true is in the fact that while Belarus borders three countries of the European Union, Azerbaijan has no consolidated democracies in its neighbourhood. But even here the situation is dynamic.

Azerbaijan’s neighbour Georgia has made significant democratisation strides in the past decade, most notably experiencing a peaceful transition of power via the ballot box last year. Meanwhile, Turkey, Azerbaijan’s main ally, greatly improved its democratic practices in the 2000s, motivated in large part by the prospect of EU membership.

If Turkish democracy is backsliding today, it is due to the unique combination of negative external and internal political factors, not because of cultural impediments stemming from Turkey’s geography.

Most important of all, Azerbaijan itself has declared its Euro-Atlantic orientation and embraced extensive commitments on democracy and human rights. There is no reason why its European partners should go soft when Baku fails to deliver on these commitments.

Ultimately, strong emphasis on reform is in the EU’s long-term strategic interests: if Baku heeds calls for reform, the EU can gain a partner with enhanced domestic legitimacy. If it doesn’t, the EU can call Baku’s bluff: whatever the rhetoric of some Azerbaijani officials, they are aware that the EU remains an essential partner and cannot be easily ignored.

Most importantly, it will preserve the EU’s credibility among Azerbaijanis. The worst possible signal that either the United States or the EU can send right now is that it that they will settle for an ‘Oriental’ style ‘democracy’ for Azerbaijan.

*Editor’s note: Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament, who writes in his personal capacity.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

There’s a coffee shop in an out-of-the-way part of Baku where the walls are covered with illustrations from an early 20th century satirical magazine called Molla Nasreddin. The magazine represents a bygone era, when Azerbaijan was a font of new cultural trends in the Muslim world, pioneering such issues as female emancipation, anti-clericalism, anti-colonialism and labour rights.

Although Azerbaijan was the birthplace of the magazine, arguably the country affected most by its essays and illustrations was Iran. At one time Jalil Mammadqulu-zadeh, the editor of Molla Nasreddin, even moved its editorial offices to Tabriz, a city with a heavily Azeri population in the north of Iran.

The ideas propagated by the magazine even contributed to the intellectual foundations of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1905.

Looking at the Molla Nasreddin illustrations hanging at the Ali and Nino coffee shop today, one is tempted to ask whether Azerbaijan can again inspire a democratically oriented transformation in Iran. In theory, it has the potential to do so. The Azerbaijani republic was born on the ashes of the Soviet Union with the promise of a democratic, European future.

The fact that most Azerbaijanis are, at least notionally, Shi’a Muslims and speak the same language as nearly a quarter of the Iranian population should have strengthened Azerbaijan´s position as a conduit for democratisation.

In reality, rather than serving as an inspiration for the democratisation of Iran, Azerbaijan itself is becoming increasingly vulnerable to hardline influences originating in the Islamic Republic. It is true that many Iranians travel to Baku to enjoy the socially liberal atmosphere, where they can do away with the strict Islamic dress code and enjoy an alcoholic drink in a cafe.

These are not trivial freedoms for those living under the thumb of an oppressive theocracy. However, Baku´s social liberalism is not matched by political liberalism.

Rather to the contrary, looking at Azerbaijan´s political evolution, many Iranians can see a familiar pattern unfolding in Baku, one that features the curtailment of rights via the promulgation of repressive laws against non-governmental organisations (NGOs), arrests of government opponents and the steady effort to restrict freedom of expression.

Over the past few weeks Azerbaijani authorities have arrested a number of activists from the civic youth movement N!DA, a presidential candidate from the opposition Republican Alternative Party, Ilgar Mammadov, and a charismatic Shi’a cleric, Taleh Bagir-zadeh. The scope and intensity of the latest crackdown suggest a fresh drive by officials to stamp out dissent during the run-up to presidential elections in fall 2013.

Iran, too, is scheduled to hold a presidential election in a few months. But Iranians do not look to Azerbaijan as an example of free and fair elections. Instead, it is Azerbaijanis who realise that – even in its current severely curtailed form, especially after the disputed elections of 2009 and the violent crackdown that ensued – the Iranian system offers a greater degree of pluralism than the Azerbaijani way.

Every presidential election in Iran since 1997, when reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami won, has produced surprising outcomes. This cannot be said about Azerbaijan, where the winner is known well in advance. The fact that even elections in the Islamic Republic are seen as more lively these days than in Azerbaijan is an indictment of the state of Azerbaijani politics.

Current conditions in Azerbaijan invite Iranian meddling. And the repressive policies of President Ilham Aliyev’s administration in Baku are making the Iranians’ task of extending their influence easier. The more Azerbaijani authorities crack down on local independent media, the more people tune in the Islamic Republic-affiliated Azeri language channel Sahar TV.

Cleverly, Sahar doesn’t just focus on religious issues, such as the demolition of mosques and bans on the use of hijab in schools, but also highlights more common concerns, such as corruption, political arrests and deficient social services. For many ordinary Azerbaijanis, especially outside Baku, Sahar’s coverage strikes a sympathetic chord.

In the southern regions of Azerbaijan in particular, where poverty and unemployment are still rampant, many people travel to Iran for foodstuffs and medicines, often despite petty corruption and humiliation from Azerbaijani customs officials.

The Mar. 31 arrest of Bagir-zadeh, the young Shi’a cleric who denounced President Aliyev’s administration in a recent sermon, may be a pivotal moment. The arrest sparked unrest in the militantly Shi’a village of Nardaran, north of Baku and Azerbaijani authorities have tried to use the protest as proof of a pro-Iranian Islamist threat, not least to bolster Western support for Aliyev’s administration.

However, many secular intellectuals in Azerbaijan, most of them worlds apart from the Islamists in terms of their values and lifestyles, have expressed support for Bagir-zadeh. The Iranian-incitement hypothesis thus hasn’t been able to gain traction. If authorities continue along this path, the Islamist-tinged opposition to the rule of the President Aliyev may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is in the interests of both Azerbaijanis and the country´s Western partners to avoid such a scenario. Baku should be pressured into making immediate policy adjustments, easing up on its efforts to stifle all forms of dissent. A political system in Azerbaijan that embraced, not shunned individual freedoms could also have a powerful demonstrative effect on Iranians, and be of help to those in Iran who are struggling for democratisation.

*Editor’s note: Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament, who writes in his personal capacity.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

There has been much speculation surrounding Azerbaijan’s relations with Israel, including reports that Israeli warplanes might use Azerbaijani airfields as support bases during a potential attack against Iran. The reality of the bilateral relationship is not so dramatic, as it is pragmatic.

We must keep in mind that neither country is an essential strategic asset for the other. From the Israeli point of view, relations with Azerbaijan represent the latest incarnation of a “periphery strategy”, under which Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab states, reaches out to the “outer ring” of non-Arab, “moderate” Muslim states. In bygone decades, Kemalist Turkey and monarchist Iran played this role.

Today, Israel’s relations with Turkey are tense, and Iran is an arch-enemy. Azerbaijan is now a cog in the periphery strategy. But Baku can’t compensate for the loss of Israel’s former strategic assets. Azerbaijan is a country with its own geopolitical entanglements, including one that has left roughly 20 percent of its territory under foreign occupation.

Baku is not in position to supply the type of support that would be relevant to the security challenges that Israel faces, especially vis-a-vis Iran.

Some of Israel’s neoconservative allies in the United States have dreamed about stoking separatist sentiment in northern Iran, where there is a high concentration of ethnic Azeris. But officials in Baku are wary of provoking Iran. They are cognizant of Iran’s capacity to retaliate – for example, by potentially staging terrorist attacks against the country’s energy infrastructure, or targeting U.S. and Israeli interests and mobilising radical Islamists inside Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani leadership clearly does not want a war at its doorstep, with all its unpredictable consequences. Neither does it want a full normalisation of relations with Iran. It rather seeks manageable tension, which would allow Baku to cast itself as the West’s crucial ally against “mad mullahs” and deflect attention from its steadily deteriorating human rights record.

As far as relations with Iran are concerned, Baku will follow its own calculations, which may well continue to diverge from Israel’s.

From the Azerbaijani perspective, relations with Israel are valuable, since Israeli officials are not bound by the U.S. and EU embargo on arms sales to Azerbaijan. Thus, Israel represents an important weapons outlet amid Baku’s ongoing efforts to regain control over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory. Indeed, Israel has sold sophisticated military hardware and know-how to Azerbaijan – enabling Baku to produce its own drone aircraft.

But, it is worth noting, a military build-up is not likely to secure Azerbaijan’s strategic objective in Karabakh enclave. If Baku is ever going to govern the territory effectively in the future, it will have to convince Karabakh Armenians that their future is better secured within Azerbaijan, not as a separate entity, or as a part of Armenia. The odds of that happening are already poor. And drone production does nothing to encourage Karabakh Armenians to accept Azerbaijani control of the territory.

Another major factor behind Azerbaijan’s efforts to cultivate ties with Israel is a desire among officials to gain access to the potent pro-Israel lobby in Washington. This makes sense from Azerbaijani perspective, since Azerbaijan seeks to counter-balance what it sees as an undue influence of the Armenian lobby on U.S. policy in the South Caucasus.

But Baku’s expectations in this regard are unrealistic. Nagorno-Karabakh is a non-issue for Jewish-Americans and Israelis. And a considerable portion of Israel’s supporters in Washington are unwilling to confront the pro-Armenian lobby, especially when Azerbaijan’s strategic ally, Turkey, is now an antagonist for both Armenia and Israel.

Azerbaijan, in turn, can’t afford to alienate Muslim countries, specifically Turkey. This is why Baku voted at the United Nations in favour of granting an observer status to Palestine.

It should be pointed out that most Azerbaijanis are unenthused about Baku’s ties with Israel. When Israeli officials, such as a former minister Efraim Sneh in 2010, or, more recently, the former ambassador to Baku, Michael Lotem, praised Azerbaijan as an “icon of progress in the Muslim world”, it merely breeds resentment among many Azerbaijanis, who are disaffected with the high level of corruption and the lack of individual freedoms in their country.

This is not to say that the Azerbaijani-Israeli relations have no future. Azerbaijan, thankfully, is largely free from the poisonous anti-Semitism that prevails in much of the Muslim world. But a sober, realistic assessment by both sides is needed in order to maximise the potential of bilateral relations.

For the time being, the diplomatic agendas of both Azerbaijan and Israel diverge significantly, and neither state seems willing to adjust those priorities in the interest of deepening bilateral ties.

*Editor’s note: Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament, who writes in his personal capacity.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.