INEQUITY INDEX

At the dawn of 2024, the US made another move against Azerbaijan. The State Department added Azerbaijan to the list of countries to be monitored due to alleged violations of religious freedom. This decision, undoubtedly unjust against Azerbaijan—a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country renowned for its traditions of tolerance—will inevitably impact the dialogue between Baku and Washington.

The Commission's Peculiarities

The US State Department annually releases the so-called Religious Freedom Index, which is based on the reports of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The Commission's stance is determined by its status as an independent commission of the US federal government. The blacklist compiled by the Commission and ratified by the State Department includes 12 countries (Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Myanmar, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Eritrea) that are deemed to be of particular concern due to their involvement in or tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom.

There's also a "special watch list", which includes countries that are potential candidates for blacklisting. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's office has added Azerbaijan to this watchlist, which also includes Algeria, the Central African Republic, Comoros, and Vietnam. In such a case, the monitored countries, in the absence of improvements in the sphere of religious freedom, will inevitably be included in the "blacklist", which could provoke American sanctions against them.

However, as can be seen from the USCIRF report endorsed by the State Department, the issue of religious freedoms is closely related to the assessment of the domestic political situation in a particular country. The internal political character of the assessment is also present in the part of the report dealing with Azerbaijan. There are statements such as "a sharp decline in political opposition in the country", "political prisoners", as well as criticisms of Azerbaijani legislation. It is claimed that the Azerbaijani government controls religious practice in accordance with the Law on Freedom of Religion and its amendments.

It appears that the US does not accept the measures taken by the Azerbaijani State to curb the threat of religious radicalism and extremism. And they are certainly not satisfied with Azerbaijan's legitimate steps to prevent the activities of Christian sects that act as instruments for expanding Western influence. In any case, the USCIRF report expresses dissatisfaction with the fact that the Jehovah's Witnesses community in Azerbaijan has been awaiting official registration for many years.

Finally, the USCIRF report concludes that the US should put pressure on Azerbaijan. And the State Department fully agrees with this conclusion. Perhaps it is the part of the report dealing with the events in the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan that clearly hints at the main reason why the Biden administration agrees with the conclusion of the "independent commission".

American Interest and Armenian Trace

The primary basis for categorising Azerbaijan as a monitored country in the context of "religious freedom" is the alleged "threat" posed to Christian churches in Garabagh following the implementation of the September 19-20, 2023 anti-terrorist operation.

The report cited by the State Department in its anti-Azerbaijani decision completely distorts the facts. They claim that since December 2022 the Garabagh Armenians "have faced serious problems with food, fuel and medicine", and that the Azerbaijani government has established "a complete blockade of the corridor - the transport route connecting Nagorno-Garabagh with Armenia".

The anti-terrorist operation, which resulted in Azerbaijan ending the separatist junta in the mountainous part of its Garabagh region and fully asserting its sovereignty over all territories liberated from Armenian occupation, is presented in the American report as a "military offensive". Its goal is portrayed as to "forcibly retake the region," leading to "a mass expulsion of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians." The report also refers to "many organisations concerned about the protection and preservation of religious sites in Nagorno-Garabagh and other neighbouring territories that have returned to Azerbaijani control in recent years".

However, Azerbaijan itself has every reason to criticise the US for its widely practised policy of double standards. During the three decades of Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territories, Washington has never once identified Armenia as the country guilty of committing military aggression, an aggression that involved the destruction or desecration of numerous monuments of Azerbaijani cultural heritage, including mosques and shrines.

The State Committee for Work with Religious Organisations of Azerbaijan has condemned the US State Department's decision to include Azerbaijan in the list of countries to be monitored for potential violations of religious freedom. The committee stresses that the US commission's report relies on pro-Armenian sources and deliberately misrepresents the events. The State Department does not acknowledge the destruction of Azerbaijani historical, cultural, and religious monuments by Armenia during the occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

"During the occupation of Azerbaijani territories in Garabagh and Eastern Zangezur, Armenia converted mosques into animal stalls and pigsties, and destroyed Muslim religious shrines. Additionally, Armenia appropriated religious monuments belonging to the heritage of Caucasian Albania and allowed the looting of Muslim cemeteries in the previously occupied Azerbaijani territories," the statement from the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations of Azerbaijan said.

The State Committee emphasizes that the Azerbaijani authorities are currently actively restoring religious and historical monuments in Garabagh and Eastern Zangezur, which were destroyed by the Armenian side during the occupation of these territories. It is also puzzling that the US did not mention in its report the preservation of the Armenian-Gregorian church and thousands of books in the Armenian language in the centre of Baku.

"Such biased and unfounded assessments harm relations between Baku and Washington," the state committee said in a statement, arguing that Armenia and the US, where the rights of Muslims in particular are seriously violated, should be "brought under control".

The real reason for the pro-Armenian assessments in the report of the American commission and the anti-Azerbaijani decision of the US State Department is clear. It is about the US' rejection of Azerbaijan's independent policy, which has created a new reality in the South Caucasus region. The US was never willing to take into account Azerbaijan's readiness to grant the Garabagh Armenians, in case they adopt Azerbaijani citizenship, all the rights provided for by the Constitution of the country. Including the rights to freedom of religion, education, use of their native language and preservation of their nationality. The states do not want to take into account the fact that the Azerbaijani state protects all cultural monuments on its territory, regardless of their national and religious content. And Christian monuments throughout Azerbaijan, including Garabagh, are an integral part of Azerbaijani cultural heritage in general.

A clear indication of the US' biased stance was the fact that the State Department's defamatory report on Azerbaijan was prepared by Daniela Ashbakhyan, an activist of the Armenian lobby. Before joining USCIRF, she served as the Director of Public Affairs of the Armenian Assembly of America, one of the leading Armenian diaspora organizations in the US It seems that the State Department allowed Ashbakhyan, who could not be expected to provide an unbiased, objective assessment of the situation in Azerbaijan, to influence the US' policy on religious freedoms and damage Azerbaijani-American relations. This damage will undoubtedly affect the prospect of American mediation between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The State Department Repeating a Mistake

In the new regional reality established after the restoration of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, which created a historic opportunity for the conclusion of an Azerbaijani-Armenian peace treaty, it's not even the habitual biased attitude of Washington towards Baku that is striking. It's not the fact that the US has committed yet another blatant act of injustice against Azerbaijan, which is one of the most globally successful examples of a multicultural society, a state where peace and harmony, mutual influence, and unity of representatives of different nationalities and religions prevail.

After all, Azerbaijan has long been accustomed to the manifestations of unfair policies on the part of the US, including the restrictive legislative amendments applied by it. But the paradox is that the US, with this attitude towards Azerbaijan, continues to claim to mediate between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Such a claim can be traced in the statements of the State Department, which expects a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia to be held in Washington in the near future.

Not so long ago, the Americans had an opportunity to make sure that Azerbaijan will not allow any country that refuses neutrality in its attitude towards both states to mediate in its negotiations with Armenia. And they were convinced not only by the example of pro-Armenian France, which practically took the path of enmity with Azerbaijan. But also by their own American example, when US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken personally had to smooth over the crisis that arose as a result of anti-Azerbaijani rhetoric of his assistant James O'Brien. O'Brien's subsequent visit to Baku seemed to open up an opportunity for Azerbaijani-American relations to eliminate the recent complications. At the same time, it made possible the resumption of American mediation in the negotiations on the settlement of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

However, now, against the backdrop of another US attempt to strike a blow to Azerbaijan's authority in the international arena, it turns out that Blinken and the agency he heads are once again bringing the dialogue between Baku and Washington to a deadlock. This, of course, will also affect the prospects of the "Washington platform" of negotiations between Baku and Yerevan. For can we seriously expect its restoration in a situation where the US, under the pretext of concern for "religious freedom", is once again trying to keep afloat the fairy tale of "violations" allegedly committed by Azerbaijan in its Garabagh region?

It is pretty clear that for the people and the state of Azerbaijan, the report of the American power centres is of no value. Azerbaijan will continue to act in accordance with its own national interests and strengthen its state independence in every possible way. And the US, which does not take this circumstance into account and, moreover, tries to counteract it, will be convinced once again that anti-Azerbaijani activity, no matter how it is executed, never brings geopolitical dividends.