By Ismi Aghaev, an OC-Media staff writer
Since the spring of 2020, crossing Azerbaijan’s land borders has been barred to civilians, allegedly on the basis of the threat of coronavirus.
The semi-regular renewal of the borders’ closure neglects to engage with the fact that all other restrictions have been lifted, that air travel is freely permissible, and that vaccine certificates are no longer required anywhere within the country.
But given the move directly impacts thousands of Azerbaijanis who study abroad, used to conduct cross-border businesses, and still need to travel to neighbouring countries for work or for medical treatment, the reasons for the measures’ continued implementation must be significant.
With observation and analysis, the answer becomes evident. Tying together the impacts and implementation of the borders’ closure are the business and financial interests of Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family, and the system of cronyism and bribery that they have created.
Azerbaijan Airlines Company (AZAL) is indirectly owned by the ruling family. Since the land borders have been closed, AZAL has had increasing dominance over Azerbaijan’s airspace due to high taxes on foreign airlines. AZAL sets the price of tickets as it sees fit, and its vice president confirmed in February that the company had ended 2022 with a net profit for the first time in its history.
Preventing Azerbaijan’s middle-income demographic from leaving the country to travel, and instead pushing them towards domestic tourism is also in the interests of the Aliyevs. The move serves to effectively prevent many people from getting an insight into what life looks like in places outside of the reach of Aliyev’s ‘iron fist’, a useful restriction as the bounds of possibility become ever narrower within the country’s borders.
It also serves to once again bolster the businesses of the Aliyevs and their allies. A quick Google search makes evident that many of the country’s most desirable hotels, restaurants, and tourist resorts belong to the Aliyevs and closely-associated high-ranking officials — providing them with a steady flow of customers is, of course, a side-effect of Azerbaijan’s dedication to fighting the coronavirus.
Preventing and managing inflow is also a politically astute move. This is particularly the case since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the return of a significant proportion of the estimated 3.5 million Azerbaijanis living in Russia would be disastrous for Aliyev, bringing both the prospect of more people seeking jobs in a failing economy and the potential for political agitation.
Air travel also allows for tighter and more precise management of who exactly enters the country and what they bring with them. The sequential checks involved in air travel allow the government to intercept money intended for civil society organisation, independent media, and individuals, as well as giving the Aliyevs even greater oversight and control of the population they already maintain under lock and key.
Unofficially, the government insists on keeping its citizens in an open-air prison regime with closed land borders and only the right to breathe.
External intervention in the matter is a delicate matter. Expressing objection to how Azerbaijan manages coronavirus within its borders is not within the standard diplomatic playbook, allowing the country’s leaders to extend the restrictions indefinitely.
So those who have been separated from their loved ones, who have been unable to access treatment, who have been unable to work, who have just been unable to even briefly leave their country to see how things look elsewhere are left with no-one to turn to.
There is, as ever, an apt proverb in Azerbaijan:
‘It is useless to complain about God to the prophet’…
And until those cruel ‘gods’ are displaced, even prayer seems to offer little hope.
