Thursday, January 21 2016 13:46

Azerbaijani regime that is in desperate straits might choose to "play the Karabakh card"--the one grievance that can rally all Azerbaijanis around the flag-and start a military operation, large or small, to recover lost territory, writes British analyst Thomas de Waal in his latest analysis 

"Azerbaijan's perfect storm" published on the website of Carnegie Endowment - Europe. "In that case, the Armenians would be bound to strike back and a new and potentially catastrophic conflict in the Caucasus would break out."

In his words, the other wild card is political Islam. For understandable reasons, Azerbaijan's secular pro-Western political prisoners have captured most of the attention abroad. 
"But the majority of the prisoners are Muslims accused of political radicalism, whether they be Shias from the pro-Iranian village of Nardaran or Sunnis accused of sympathy for the so-called Islamic State. The level of support for political Islam is hard to judge because it is below the surface. We can only be certain that, as in much of the Middle East, the more it is suppressed the stronger its appeal will be," de Waal writes. 

The analyst believes that trouble at home in Azerbaijan comes within a worsening international context. "Azerbaijan is in the middle of a (self-inflicted) row with the United States, after closing down almost all U.S. organizations in Baku and accusing Washington of fomenting a "color revolution" in the country. A bill threatening sanctions in response to human rights abuses was recently tabled in Congress."

"The row between Russia and Turkey, its two closest international partners, has put Azerbaijan in an awkward spot. (Only last year, Aliev was convening a friendly meeting between Putin and Erdogan in Baku.)

Lifting of sanctions on Iran is a triple blow. It removes a major card Baku was playing with the West (that it was a bulwark against a hostile Iran), reinvigorates a regional power which has a number of quarrels with Azerbaijan, and depresses oil prices. Moreover, there is talk in Georgia of importing oil from Iran via Armenia, which would end Azerbaijan's monopoly on gas imports," the British analyst writes.