Azeri’s Aliyev: brutal, murderous but the West says, ‘Look at all his luscious oil’

In principle, we do not like autocrats. We also clearly condemn ethnic cleansing practices. And in theory, authoritarian regimes ruled by despotic families are the exact opposite of what we stand for. In practice, however, things are quite different.

Take Azerbaijan, for example. With the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) to be held in Baku in November, civil society organisations and watchdogs are calling attention to the country’s abysmal track record on human rights and freedom. Few appear to listen.

After all, the otherwise sensitive international community is rather accustomed to turning a blind eye on Azerbaijan’s bads.

It was only last year, when the Azeri regime embarked on a bloody military operation that carried out ethnic cleansing in the Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, region, ousting hundreds of thousands of Armenian civilians from their ancestral lands.

Azeri crimes, such as cold blooded mass executions of Armenian prisoners caught on harrowing videos, never truly bothered the West. Students, academics, activists, intellectuals, politicians and artists who are otherwise driven by humanitarian concerns never protested for the orphaned and displaced Armenian children.

Things would be different if Azerbaijan was not a country so rich in oil and gas. What is more, as the EU and the US have focused on facing Putin, the Azeri’s president, Ilham Aliyev, becomes even more influential as an alternative supplier of fossil fuels to Europe.

Aliyev, however, is very much like Putin. He has been in power since 2003, after succeeding his father, former KGB agent Heydar Aliyev. His family has ruled for more than 30 years. Corruption in Azerbaijan is king, opposition is being severely persecuted, freedom of speech and expression, let alone activism, are almost non-existent.

Freedom House, the oldest American organization devoted to the support and defence of democracy around the world, gives Azerbaijan an overall freedom status score of 4/100 – with 0/40 for political rights – labelling the country “not free”.

With Baku currently in the spotlight because of the COP29, Human Rights Watch and Freedom Now have issued a joint report focusing on the “crackdown” on government critics and activists in Azerbaijan. They are calling on the EU to take action.

Dozens of US lawmakers have also urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to push for the release of political prisoners, hostages and prisoners of war in Azerbaijan. Their open letter does not fail to mention “war crimes”, allegedly committed by the Azeri military since 2022.

Not much is expected to change, though. Under its current foreign policy, Europe cannot afford the luxury of cutting itself off from the — rather overpriced– Azeri energy resources. So leaders who strongly condemn other regimes and wars, will in this case see no evil, hear no evil.

This is what happens when we are driven exclusively by interests, leaving no room for principles. To paraphrase a quote that has been attributed to three American presidents, “Aliyev may be a gory despot, but he is our gory despot”.