News.Az interviews Adil Baguirov, Ph.D.Managing Director and co-founder U.S. Azeris Network (USAN).
Q: Azerbaijan has presented a note to the United States regarding the decision by the Congress to allocate $8 mln to Karabakh separatists. If I am not mistaken this occurred for the first time in the history of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Is it possible to speak about the cooling in bilateral relations?
A: I know that Azerbaijani protests, at least verbal ones, have been always lodged and heard, but it is indeed the first time that the Azerbaijan government and wider public have given a very stern and strong reaction from all sides. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani-Americans have been vociferously protesting this waste of U.S. money as well, especially in the past two years.
Considering that the direct aid to the occupied region of Azerbaijan has been masterminded and done only by a few very motivated, and powerful, members of the U.S. Congress, for whom this is a special “pet project”, and who are not representative of the entire United States Congress and people, I do not think that the bilateral relations between our two countries would, or should, suffer, since neither the White House (Executive Branch), nor the majority of Congress (Legislative Branch), nor the American people, are in favor of hurting Azerbaijan, and, quite frankly, American national interests. Because Azerbaijan is a time-tested, proven and recognized strategic ally and friend, whilst Armenia is simply not at the same level, and would be unable to be such for a while. Also, considering the fact that Azerbaijan, as former President Bush said, is the locomotive of the Caucasus region and bridge to Central Asia and Caspian region, it makes zero sense for U.S. to intentionally hurt its close friend. It would be very hurtful for Azerbaijani-American Diaspora to see cooling in relations between their adopted homeland and their historic homeland.
Unfortunately, there are many precedents in both U.S. politics as well as policy of any country, including Azerbaijan, when some decisions are a result of mistakes, omissions and faulty decision-making process. Just like Azerbaijan is not immune from unfortunate mistakes, neither is the United States. In America right now there are a great many very important initiatives and decisions, which are a direct result of mistakes, from the huge so-called “stimulus bills” that increased the deficit, is projected to increase the gross national debt to over 100% of the GDP in the coming few years, and devalued the U.S. dollar, to being very soft on Wall Street bankers who created this financial mess, to U.S. foreign policy from Afghanistan to Honduras and other areas of the world (e.g., pressure on Turkey).
And when we have a relatively small (2 million Armenians out of 308 million U.S. population is relatively small), but a very motivated and well organized community, a “special interest” group, in this case the Armenian Diaspora, it is able to negatively affect and influence the political process through targeted lobbying in certain states such as California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts, thus prolonging problems for everyone in U.S. and the Caucasus region, and, ironically, more so for Armenia, since it has a hard time to sustain its aggression and occupation of Azerbaijan economically, demographically and also politically (not to mention morally).
Regrettably, U.S. politics is filled with examples of such special interest ethnic lobbies negatively influencing processes, and derailing usual government thinking and policies — for example, many political scientists point to the highly-effective lobbying by the Cuban-American community, which dominates politics in the politically crucial state of Florida, which has imposed a full embargo on Fidel Castro’s Cuba for the past almost 50 years, as a punishment for all the wrongs committed by President Castro. This emotional lobbying by some activist Cuban-Americans has, in the words of many academics and former politicians, delayed democracy and normalization in that island country for all these years, and despite all attempts by the White House, including President Obama, and many in Congress to lift or at least relax the embargo, some very active Cuban-American lobby groups oppose it, prevent such efforts and dictate their own narrow agenda (even if a sizeable number of Cuban-Americans, not to mention most Americans, are not supporting this — in fact 64% of Cuban-Americans want to have the embargo relaxed according to the latest polls). So this shows the sometimes disproportionate power that a relatively small, but well mobilized ethnic community can do with the U.S. policy.
Q: What can you say about the very fact of allocation of assistance to Karabakh separatists? It is clear that it is done not for the first time but, probably, the expectations from Obama’s administration that did not envision assistance to Karabakh in a separate article have not been justified.
A: As you know, a few motivated pro-Armenian members of the U.S. Congress have been inserting the provision of direct aid to the Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan since 1998. This is a classic example of “pork barrel” spending, when something that goes against the common good is inserted into a large bill for the benefit of a very small special interest group. And the U.S. Administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush and now Obama always opposed it, as did some in Congress, particularly the Azerbaijani Caucus members.
For example, when Amb. Richard Morningstar was in charge of aid to the former Soviet republics in the Clinton Administration, he was successful in stopping and delaying the Congress appropriated aid, which constantly led to friction and problems with the members of the Armenian Caucus, particularly the recently defeated co-chair of that Caucus, Congressman Joe Knollenberg. Unfortunately, at the time neither the Azerbaijani-American Diaspora, nor Azerbaijan itself, seemed to have been vocal enough or even informed enough to oppose this ridiculous piece of legislation. Also, Azerbaijan has never had a large lobbying presence on the Capitol Hill, which is very surprising. What is even more surprising is that Azerbaijan has seemingly never rectified this huge omission. The very same $8 million that are being sent to the occupied NK potentially could be prevented if Azerbaijan is to spend as much on lobbying for its interests and explaining the situation to all the involved political leaders. On the other side of the spectrum, we have Armenian groups such as ANCA and AAA with combined operating budgets of well some $12 million per year, plus up to $50 million in assets, plus dozens of other such organizations, plus raising another $5 million per year just for political contributions to federal and state candidates for office. Is it not interesting that these seemingly grassroots organizations created by the Armenian Diaspora are actually hiring lobbyists to help them achieve their goals, paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars each year (no Azerbaijani or Turkish Dispora organization has ever done that, by the way)? This massive lobbying and advocacy potential appears to be far greater than whatever Azerbaijan and Turkey put together combined. Hence one can witness the result. Nations and ethnic communities that spend the most, are generally most effective lobbyists of their perceived interests — whether Indians, Israelis, Greeks, Armenians, Taiwanese, Italians, Saudis, or Irish.
It is absolutely reprehensible and plain outrageous that even one single U.S. taxpayer dollar goes directly to the Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, bypassing Baku. It is even more ridiculous that the Congressional conference report that accompanies the bill was changed, where now Congress appropriated the $8 million specifically just to Nagorno-Karabakh region, whilst before, in
Plus, if before there was language to provide direct assistance to Abkhazia too, but it was never done and members of Congress always ignored that — which flies in the face of anyone trying to defend the indefensible stance that this is just a humanitarian aid to the people, done by some NGOs — which makes matters worse since there is less accountability as it is not administered by the U.S. government. Moreover, how can anyone logically explain why would occupied Karabakh region with up to 120,000 people get $8 million in aid, whilst the rest of Azerbaijan with 8.5 million population only $22 million — i.e., just 3 times more. This is plain insulting to say that the “humanitarian” needs of the aggressors in Karabakh region are greater than the needs of the 800,000 Azerbaijani refugee and IDP victims of the Armenian occupation. One more problem with the recent bill — it has a reference to the Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act (FSA) and basically concerns itself with it being waived since 2002 — in other words, the Armenian Caucus members of the U.S. Congress are trying to do everything they can to make it harder for President Obama to waive Sec. 907 in 2010 and beyond, and to eventually try to reinstate that outrageous piece of legislation. Of course the irony of this is that if Sec. 907 is to be reinstated, U.S. will stop all military aid to Armenia, too. Which in a strange twist of events, might actually benefit Azerbaijan.
Even if this so-called direct “humanitarian aid” to the occupied NK region is strictly non-military, non-security, and is used only for vaccination, demining and food, that still frees up more money for the Armenian army to sustain its continued aggression and occupation of Azerbaijan, and circumvents Azerbaijani law and potentially international and U.S. laws, since there is absolutely no legitimate need or reason to send money directly to an occupied region of a friendly nation that happens to also be a strategic ally. Considering that Armenia spends up to $150 million per year to sustain the non-military part of Karabakh’s occupation, giving them $8 million is a serious present, or actually an outrageous example of wasteful spending, that would have been better to give to the millions of unemployed, disabled and uninsured in the U.S., particularly the American military veterans who are suffering a lot after their tours of duty, or the homeowners in the very same California and Michigan that are being crushed by the debt. For example, we just learned that of the 100,000 mortgage loan modifications attempted by homeowners, only some 400 were actually approved by banks. The rest 99,600 homeowners could have got about $80 each from the $8 million given to “criminal secessionists” in Karabakh, as they were called by former Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones, and later, in a similar manner by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. courts, who have deported an Armenian army lieutenant Vigen Patatanyan for, I quote, “crimes against humanity” in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
Thus, it is understandable that Azerbaijan and all Azerbaijanis are furious about this — so are all Americans once enlightened on what some of these irresponsible pork-barrel spending, special interest serving members of the Armenian Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives do with their money. With so many problems at hand, it is absolutely not the business of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign and Related Programs, made up of the Armenian Caucus members, to override U.S. policy and circumvent international and foreign laws.
And this happened because the Obama Administration is so bogged down with other bigger, national problems and is in such a hurry trying to do so much in so little time, that it simply could not prioritize this critical issue and give stern instructions to the Congressional liaison offices, to the respective State Department, Pentagon, as well as Congressional leaders, to oppose the inclusion of this outrageous line-item “aid” in the reconciled FY2010 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill — especially considering that this line-item was neither in the Presidential FY2010 budget request, nor in the Senate appropriations version of the bill. In this case it is due to the push done by the following members of the Armenian Caucus of the U.S. Congress: chairwoman Nita Lowey (Democrat — New York), co-chair of Armenian Caucus Mark Steven Kirk (Republican — Illinois), Adam Schiff (Democrat — California), co-chair of Armenian Caucus Frank Pallone (Democrat — New Jersey), Frank LoBiondo (Republican — New Jersey), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (Democrat — Illinois) and Steven Rothman (Democrat — New Jersey). So this makes for seven (7) members of Congress, out of 435, who took this extremely unfriendly and outrageous step.
Additionally, their initiative, urging all the Congress to support the direct aid to the Armenia occupied Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, was signed by the following twenty-nine (29) members of the Armenian Caucus: Bruce Braley
Q: Is this decision of the Congress final or it can be reviewed? Anyway, does the Azerbaijani Diaspora plan to take any steps and actions as a sign of protest?
A: Yes, as I predicted sometime ago, at this point, there is nothing that can be done by the Congress, since the bills have passed. President Obama hypothetically could veto the appropriations bill, but neither he, nor his predecessors, would veto a thousand-page law because of one small line-item. Back in
I should note that the members of the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus have written “Dear Colleague” letters to their colleagues, the members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign and Related Programs (you can read this and many other relevant documents on our website, www.USAzeris.org), but their appeal was obviously ignored. The Azerbaijani-Americans and the USAN in particular, have been very active on this subject, sending over 15,000 letters and petitions just on this subject in the past two years (for the 2009 and 2010 budgets). That is 15% of our total letters sent! USAN has also submitted several congressional testimonies to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign and Related Programs, plus sent three (3) letters to all the nearly 10,000 staff members of the U.S. Congress. In respect to the 2010 budget, USAN members sent 1,345 letters to President Obama and members of the Senate, as well as the Azerbaijan Caucus, thanking them for their fair stance, and 9,781 letters to all the members of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees. As you can see, despite these great never-before-done on such a scale grassroots advocacy initiatives, all done by volunteers and activists of the Azerbaijani-American Diaspora, it was not enough, because the much larger Armenian lobby made even more efforts, mobilized even more people, raised even more campaign funds, and hired many lobbyists. The leading Armenian-American lobby organizations need two topics for their survival and relevance, to always be in the news, one of which is the Karabakh issue. Hence, they do everything they can to, what they rashly think, “hurt” Azerbaijan and “help” Armenia, even if the result is actually completely opposite — it makes Armenia sink deeper and deeper, as all politico-economic ratings reveal, while Azerbaijan economy, as well as military budget keeps rising, and hurt U.S. policy and interests in the region, by making people of Azerbaijan, as well as Georgia, Turkey, and Central Asia, far less enthusiastic about America. That is how we in America always lose friends abroad — millions of great, trusted, time-proven friends and allies. This has a negative effect on the U.S. interests in the Greater Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, and Caspian energy, to name a few.
But it can still be all fixed, and what is most important, despite the significant advantage that the Armenian lobby has always enjoyed in U.S. and other Western countries, it is eroding, and they have experienced massive setbacks in the recent times. It should be obvious to any long-term policy planner that Azerbaijan and the rest of the Turkic world is on the rise, whilst Armenia is falling behind, and the actions by the Armenian Diaspora groups are actually contributing to this.
News.Az
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