Alla Djioyeva (photo: RFE/RL)

After being hospitalized last Thursday under mysterious circumstances, the winner of November’s South Ossetian presidential election had, as of yesterday, told the press that she may leave politics and is reportedly considering asking for asylum in an unnamed country.

Alla Dzhiolyeva, 62, was transferred on Monday from intensive care to a “regular ward” in a Tskhinvali hospital after sustaining either a stroke or a “hypertensive crisis” during a police  raid at her party headquarters on Thursday.

Her supporters allege that she and other party members were roughed up during a melee instigated by police, who have said that they entered the building to bring Dzhioyeva in for questioning pertaining to “a coup attempt” and demonstrations late last year.

Witness accounts of the incident vary, with some saying that Dzhioyeva was struck in the head with a rifle butt, leading to her collapse and hospitalization. The South Ossetian de facto government claims that Dzhioyeva suffered a “hypertensive crisis” due to stress after police entered her party headquarters.

Dzhioyeva’s electoral victory in November was subsequently overturned by the South Ossetian Supreme Court. Since then, the breakaway republic has been in a state of political chaos, with a new election scheduled for March 24. But Dzhioyeva announced that, in defiance of the court’s decision, she would hold an “inauguration” ceremony on the 10th of February, a day prior to the police raid.

A number of demonstrations followed the court’s decision, with police firing automatic rifles into the air to disperse protesters during at least one rally. Dzhioyeva won an upset victory in November over Anatoly Bibiolov, the Moscow-backed candidate

What took place in party headquarters during the raid may never be known unless a video tape turns up. An aide to Dzhioyeva told the press that the candidate had been assaulted by police, who claimed that she was “faking it” when she complained of illness during the incident.

Alla Djioyeva in hospital (photo: Pik TV)

Her condition was upgraded from “grave” to stable in the last few days. As of press time, she is reportedly still hospitalized in Tshkinvali, the South Ossetian capital.

Ruing her brief career in politics, Dzhioyeva told the press from her hospital bed that she never realized that politics “was such a dirty game.” The television footage can be seen here, courtesy of Pik TV.

This may be a coordinated series of attempted attacks against Israeli embassy assets, and the speculation from some sources is that the explosion in India and the bomb in Georgia are tied to the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah deputy leader Imad Mughniyah, for which Hezbollah blames Israel.

Last year at this time, the Israeli Counterterrorism Bureau warned against travel to all three South Caucasus countries as well as a number of other states.

However, Isabel Kershner and Michael Schwirtz in the International Herald Tribune imply that the incidents could “represent Iran’s first confirmed retaliation for a series of recent attacks in Iran aimed at killing Iranian atomic scientists and sabotaging Iran’s nuclear disputed program, the source of rising tensions between Iran and the West.”

I don’t know what their source is, but it seems unlikely that these attacks—random in their nature and not targeted against specific individuals—are linked to Israel’s efforts to undermine Iran’s nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to subscribe to the Hezbollah hypothesis himself (at least publicly), and the Israeli press likewise is focusing on the anniversary of Mughniyah’s death rather than a tit-for-tat strategy tied to the deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (credit: Asianews)

Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told the press today that “We know exactly who is responsible for the attack and who planned it, and we’re not going to take it lying down.”

For its part, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced that the explosion in New Dehli (which injured the wife of an Israeli diplomat) and the similar bomb in Tbilisi were the work of Israel, in an effort to “tarnish Iran’s friendly relations” with India and Georgia.

Georgia and Iran enjoy cordial relations, and in May of 2010, the Iranian government announced its intention to build a hydroelectric plant in Georgia, despite the reservations expressed by the US Department of State in a confidential message to the US embassy in Tbilisi in December of the previous year.

Rafiq Tagi. Credit: APA.AZ

There is no real progress to report on the investigation into the murder of Rafiq Tagi, although as I mentioned shortly after his death, a number of theories—some of them rational, others not—cropped up immediately on social networking sites and internet forums.

My guess is that Tagi was killed by Islamists who were incensed by a piece he had authored shortly before his death. A number of Azeris have scoffed at this theory, pointing out to me that the Iranian fatwah against Tagi was announced years ago, and he had somehow survived since then with no attempts on his life.

Their various theories are unconvincing and overly elaborate, including one favored by many in the opposition: that the assassin was from Azerbaijan and the motive was to sow discord amongst the secular and religious forces who have been more or less united in their opposition to the Aliyev government.

A major proponent of this theory is political analyst Arastun Orujlu, with whom I spoke via Skype in December. While acknowledging that he didn’t “have the facts to blame anyone” in particular, Orujlu speculated that the aim of the attack on Tagi was to weaken the secular and religious opposition factions and blunt the momentum for regime change:

“I cannot imagine that someone in Iran killed Rafiq Tagi. This is something internal. They calculated that after the killing of Rafiq Tagi the secular part of the society, especially the atheistic part, would blame the religious community. And it happened!

“Both sides were blaming each other – the religious community and the liberals…I think now that this mistrust has become much bigger than before. So an Arab Spring has a much smaller chance of succeeding today than before.”

Khadija Ismayilova has written a very insightful piece for Eurasianet on what Tagi’s violent death may mean for public discourse in Azerbaijan. Among other things, Khadija’s article traces how Tagi’s murder has exposed and intensified the fissures between secular writers and political figures and more conservative elements from Azerbaijan’s religious community. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that Khadija agrees with those who posit that Tagi’s murder was designed to to drive a wedge between the two communities. She is laying out for her readers how Tagi’s death has resulted in a schism; these are two different things.)

Meanwhile, Elnur Majidli, the principal organizer of last year’s 11 March “Great People’s Day” has announced a similar effort for 2012. Majidli, who is studying law in France, was charged last year with attempting to overthrow the government after launching the 11 March Facebook page. The Azerbaijani government eventually suspended its prosecution of Majidli.

He tells me that this year’s strategy is more nuanced than in 2011, with a “campaign” planned “in stages”:

“The next stage is the Great People’s Movement currently with 1500+ members and the material is shared among 40,000 members…The movement is strongly supported by the opposition parties in Azerbaijan. Last year we broke the silence in the political atmosphere of the country and I believe this year people will [be] more ready to support and follow through with the movement. I believe this year the end result of the movement and demonstrations will be much more fruitful.”

That remains to be seen, of course. The opposition is in a state of near disarray thanks to the long-term program to discredit it and vigorous police tactics at rallies last year, coinciding with the Arab Spring movement in the Middle East. After talking to a number of opposition youth figures, I’m not sensing a groundswell of support for this year’s iteration of the Great People’s Day Movement,  although it’s still early. A new political variable is the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Baku in late May, and it is unclear as to whether protests will be held to coincide with the competition.

Majidli’s Facebook page complements a multi-media web site called “Etiraz,” in English and Azeri, with news and commentary.

Finally, as reported widely in early January, career diplomat Matthew Bryza, US ambassador to Azerbaijan, has left Baku and will not be re-nominated. Bryza was named ambassador by President Obama at the end of 2010 during a Senate recess, necessitated by the fierce resistance instigated by a number of Armenian interest groups and led in the Senate by Robert Menendez (D – New Jersey) and Barbara Boxer (D – California).

Thus Bryza’s tenure in Baku was from the beginning subject to the whims of the Washington political process, and despite a well-argued letter of support addressed to the Senate (and signed by people such as Robert Kagan, Thomas Pickering, and R. Nicholas Burns), Bryza was not re-nominated.

An informed Washington source, who probably doesn’t want his name revealed, told me that re-nomination is at this juncture not an option: “It is way too late for that. The administration appears to just have dropped the ball and not even pushed with Menendez and Boxer, as suggested by the failure to push for a vote. If they wanted to persuade anyone they had a year to do it. [Bryza] has left Baku and it’s over.”

I won’t rehash the litany of complaints lodged against Bryza, but will simply say that there is zero evidence that he has ever been less than objective and thoroughly dedicated in his previous role with the OSCE Minsk Group. In my view, he did an excellent job in attempting to hammer out a final agreement over the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and it’s a pity that he has been robbed of a chance to truly leave his mark as ambassador to Azerbaijan.

Speaking of US ambassadors to Baku, I’d like to close by apologizing to former ambassador Anne Derse for something I wrote last year (not that she is ever going to read this).

In February of last year, I posted an article on this blog in which I dismissed allegations coming from PanArmenian.net that the US Department of State had concluded that former Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian, among others, was personally profiting from the sale of narcotics in the Caspian region.

The source, according to the Armenian news site, was a Wikileaks cable released by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.

So I did some digging, talked to some sources, and called the Baku UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) branch, which was mentioned in the PanAmenian.net article. Notably, the specific source of the sensational allegations against the former president was redacted in the Aftenposten’s version of the cable.

Aftenposten, like the New York Times and other press outlets, has a policy of redacting the names of sensitive State Department sources, and for good reason: these people, many of whom are citizens of host countries, have in some cases taken risks in order to give US embassy contacts their unique perspectives. Removing the names of these sources is something I fully agree with on ethical grounds.

But curiously, Aftenposten has, in a seemingly random fashion, also redacted information, not simply the names of protected sources. And it was Aftenposten who released the cable I referred to in my blog post.

Here is the Aftenposten version of the relevant portion of the cable:

[TEXT REMOVED BY AFTENPOSTEN ] observed that Armenia is “starved for hard currency,” and alleged that UNODC as well as Azerbaijani officials believe that senior Armenian political and government officials, including former President Tar-Petrossian, are personally profiting from this trade. (Note: [TEXT REMOVED BY AFTENPOSTEN ]. End Note).

Since September of 2011, the unredacted versions of all 250,000+ cables are now widely available. Here is the complete version of the cable I referred to in my story, with the name of the UN source removed by me:

[Name removed] observed that Armenia is “starved for hard currency,” and alleged that UNODC as well as Azerbaijani officials believe that senior Armenian political and government officials, including former President Tar-Petrossian, are personally profiting from this trade. (Note: [Name removed] is an ethnic Azeri, and his lurid assertions about Armenia need separate confirmation…)

The “note” at the end is critical, since it shows that the US embassy was, quite properly, skeptical of the source’s “lurid assertions.” Had I been aware of the contents of the redacted segment, I would not have leapt to the conclusion that “neither [Derse] nor anyone at the embassy injected a note of skepticism prior to sending the message to Washington.”

While the main focus of the post is still valid, namely that US embassy personnel have never alleged that former Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian was complicit in the regional narcotics trade, I was dead wrong about Ambassador Derse’s assessment of the accusations coming from the UNODC source.

Jabbar Savalan (credit: Turkhan Karimov)

News out of Baku courtesy of Radio Free Europe and the viral Azerbaijan rumor mill is that Jabbar Savalan was released from prison today (26 December) in a general amnesty granted by President Aliyev. As noted earlier on this blog, clemencies for political prisoners are not uncommon, and usually take place to coincide with some national holiday or festival such as the Novruz celebration in the Spring. This amnesty affected roughly 90 convicts, I am told, although evidently Jabbar was the only political prisoner to enjoy a clemency.

I’ll try to get an interview in the coming days, although talking to the foreign press might be something Jabbar is reluctant to do, given the sensitive nature of his trial and conviction.

The raft of Facebook activists and opposition party figures arrested and sentenced to prison terms this year has damaged Azerbaijan’s international image and we may well see further amnesties granted prior to the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, due to be held in Baku in May.

And there was much more, of course. Distilling 2011, then, would be less fruitful than an admittedly impressionistic look at some of the more significant events of the year.

Jabbar Savalan (photo: Turkhan Kerimov)

Let’s start with the civil unrest in the early months of 2011, which led to arrests for many and imprisonment of a select few but revealed much about the government’s fears and its strategy. As in Armenia, opponents of the government sought to ignite widespread protest, modeling themselves after the Arab Spring. But unlike the demonstrations in Armenia (where something akin to democratic pluralism is much more in evidence than in Azerbaijan), the rallies were relatively small and the government response was swift and harsh. The “Great People’s Day” of March 11, for example, saw a meager turnout, a quick roundup of protesters by police and a number of arrests. More rallies followed in March and April, with hundreds of arrests and in some cases, criminal charges.

Great People's Day protest, Baku (photo: Abbas Atilay)

As in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world, Facebook and Youtube were used as tools for organizing protests, but despite the claims of the participants, Azerbaijan was hardly teetering on the edge of regime change.

Those charged with creating public disorder and similar crimes connected to protests in April include prominent Musavat Party figure Arif Hajili and nine others who were convicted and are now serving time.

The strategy of the government in the past couple of years looks something like what we’ll call “general harassment and targeted prosecution,” where the prosecutor’s office brings charges against Facebook activist X or independent journalist Y or opposition political figure Z. The charges might be drug possession (Savalan) or hooliganism (Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade) or, let’s say, interfering with election officials. The suspects are detained prior to trial while an “investigation” takes place (e.g. Savalan, Hajiyev, Milli, Hajizade and Khural newspaper editor Avaz Zeynalli).

Then coincidentally, the defense counsel is disbarred – thus sabotaging the defendants’ cases. (Among those disbarred this year while involved in politically sensitive cases were Osman Kazimov, Khalid Bagirov and Elchin Namazov.)

Finally, the defendants are convicted, an outcry from the international community ensues, and eventually the cases reach the Azerbaijani Supreme Court, which inevitably rules in favor of the prosecution.

On 29 November, the Azerbaijani Supreme Court sustained the lower court’s conviction of Savalan. And yesterday (6 December), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, who was convicted earlier this year on charges of evading military service.

Both men can look forward to serving a substantial portion of their sentences, although there is a chance they and others convicted this year will be released in a “magnanimous” gesture by President Aliyev prior to the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Baku in late May.

(Azerbaijan’s Eurovision 2011 victory may well be a godsend to a number of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners – the authorities will find it awkward if the international press goes digging into Azerbaijan’s human rights record during the competition. Best to send people like Savalan and most of the others home at least a month prior to the commencement of Eurovision, although my guess is that there will be one or two still languishing in prison by late May. The government will find it even more awkward if the opposition stages protests just before and during the competition…)

I haven’t touched upon a number of other issues, such as the sensational trial and conviction of Movsum Samadov, the head of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, for plotting to overthrow the government. Samadov got a twelve-year sentence in October, and six other Islamic Party members were also convicted.

There were two subtexts here: one was the struggle on the part of some segments of Azeri society against the government-imposed ban on hijabs in public schools. (It was “no accident,” Samadov’s supporters say, that his legal troubles began shortly after he publicly opposed the ban. As explained in an excellent article available at the IWPR web site, Samadov’s wife saw a cause-and-effect relationship at work: “When [the education minister] decided not to admit girls wearing hijab to the schools, my husband spoke up and said he couldn’t do that, that we’re Muslims and you can’t force us to remove our hijab,” she said. “Two days after that, my husband was arrested.”)

The other subtext is Azerbaijan’s dicey relationship with Iran. It didn’t take much of an inferential leap to conclude who would benefit from an Islamist takeover of the government (unlikely as that may be), and Iran’s rhetoric toward Azerbaijan seems to have become more strident in 2011. According to one theory, a conviction of Samadov and his associates should be construed as a message from Baku back to Tehran.

(I’m not theorizing myself on the prosecution of Samadov and his associates. The above is offered only for your consideration and because it is grist for the mill in Azerbaijan.)

I’ve left a lot out, but 2012 will no doubt prove to be an equally eventful year, unfortunately.

Finally, the good people at the Foreign Policy Association have asked us bloggers to name our books of the year. I’m a bit late, since the FPA have nominated several of them here. But I certainly agree that John Gaddis’s book on George Kennan (George F. Kennan: An American Life, Penguin Press 2011) is a remarkable biography.

Parenthetically, I wrote to Kennan when I was an adjunct lecturer teaching US foreign policy at Lake Forest College in 1991. (When I say “wrote,” I mean a “letter.” Not an ethergramme [a single piece of email], but a real letter.) My question concerned his “Long Telegram,” the most famous single diplomatic cable in history, which he wrote as a young diplomat in Moscow in 1946 when the US foreign service was beginning to understand that Soviet foreign policy was signaling a new and confrontational relationship with the west.

The Long Telegram, his missive to State Department headquarters in Washington, was a masterful 8,000 word examination of the Soviet mindset, and was extraordinarily prescient. The telegram resulted in Kennan becoming something of a legend (not to mention a foreign policy Cassandra).

So in my letter, I told Kennan that I wanted to pose “an impertinent question”: while he was composing the Long Telegram during those lonely hours in Moscow, did he happen to notice the ghost of Sir Eyre Crowe hovering over his shoulder?

Kennan wrote back a charming reply in which he confessed that at that stage of his career, he had no idea who Eyre Crowe might have been! I’ll take him at his word (especially since Gaddis emailed a few weeks ago to say that what Kennan told me is perfectly plausible).

Best wishes,

Karl Rahder

2011 was the year when former Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze put the finishing touches on her long campaign to discredit former Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze.

Nino Burjanadze (geotimes.ge)

Ms. Burjanadze began her re-branding effort from responsible, clear-headed opposition leader to uncompromising radical after forming her own political party in 2008. The disastrous Russo-Georgian War in the same year fueled her embrace of confrontational rhetoric and what appeared to be acquiescence to occasional violent tactics by her allies at demonstrations.

The arrest of a number of her inner circle on weapons charges in 2009, which Burjanadze referred to as a government “campaign of terror” against her was a blow to her image, as were her visits to Moscow last year in attempt to look statesmanlike.

2011 was probably the final chapter for Burjanadze in her role as opposition leader. Beginning early this year, she called for another round in an endless series of demonstrations against President Saakashvili, whom she has begun to refer to as “a dictator” and a leader who is “terrorizing the people.”

Thus like Armenia (and to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan), Georgia experienced a number of demonstrations in the spring. But the character of the rallies in Georgia was of an altogether different nature, consisting of a hodgepodge of fringe political groups hankering for a fight, which is precisely what they got.

The tragedy at the tail end of the rallies was the random death of two men—a policeman and a bystander—on the evening of 26 May, when they were run down by someone in Burjanadze’s motorcade as it sped away, east on Rustavelli Avenue, at the conclusion of a violent demonstration.

The arrest and conviction of Burjandze’s husband Badri Bitsadze on charges stemming from the violent demonstrations that month probably closes the book on Nino’s political future. Badri, who went into hiding, was convicted in absentia, and his last reported whereabouts were Vienna, where he was spotted by journalists in September.

With Nino excluded as a major political actor, there are now two or three figures poised to lead any unified opposition that may eventually emerge. One is Levan Gachechiladze, who was trounced by President Saakashvili in the special presidential election in 2008. A more serious contender is former Georgian ambassador to the United Nations Irakli Alasania, although he too was easily brushed aside when he ran for mayor of Tbilsi in 2010.

That leaves us with Bidzina Ivanishvili, the “reclusive” (which seems to be the operative term for Ivanishvili these days) billionaire who in November announced his plans to enter politics.

Ivanishvili will be the man to watch in Georgia’s near-term future. Stripped of his (lapsed) Georgian citizenship by the authorities due to his dual Russian-French nationality, Ivanishvili has said that he intends to renounce his dual citizenship and appeal to the president. (That’s a mildly ironic tactic, since Ivanishvili is reported to have blamed Saakashvili for starting the 2008 war with Russia.)

Saakashvili’s allies have attacked Ivanishvili as a tool of Moscow, where he made his fortune, and the police have not at all coincidentally launched a money laundering investigation of the Cartu Bank, owned by Ivanishvili.

His new political movement, still in incubation, is called “Georgian Dream,” which he will use to spearhead his effort to wrest power from the ruling party in the 2012 parliamentary elections.

Ivanishvili’s platform is still a little unclear beyond the ritual denunciations of the president, of whom he said, “In my view, reality today is such that even his own mother would not vote for Saakashvili.”

His personal web site is here.

Armenia

The biggest story for Armenia was probably the rallies in February through April staged by the Armenian National Congress (HAK) and its leader, former president Levon Ter-Petrossian (often referred to in shorthand as “LTP”).

Levon Ter-Petrossian (photo: Onnik Krikorian)

The demonstrations were designed to force a number of concessions from the government, including the release of detainees held since Armenia’s 2008 civil unrest, the resignation of President Sargsyan, and early elections. The rhetoric borrowed, somewhat superficially, from the Arab Spring template, with LTP speaking of a “Mubarakization” process underway in Armenia.

The rallies never attracted more than 30,000 or so participants, although HAK claimed a turnout of 50,000 at one demonstration in early March.

As of early April, Ter-Petrossian had climbed down somewhat, telling supporters at a rally that he was now demanding merely that President Sargsyan free all “political prisoners,” agree to an inquiry into the 2008 political unrest, and guarantee access to Freedom Square in downtown Yerevan for further demonstrations.

By May, the government had released many HAK supporters who had languished in prison since the violence of 2008, and agreed to establishing the commission that Ter-Petrossian had demanded. While these were two key premises behind the rallies, it was clear then—and after the more recent demonstrations in October—that the president would not resign and that new elections were not in the offing.

To many observers, the rallies constituted a trial balloon for LTP’s efforts to retool himself and become a political force once again. I would tend to agree, and in my view this strategy has failed.

Ter-Petrossian has intimated recently that he hasn’t abandoned the cycle of demonstrations, but some observers believe that his day in the sun is over. Intriguingly, a Wikileaks cable released this year cast the former president in a rather unflattering light.

The cable, written in late 2008 and released this year, details a wide-ranging conversation in Yerevan between LTP and then-US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and reveals a sometimes exasperated Yovanovitch expressing her astonishment at charges Ter-Petrossian had leveled against the United States at a rally two weeks earlier:

“[The ambassador] took strong exception…to LTP’s
October 17 speech in which he had argued in the most
provocative terms the exact opposite of what he was now
saying to the Ambassador privately, and had called the
United States “doubly immoral” for allegedly taking unfair
advantage of Serzh Sargsian,s supposed political weakness
to push for a deal counter to Armenia’s national interests.”

Defending himself, Ter-Petrosian told the ambassador that his polarizing comments were meant only to placate his more radical cadres:

“…LTP assured the Ambassador that his rhetoric was meant only
to mollify the radical elements in his opposition movement — to
provide them with a viable explanation for his decision to suspend
protest activities.

“LTP said he “had no other way to get people off the streets
and back in their homes.”

But Yovanovitch wasn’t quite buying it:

“The Ambassador replied that the problem with such
rhetoric — even if it is meant to satisfy LTP’s constituents –
is that the U.S. has no way of knowing what LTP truly thinks, and
that painting the United States in an immoral light on resolving NK
is intellectually dishonest no matter the motive.”

The cable then summed up with a cold, hard look at Ter-Petrossian’s tactics:

“LTP saw support for public rallies dwindling with each passing month,
and was desperate to find a face-saving tactic. Empty-handed after
months of a stridently rejectionist strategy, LTP chose to cloak himself
in nationalism and concoct a conspiracy theory of great power
machinations to cover his political retreat.”

Ter-Petrossian isn’t exactly President Sargsyan’s biggest worry, because it looks like Robert Kocharian, Sargyan’s former ally, is maneuvering for a comeback. And Sargsyan is taking the threat seriously.

Robert Kocharian (mediamax.am)

The dominant theory explaining the recent sackings and resignations of key government personnel, including the mayor of Yerevan, is that the president is engaging in a pre-emptive move to weaken Kocharian’s power base. That may be true, but I’ll leave you with the waggish analysis of Kocharian and Sargsyan from the New Times party leader, who last month dismissed the notion that there is any substantive difference between the two men:

“They are Siamese twins,” he said.

Sheikh Mohammed Fazel Lankarani, a prominent ayatollah like his late father, has written on his site that “Without a doubt, the man who performed the sentence and pleased the Muslims, will receive a great gift from the Almighty.”

The ayatollahs Lankarani, father (l) and son (r): fazellankarani.com

The full text (in Persian) is here. A translation is not available in the English language section of Lankarani’s site, although this English version from the Turan News Agency(available on Azerireport.com) seems to be accurate.

After Tagi’s controversial “Europe and Us” article was published in late 2006, Lankarani’s father, Grand Ayatullah Fazel Lankarani, issued a fatwah on his web site saying that “it is necessary for every individual who has an access to [Tagi] to kill him. The person in charge of the […] newspaper, who published such thoughts and beliefs consciously and knowingly, should be dealt with in the same manner.”

Another cleric from the Iranian city of Tabriz reportedly offered his house as a reward for anyone who killed Tagi and his editor Samir Sadagatoglu, who has told the press in recent days that he fears for his life.

Today (29 November), the US Embassy in Baku issued a statement on Tagi’s murder, referring to it a “heinous crime” and calling on the Azerbaijani government to “devote all necessary resources to bring the perpetrators” to justice.

The statement was curiously late, in my view, coming six days after Tagi’s murder and four days following a much stronger statement from the French Foreign Ministry.

Meanwhile, Tagi’s family have asked the government to provide protection, according to a report from Contact.az.

At Rafiq Tagi's funeral, 24 November

I just wanted to post this powerful photo taken by Aziz Elkhanoglu today at Rafiq Tagi’s funeral.

We may never know who Tagi’s killers were, and the Azeri rumor mill is in full swing. I’ll refrain from repeating the more fanciful rumors, although the Iranian embassy in Baku actually released a press statement yesterday, prior to Tagi’s death, in which they denied any Iranian government involvement in the knife attack and added helpfully that any notion of an Iranian link was designed to create “a negative atmosphere” and was an example of “Zionist-American sabotage” in order to “undermine Iranian-Azerbaijani strategic relations.”

As I mentioned on this blog a few days ago, I had always wanted to meet Tagi for a long chat over tea in Baku. We would have had a lot to talk about, but his assassins would prefer that we live in a world where dialogue with creative and provocative minds is impossible. This is the worst kind of fascism, and there are many areas of the world where the cycle of fear and violence threatens to destroy the fragile social contract that we take for granted in the west but has been ripped apart in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in our recent past.

All of us are a little diminished today with Tagi’s death, and I wish I could write a fitting epitaph for him. Will update in the coming days with any news.

Rafiq Tagi

Tagi is best known for his thought piece entitled “Europe and Us,” published in 2007 in the Sanat newspaper. In the article, Tagi compared modern Muslim societies to their European counterparts, and argued that Islam had hindered social and political development.

As I wrote at the time of Tagi and his editor, “[T]his sort of reflective social commentary might be the norm in the West, [but] the outcry from some quarters in secular, Shi’ite Azerbaijan was shrill, with ultra-conservative Muslims in the village of Nadaran calling for the two men’s deaths and the public prosecutor bringing criminal charges against them.”

The criminal charges were “inciting religious hatred,” and Tagi and Samir Sadagatoglu, his editor, were convicted quickly, sentenced to four year and three year terms (respectively) in prison, and locked up.

Meanwhile, an Iranian ayatollah issued a fatwa calling for the two men’s deaths and another cleric in Tabriz reportedly offered his house to anyone who assassinated Tagi and Sadagatoglu.

Here’s a chilling quote at the time from the ayatollah’s web site: “it is necessary for every individual who has an access to him to kill him. The person in charge of the […] newspaper, who published such thoughts and beliefs consciously and knowingly, should be dealt with in the same manner.”

Today, Tagi was stabbed in the back and neck, according to his family. The RFE story says that the doctor has indicated that the wounds are not life threatening.

Talking to Tagi has been a goal of mine since his imprisonment and early release at the end of 2007. His case was disturbingly

Rafiq Tagi in better days (photo: APA.AZ)

similar to that of Salman Rushdie, and the English branch of PEN, among others, took up his cause at the time. He’s a brave man, and the road he has chosen to walk upon is dangerous and lonely. (Although I’m hearing in the last hour or so that Tagi’s recent essays on everything from the opposition to revered Azeri poet Mirza Alakbar Sabir are seen by some as designed to provoke controversy.)

It’s unclear from the RFE article how many attackers were involved or exactly what the circumstances were.

Don’t expect a major effort by the police to track down those responsible. Tagi’s imprisonment in 2007 was no doubt thought necessary by the government due to the hyper-sensitive nature of his writing, but my guess is that unlike some opposition figures, Tagi was considered a minor irritant. It’s hard to imagine that Zakir Qaralov, the prosecutor general, or President Aliyev were in any way offended or shocked by Tagi’s article. Tagi and his editor would have been forgotten except for a small but extremist segment of the religious community that had to be placated. Their imprisonment was the pound of flesh demanded and received.

I’ll try to reach Tagi once he recovers and will post more information at that time.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov (RIA Novosti)

Morally bankrupt movie star Hilary Swank attended the festive birthday party of dictator Ramzan Kadyrov in the Chechen capital of Grozny on Wednesday, accompanied by a number of other celebrities including pop culture oddity Jean-Claude Van Damme and British violinist Vanessa Mae.

Reportedly, Ms Mae was paid half a million dollars to attend the party and perform for President Kadyrov, who has been accused by human rights groups, journalists, and others of presiding over a regime that routinely participates in kidnappings, killings and torture of political opponents and human rights advocates.

As reported in the US Department of State’s 2008 Human Rights Report on Russia, Mr Kadyrov’s forces have been accused by human rights groups of implementing “a widespread, concerted campaign of arson in villages and towns designed to punish families of suspected insurgents.”

A list of human rights campaigners and journalists who have been murdered or who have disappeared because of their work in Chechnya would be too exhaustive to compile here, but let’s just take note of a few of the many victims:

Natalia Estemirova was abducted in Grozny on July 15, 2009, on her way to work. A former teacher and journalist, she was best known for her involvement in “Memorial,” a Russian human rights organization. According to witnesses, Estimarova was working on something “extremely sensitive” just before her abduction. Her body was found later the same day in a wooded area, her chest and head riddled with bullet holes.

Three months later, Zarema Gaisanova, who was employed by the Danish Refugee Council, was abducted from her home in Grozny. Here is what the State Department said about her in its 2010 Human Rights Report:

“Amnesty International asserted that law enforcement officials carried out the abduction. Her whereabouts remained unknown at year’s end. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) reported that eye-witnesses and other human rights organizations stated that a special security operation involving either Chechen leader Ramzon Kadyrov or a security unit named after him took place, in which Zarema Gaisanova was taken away in a military vehicle.”

And crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down outside her apartment in 2006, apparently by a contract killer. Politkovskaya was well known for documenting cases of torture, killings, and other abuses allegedly carried out by Chechen and Russian security forces during the long, grueling Chechen wars.

As to Kadyrov’s alleged personal taste in torture methods, Ms Swank might have gone here for this piece by C J Chivers of the New York Times. In the article, Chivers writes that Chechen exile Umar Israilov “described many brutal acts by Mr. Kadyrov and his subordinates, including executions of illegally detained men. One executed man, Mr. Israilov said, had been beaten with a shovel handle by Mr. Kadyrov…Another prisoner, the defector said, was sodomized by a prominent police officer and at Mr. Kadyrov’s order put to death. Israilov said he and others had been tortured by Mr. Kadyrov, who amused himself by personally giving prisoners electric shocks or firing pistols at their feet.”

Of course, Israilov was assassinated eventually – in Vienna, where he had been living after fleeing Chechnya.

As I say, the list goes on and on…

One assumes that Ms Swank and her celebrity pals can read. And that they have access to the internet. Thus it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine that Ms Swank was just some dumb Yank who innocently accepted a birthday invitation from that nice guy who runs this “Chechenya” place, which is how Van Damme pronounced it when he proclaimed to Kadyrov on stage, “I love you, Mr President!”

No. Ms Swank knew perfectly well of the allegations against Mr Kadyrov. And she went to his birthday party nonetheless.

I contacted her agent, one Jason Weinberg, who apparently is a major player in the creepy world of celebrity management. Actually, I left two phone messages, talked briefly to someone on his staff, and emailed him twice. And curiously, I got no reply.

Go here for a video of Ms Swank gushing to Kadyrov that “really, truly, for me this was a great honor to learn more about you and your country and what you’re building…And happy birthday, Mr. President!”

Interestingly, the Human Rights Foundation, an NGO based in New York, has reported here that they were assured by Mr. Weinberg in late September that Ms Swank had “no current plans” to attend Kadyrov’s party. Apparently, she changed her mind. Did Kadyrov offer her more money?

It should be noted that the BBC and other sources reported incorrectly that Kevin Costner attended the party. His publicist, Arnold Robinson, was quite emphatic in two email messages to me on Friday that Costner wasn’t even in Chechnya last week. As of today, it appears that the BBC has corrected the error.

My apologies to FPA colleague Vadim Nikitin – normally I don’t write much about the North Caucasus, which strictly speaking is Russia, his domain. But this wasn’t a story I could pass up.

Since the the airing of the allegations on BBC’s Newsnight program, I’ve talked to many of the principals at the center of this story, and what follows is an examination of the more explosive components along with the unearthing of a case in a US federal court (thanks to an anonymous source) that may shed light on where the money went.

Newsnight broadcast the story just as the AIBA World Championships and Olympic qualifiers commenced in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. AIBA (the International Boxing Association) is Olympic boxing’s governing body, and the BBC allegations have sent shockwaves throughout the boxing world.

The BBC report alleged that, according to two sources, at least $9 million out of a total of $15 million was paid by a mysterious Azeri to a Swiss bank account held by the World Series of Boxing, an arm of AIBA, in exchange for Olympic gold for Azerbaijani boxers.

Newsnight relied heavily on charges made by two unnamed individuals as well as email correspondence between Ivan Khodabakhsh, WSB’s Chief Operating Officer, and an official in Azerbaijan’s government. A copy of an email message sent by Khodabakhsh to an official at the Ministry of Emergency Situations refers to a previous meeting between WSB chief Ho Kim and “the Minister,” who has been identified by the BBC as Kamaladdin Heydarov.

Heydarov, the Minister of Emergency Situations, is one of the three or four most powerful people in Azerbaijan. A secret US embassy cable, written last year and released by Wikileaks, details Heydarov’s political acumen and describes his family as “the second most powerful commercial family in Azerbaijan…”

It is no surprise that Heydarov, who is also president of Azerbaijan’s Boxing Federation, would have contact with AIBA or the WSB, who have asserted that the minister was merely acting on behalf of the still unidentified Azeri businessman in obtaining the investment. And no verifiable evidence has yet emerged to suggest that the money came from Heydarov personally or the Azerbaijani government.

In any case, the funds arrived just as the WSB Americas teams were tottering on the brink financial collapse. Of the original four teams in the Americas division, two remain: Mexico City and Los Angeles. The Miami and Memphis teams ceased operations earlier in 2011 after a season of poor attendance at matches and dismal revenue.

Rich Orosco, one of the current managers of the Los Angeles Matadors team insisted in a phone conversation with me that there was nothing to the charges, and blamed former Los Angeles general manager Jeff Benz for the allegations aired by the BBC: “Their source is a disgruntled former employee who was fired. He was the original general manager of Los Angeles…That’s their source, a disgruntled former manager who was fired: Jeff Benz.”

Benz, a well-known lawyer who was once general counsel for the US Olympic Committee and participated in the independent commission that investigated the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics payoff scandal, was sacked earlier this year as manager after a dispute with Ivan Khodabakhsh concerning marketing strategy and costs.

Benz appeared in the BBC Newsnight piece, but despite what Orosco appeared to imply, Newsnight did not indicate that he was one of the confidential informants making the allegations against Khodabakhsh. In telephone and email conversations over the past several days, Benz said that he never heard Khodabakhsh talk of trading money for gold medals.

In the Newsnight piece, Benz does say that the cash infusion from the mysterious Azeri made him suspicious: “It made me wonder if what the AIBA folks had told me was true, that there were links to the Azerbaijan government, what they were expecting to receive out of this, because people, in my experience, governments or individuals, just don’t give money away, especially on the magnitude of ten to fifteen million dollars without some sort of expectation of quid pro quo or a promise.”

The most damning allegations for the Newsnight piece were made by two sources, their identities undisclosed, who charged that Khodabakhsh told them that Olympic medals for Azerbaijani boxers would be arranged in return for the money.

One of the sources, described as a boxing “insider,” told the BBC that “Ivan boasted to a few of us that there was no need to worry about WSB having the coin to pay its bills. So as long as Azerbaijan got their medals, they would get the cash…Ivan made it clear that AIBA would take care of Azerbaijan.”

Khodabakhsh told me via email that “all allegations are completely false and ridiculous. They are fabricated by individuals with an axe to grind, having worked for us in the past and who are totally discredited, because their working relationships was terminated.”

In a press statement, AIBA expressed support for Khodabakhsh and called the charges of a money-for-gold swap “preposterous” and “utterly untrue.”

“The loan was not ‘secret’…nor was there anything improper about it. It was an arms length transaction between two entities made on a commercial basis and with a view to a commercial return for the investor.”

Nevertheless, AIBA has agreed to set up an internal “Special Investigation Committee” to look into the allegations.

However, the special committee’s mandate seems somewhat compromised from the start, given the very close relationship between AIBA, the parent organization, and its offspring WSB. Both share the same address in Lausanne, and despite AIBA’s pledge of “transparency,” it’s hard to imagine that it would pursue an aggressive, thorough investigation. All five members of the committee either have very close ties to AIBA or are staffers, including AIBA’s legal counsel and Tom Vigrets, the chairman of the committee.

(Mr Vigrets did not respond to a query, nor did AIBA respond to multiple requests for information.)

The appearance, then, is that AIBA is investigating AIBA, and I for one am somewhat astonished at the attitude of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which announced that it would wait for the conclusion of the AIBA internal investigation before launching its own inquiry.

Surely the best way for Khodabakhsh to clear his name (and for Heydarov to refute allegations that he may be complicit) is to demand a completely independent investigation comprised of people who have no ties to AIBA or WSB, ideally with the power of subpoena in Switzerland, the US, and Azerbaijan.

An investigative committee that represents AIBA, which is tightly enmeshed with the WSB, may imply to some a conflict of interest, and a “not guilty” finding will leave many unconvinced.

One issue the committee might want to look into is how much of the investment actually reached the American teams.

In April, Eric Parthen—former managing director of the Matadors—filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Denver against the World Series of Boxing, Ho Kim (its CEO and who also happens to be AIBA Executive Director), and Ivan Khodabakhsh.

According to Parthen’s complaint, three large cash payments were promised to the teams:

Defendants KIM and KHODABAKHSH, and each of them, repeatedly represented to Plaintiff that the investor funds would be paid in three (3) installments of five million dollars (US $5,000,000) in September 2010, January 2011 and March 2011, respectively.

In an apparent reference to the mysterious Azeri investor, Parthen contends that Khodabakhsh, Kim, and the WSB withheld a large portion of the money:

Defendants…made material misrepresentations of fact, including that WSB AMERICAS

had secured fifteen million dollars from an unidentified private investor to fund the

start-up and operational costs during the inaugural 2010-2011 season.

These representations were false when made because, in fact, WSB-AMERICAS only received a

fraction of the funding it claimed to have secured from the unidentified private investor.

Orosco assured me that the WSB “is a noble mission” and that the boxers have been paid: “All I know is that we have money to fund our teams. I wasn’t involved in where the money came from, but I do know that four teams were supported last year.”

Joe Smith, the former manager of the Memphis Force, one of the two US teams that flopped this year, acknowledged that there were funding gaps during his team’s bumpy ride: “I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Ivan. When there were money problems he’d say, ‘the money isn’t in yet.’ He has been real honest about that.”

This “scandal” may be nothing more than the malicious accusations of disgruntled former employees, which is just what Khodabakhsh and Orosco have alleged. But the committee will have to operate independently in order to get to the truth.

Smith, who before his brief stint with the WSB was team manager for US boxing at the Beijing Olympic Games, had nothing but praise for Khodabakhsh: “He has been very up front with me, and in my experience, he’s been a man of integrity. I’ll be real surprised if the allegations are true.”

Lawyers Khalid Bagirov and Osman Kazimov met with the same fate earlier this year, as reported on this blog. According to this report from Radio Free Europe’s Baku bureau, Namazov was removed from the Collegium after the body received a letter from the judge in the current trial, who complained that the attorney had broken “ethics rules” during the proceeding, which is continuing this week.

What appears to be taking place is a carefully organized effort to intimidate attorneys who might consider defending anyone connected with pro-democracy youth groups and the two major opposition parties, Musavat and the Popular Front Party.

According to Gorkhmaz Asgarov, an Azeri currently studying law in the US and who runs the Azeri Report web site, another attorney, Aslan Ismayilov, is also in danger of being disbarred for “ethics violations,” but “the Collegium spared him for the time being.”

This apparent campaign against opposition lawyers seems superfluous since guilty verdicts are virtually guaranteed for anyone charged with anti-government activities: engaging in protests, starting facebook pages devoted to civil disobedience, or dressing up in a donkey costume. But Asgarov sees a more far-reaching strategy. Despite the fact that the conviction rate in Azeri courts is daunting, lawyers for opposition figures serving prison sentences have won a number of recent cases in the European Court of Human Rights. In July, the court rendered a judgment in favor of former Prime Minister Panah Huseynov and opposition newspaper editor Rauf Arifoglu, who were imprisoned after unrest following the 2003 presidential election. And last year, the court ordered the release of journalist Eynullah Fatullayev, who at the time had spent nearly three years in prison after being convicted in 2007 on a variety of charges and again in 2010 for drug possession while in prison. Fatullayev was finally released this year.

Thus, Asgarov thinks, the rash of disbarment proceedings is a signal to those lawyers who might take cases to Strasbourg, where the ECHR is located.

“It looks like lately, the Azeri lawyers have been pissing the government off by winning cases at the European Court. [Disbarment] is retaliation for the lost cases at the European Court…The Azerbaijani government is facing a new terrain, where local Azeri lawyers sue its ass and win. Hence, disbarment. Disbarment prevents those lawyers from representing their clients and climbing up the ladder all the way to the European Court.”

This sounds like a viable theory, and is a discouraging development in an atmosphere where due process and political pluralism are all but nonexistent.

Vidadi Iskenderov (Turan photo)

Azerbaijani courts have convicted and sentenced seven defendants in cases relating to protests in April of this year and the parliamentary elections last November.

Six defendants (Babek Hasanov, Zulfugar Eyvazov, Elshan Hasanov, Arif Alishli, Elnur Israfilov and Sahib Karimov) in Baku were convicted of charges of “organizing actions resulting in the violation of public order and resisting and using force against government officials.” Sentences ranged from one and half to three years, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Eight remaining defendants are still involved in court proceedings.

As reported on this blog earlier this year, protests held in March and April were inspired by the Arab Spring in the Middle East and were quickly suppressed by Azerbaijani police. The prison sentences, essentially for participation in small-scale political protests, underscore just how nervous the Azerbaijani government was in the wake of the Arab Spring and its continuing commitment to a “zero tolerance” policy toward dissent, as journalist Khadija Ismayilova put it in April.

Khalid Bagirov, lawyer for one of the eight remaining April 2 defendants as well as former parliamentary candidate Vidadi Iskenderov, was effectively disbarred (removed from Azerbaijan’s “Collegium”) for one year as of Friday.

Iskenderov’s case, not formally tied to the April 2 protesters, resulted in a guilty verdict and a three-year sentence handed down on Saturday in the city of Goychay. The prosecution had charged Isgandarov with, among other things, interfering with electoral officials and battery against an election observer during the parliamentary elections last November.

According to this article from Azerireport, Iskenderov “actively exposed election falsifications by investigating into the election process and election documents.”

His lawyer Bagirov told me yesterday via email that there were additional motives for the charges against his client: “I am deeply convinced that the true cause of the prosecution of Vidadi Iskenderov lies in his extensive human rights work. In particular, he has repeatedly put forward accusations of involvement of many high-ranking officials in corruption.”

The disbarment will complicate matters, says Bagirov: “Just before the verdict was read out, the Collegium suspended me for one year, thus my client’s interests in the higher courts, including the appellate and Supreme Court, will likely be undertaken by another lawyer.”

Bagiroz told me that the ostensible reason for his disbarment was due to a lawsuit brought by Baku police chief Rafig Abbasov in connection with a case involving a man who died earlier this year under mysterious circumstances after being arrested by a Baku police unit.

The underlying reason for his removal from the Collegium, Bagirov said, was his defense of Iskenderov and Elnur Majidli, who was arrested in connection with participation in the protests in April.

Another lawyer, Elchin Namazov, was removed by the judge in the Baku court for a charge similar to contempt in common law countries such as the US or Britain. Namazov had been representing Rufat Hajibeli and Fuad Garamanli for their roles in the April protests. According to Azadliq newspaper reporter Natiq Adilov, Namazov “was the most energetic of the lawyers.”

Osman Kazimov, one of Azerbaijan’s best known defense attorneys, was kicked out of the Collegium earlier this year, but was recently reinstated and is now representing one of the April 2 defendants, according to an Azeri source living in the US.

Both the EU and the OSCE have issued press statements expressing “concern” regarding the outcome of the trial of the April 2 defendants. The OSCE statement said that its Baku office “has monitored the court case and we have concerns about the fairness of the court proceedings.”

I am told by Azeri sources that two trials are ongoing in the remaining cases.

Bitsadze, left, and Nino Burjanadze (new.am)

Badri Bitsadze, the husband of opposition leader Nino Burjanadze, was sentenced by a Tbilisi court on Friday to five years and six months in prison on charges stemming from violent demonstrations in late May.

Bitsadze—whose whereabouts have been unknown for months—was sentenced in absentia by the court. Rumors have persisted since early June that he is in hiding in Armenia or South Ossetia. Russia, however, would be a more likely possibility.

A statement released by the court said that Bitsadze was found guilty of “organizing an attack on police during the Public Assembly rally with the use of truncheons and other weapons to provoke large-scale clashes” during a series of protests in late May. These resulted in the deaths of a protester and police officer who were both struck by cars in a convoy carrying Nino Burjanadze, her husband, and other opposition leaders. The “Public Assembly” is an opposition coalition linked to Burjanadze and Bitsadze, among others.

For every spy drama or accusation of sedition in Georgia there is, inevitably, a video or audio recording – usually released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. One would think that Nino Burjanadze and her son Anzor Bitsadze would have been more careful in May when they allegedly discussed how they might engineer a civil war. But if the recording of a purported conversation between the two of them is genuine, Nino and her son went over a range of issues including how many lives a civil war might cost, and whether the Georgian Army will oppose them in a showdown.

One of the extraordinary aspects of this recording is how deluded mother and son are regarding Georgian support for Russia and the implication that the two or them are expecting Russian government assistance if they attempt to overthrow the government of President Saakashvili. Nino insists that public support for Russia amongst Georgians is ”50/50” and Anzor says that if the Kojori Special Battalion, a Georgian Army unit, shoots revolutionaries, they will soon have the Russian GRU to deal with.

Go here for the recording.

In a related video released by the Ministry, a group of men appear to be discussing plans to overthrow the government. The video, supposedly shot at a café in Tbilisi, appears to show Badri Bitsadze and others calculating the number of provocateurs they would need, as well as whether Molotov Cocktails could be used in an uprising. At one point, the video appears to show former Georgian security chief Irakli Batiashvili saying that the opposition group would need “3,000 experienced and organized warriors” to spearhead the revolution. Batiashvili, who was in 2007 convicted of assisting in a plot to overthrow the government, has said that the contents of the video have been interpreted out of context, and that he and his companions were not discussing an armed rebellion.

The conviction and sentencing of Bitsadze will do little to quell the fervor of Nino Burjandze, despite the fact that her recklessness in recent years has destroyed her legitimacy in the eyes of the Georgian people. She and her allies can always manage to energize ten or twenty thousand agitators in Freedom Square, although even Nino sighed on the audio tape, “How we need it!” when her son suggested that perhaps they could get a turnout of 30,000 or more.