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Caspian Studies Program
Summary by Emily van Buskirk
On August 24, 2000 the Caspian Studies Program and the Wexner-Israel Fellowship Program hosted a dialogue between students at the Kennedy School of Government about mutual perceptions and relations between Azerbaijan and Israel. Five students from Azerbaijan, four of whom are U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce Fellows, and ten Wexner fellows from Israel participated in the discussion.
Brian Mandell, lecturer in Public Policy, opened the dinner, articulating the relationship between globalization and conflicts. As he described it, globalization creates new possibilities for resolution, as there are opportunities for thinking differently about a country''s context in the search for new partners in a post-Cold War world. Melissa Carr, Program Director of the Caspian Studies Program, followed Professor Mandell, with a description of the goals of the Caspian Studies Program at Harvard, which seeks to place the Caspian basin on the mental maps of U.S. policy makers as a region of strategic importance. The Program includes outreach, research, and fellowships enabling students from the region to study at the Kennedy School.
KSG MPA student Ramin Isayev, a Senior Economist at Statoil, gave a presentation about Azerbaijan for the Israelis. Ramin himself is a refugee from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. He outlined Azerbaijan''s history, economy, and strategic challenges, highlighting the country''s distinction as the first democratic republic in the Eastern world (established May 28, 1918). (This history was short-lived, however, as the Soviets took over the country in April 1920.) Ramin also spoke of the long history of Jews in Azerbaijan: both Ashkenazi Jews and Caucasian Mountain Jews have lived there at least since the ninth century, he stated. Today Azerbaijan''s Jewish population is about 20,000.
Roni Yannay, a Lieutenant Colonel and Chief of Branch in the Israeli Defense Force, and an MPA student at the Kennedy School, gave a subjective characterization of his country by describing his family background. His parents are European (Dutch and Russian/Lithuanian) Holocaust survivors and his mother and father-in-law are both Israeli-born, with families from Yemen and pre-World War II Germany. Three defining issues for Israel, he argued, are 1) the Israeli-Arab conflict; 2) the role of religion in the state (Israel is defined as the state of the Jewish people, but not only Jews live there); and 3) a stable democracy that is systemically problematic and unstable.
Brenda Shaffer, Research Director of the Caspian Studies Program, spoke about Israeli-Azerbaijani relations as they have developed since the Soviet dissolution, and about lessons that Israel can learn by studying Iran''s policies towards Azerbaijan. Brenda worked for the Government of Israel during the nascent years of Israeli policy towards the newly independent states. Certain Israeli government figures, she described, at first assumed that the appearance of six new Muslim countries would be potentially bad for Israel. However, they soon learned that Israel could instead take advantage of the opportunity to show that while it had conflicts with certain Arab countries, it was not at odds with the whole Muslim world. Israel thus adopted a very positive and cooperative policy toward the new Muslim states. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan was eager for good relations with Israel, which it regarded as a needed and powerful friend. Azerbaijan and Israel have accordingly built up good mutual relations. David Dorenfeld of ExxonMobil pointed out that if oil development continues to expand in Azerbaijan as most are projecting, Israel could play a major role in developing the necessary new infrastructure.
Brenda drew out several lessons about Azerbaijan, the principal one being that 20 million Azerbaijanis live in Iran, a country that is, unbeknownst to many, actually 50% non-Persian. In contrast, only 7 million Azerbaijanis live in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Iran''s large proportion of Azerbaijani Turks helps to explain why Iran has not been a friend to Azerbaijan, but rather has supported Armenia in the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over Nagorno Karabagh. Thus the lesson for Israel is that Iran''s foreign policy is pragmatic (striving to keep Azerbaijan weak so that it does not become attractive to its own population), not ideological (which would mean alignment with Muslim brethren).
Subsequent discussion focussed mainly on the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict, and comparisons of conflicts in the Caucasus to those in the Middle East. Fuad Akhundov, MPA Student and Senior Inspector at the National Central Bureau of Interpol in Azerbaijan, explained the history of Armenian settlement in the mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan, and of conflicts between Iran and Russia in which Azerbaijan was caught in the middle. He stated that the conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabagh (there has been a 6 year ceasefire but no settlement) has resulted in 1 million Azerbaijani refugees, mostly internally displaced persons. Brenda Shaffer added that the Nagorno-Karabagh peace process is at a stage analogous to where the Arab-Israeli process was in the 1960''s or 70''s: the historians are still battling, rather than the diplomats. However, in contrast to the Middle East conflict, on the human level, Armenians and Azerbaijanis are extremely amenable towards each other and quite open to trade and contacts with one another, as exemplified by the number of mixed families.
Some of the Israeli students noted that they had traditionally tended to identify more closely with the Armenian people, because of the shared experience of genocide, than with Azerbaijanis. Thus they were surprised to hear from the Azerbaijani students about hardships and refugees resulting from the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict. Another point the Wexner Fellows found interesting was Azerbaijan''s status as a secular Muslim State, and the separation of church and state in Azerbaijan as explicitly stated in the constitution. This is in contrast to Israel''s definition as a religious state. Both groups of students found a new commonality as countries coping with life in "tough neighborhoods."
In sum, the dinner provided a forum for the students to get to know one another, to discuss each other''s countries, and through these discussions to discover important topics for exploration during the coming year. Among the subjects that students identified as important for shared discussion were: the role of Islam in secular states, constitutional analysis, and experiences with conflict and conflict resolution.