Ilham: Portrait of a President

Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama stated that: “...War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease, the manner in which tribes and then civilisations sought power and settled their differences.” From before recorded beginnings war has been a feature of the human condition. According to military historian Carl von Clausewitz, in his 1827 book On War, half of the people found in a Nubian cemetery, dating to as early as 12,000 years ago, had died of violence. Since the rise of nations and states, around 5,000 years ago, armed conflict has occurred in every part of the globe. The invention of gunpowder and more recent technological advances led to modern warfare and increased the death toll. According to authors Ziad Obermeyer, E. Gakidou and Christopher Murray, in Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia, it is estimated that 378,000 people died each year due to war just between 1985 and 1994. It is a ghastly figure, though dwarfed by other dark points in history. Up to 56 million people died in World War Two, 36 million in the An Shi Rebellion of China and perhaps 40 million during the Mongol Conquests. In more contemporary times — and closer to Azerbaijan — over one million died during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a million during the Iran-Iraq War, and as many as a million during the current travails in Iraq. Less of a headliner, but equally spurious, the Nagorno-Karabakh War claimed some 25,000 lives between 1988 and 1994. Armenia engaged Azerbaijan in an undeclared war in the mountainous heights of Nagorno-Karabakh. During the turmoil of the demise of the Soviet Union, a deeply divided and weak political elite in Baku contributed to chaos as Azerbaijan lost Nagorno-Karabakh and swathes of surrounding territory. By the time that advancing Armenians were stopped, Azerbaijan had lost nearly one fifth of its territory to occupiers. Worse was the human cost. According to a major United Nations Department of Public Information report on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), published on June 18, 2009: The situation of such people in Azerbaijan is as heart-shattering as elsewhere around the globe. With 800,000 refugees and IDPs, Azerbaijan has the largest internally displaced population in the region, and, as of 2006, had the highest per capita IDP population in the world. Ilham Aliyev ascended to the Presidency of Azerbaijan in 2003, some nine years after his father had forged a difficult ceasefire with Armenia. Ahead lay difficult years. The younger Aliyev faced the same occupation and IDP crisis. Yet before him lay a nation that was desperate for social change, economic growth and democratic transformation. Also he is a ‘War President’. A stalemate of ‘no war, no peace’ exists. If Azerbaijan has resources but not the military victory, Armenia has the victory but lacks resources. Both states suffer, yet there remains an abiding feeling that Aliyev has to free his lands, while in Yerevan a succession of leaders have fed their people a staple diet of rhetoric in order to explain away economic failure. In Baku, a reluctant ‘War President’ has quietly restrained himself, and pursued a diplomatic agenda while his armed forces have been built with an eye on a liberation conflict. Sun Tsu was an ancient Chinese general and strategist who authored The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy. It is a tome that remains in evidence today, some two and a half millennia on, a reference point that military strategists the world over have invariably read. According to Sun Tzu’s long-relevant doctrine the art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death. The path to safety or ruin. It is a subject that has occupied the time of military men and some political leaders for the thousands of years since Sun Tsu put pen to paper. Ilham Aliyev may never have read the seminal military book, but many in his armed forces will. The doctrines therein will, to some degree, have shaped Azeri strategy in this regard. Certainly to the President of a country one-fifth under occupation, “vital importance to the state” is a sentiment he knows well. The human cost of the occupation is well known to the President of Azerbaijan. “I talk about this issue every day, every single day,” he says. “One eighth of the people of my country are Internally Displaced Persons. That issue dominates my life.” During his Presidency, Ilham Aliyev has been responsible for providing accommodation for hundreds of thousands in temporary homes, as well as ensuring schools for children, healthcare and other norms of a civil society. They want to go home, but at least while they wait for this they can live — relatively — normal lives. Ilham Aliyev reels off the statistics. They are well practiced. In the 2,863 days between his assumption of the Presidency on October 31, 2003 to September 1, 2011, not a day has gone by without recourse to the awful truths they represent. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, established by the Norwegian Refugee Council and the leading international body monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide, Azerbaijan has one million IDPs as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh War. It’s grim, especially considering that on January 15, 2010, Azerbaijan’s nine millionth citizen was born in the Babek District in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Eleven per cent of Azeris are IDPs, a frightening statistic. Aliyev is impassioned and energetic as he spits out this figure. Eleven per cent equates to 34 million Americans being displaced, 7 million French, 16 million Russians or 14 million Japanese. Yet outside of Azerbaijan these are a forgotten million. Afghanistan’s estimated 200,000 IDPs are far more visible on our television screens, as are Sri Lanka’s 300,000 IDPs or Burma’s (Myanmar) 500,000 IDPs. That is not to lessen the burden of those suffering in these countries, but to highlight that the suffering of Azerbaijan’s IDPs is far less conspicuous. One million people forgotten, in international media terms. And indeed in terms of international law. Unlike the case of refugees, there is no international treaty which applies specifically to IDPs. Bahame Tom Nyanduga, Special Rapporteur on Refugees, IDPs and Asylum Seekers in Africa for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights states that: “the absence of a binding international legal regime on internal displacement is a grave lacuna in international law.” While battling on this front, Aliyev has had enviable success elsewhere. Achieving tangible economic growth is another form of war, where many nations fail. Boosted by oil revenues, Aliyev’s Azerbaijan has seen a transformation since 2003... Official statistics show a drastically decreasing level of poverty over the last five years, from 49 per cent to 16 per cent, an increase of the state budget from $1 billion up to $12 billion, 1,200 new schools built, hundreds of new private sector businesses, vast water and electricity projects, a new ‘National Strategy for Transparency and Combating Corruption’... the list goes on. In 2004, during the first 12 months of his Presidency, Aliyev stepped up to the plate on employment, particularly youth employment. He decreed that government and the private sector needed to create 600,000 new jobs in five years. By 2009, this figure had been bettered, reaching 800,000 new jobs. In the last six years the economy grew approximately three times and remained as one of the fastest expanding economies in the world. Even during the global downturn and crisis of recent years Azerbaijan’s economy was robust, in 2009 GDP growing by 9.3 per cent...