Not quite duck and cover

A few weeks ago, Azerbaijan celebrated "Civil Defense Day," and I sat in on one school's events. Although hardly surprising, it was worth seeing.

In the afternoon, students gathered in the school's courtyard, and five students came forward wearing leather bags over the shoulders. Looking serious, they stood in a row while one of the younger teachers harangued the assembly with tales of Armenian perfidy, warning that an Armenian terrorist gas attack could strike this sleepy village at any time. The students seemed more inclined to gossip amongst each other or stare at the goofy foreigner snapping pictures.

A second teacher got up, an older history teacher who I happened to know was a member of one of the ethnic minorities in the area. His speech was much more restrained, talking about the general advantages of knowing first aid -- in case of natural disaster, for example. He seemed to studiously avoid tales of foreign devilry, preferring to focus on the non-divisive praticalities of the situation.

His speech over, the five students in front produced gas masks from their shoulder bags, and demonstrated how to put them on. Then they trooped out to take photos with the director of the school, and then more photos inside the school, four of them carrying a fifth one through the hallways.

It should be noted that the five gas mask-clad youngsters were boys. A bit later, the young teacher entered one of the classrooms, and showed the girls how to tie bandanas of cheesecloth over their mouths and noses.

More on terrorism

Even as more suspects in the recently-foiled attacks are being rounded up, terrorism is taking a heavy toll on Azerbaijan:

On October 30, Azerbaijan’s Grave Crimes Court convicted Fatullayev, the outspoken editor-in-chief of the independent Realni Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan newspapers, for terrorism, inciting ethnic hatred, and tax evasion. The conviction is a culmination of a concerted effort by the Azerbaijani authorities to silence Fatuallyev and his newspapers.

“Fatullayev’s prosecution was politically motivated, and his conviction should be quashed immediately and he should be released,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The steady rise of politically motivated criminal charges, as well as violent attacks against journalists, is obviously aimed at silencing critical voices in Azerbaijan.”
...
Fatullayev is the eighth journalist in Azerbaijan imprisoned for defamation and other criminal charges. Human Rights Watch has also documented numerous cases of violence and threats of violence against opposition and independent journalists in the country.

A view from the ground on the thwarted attack

A terrorist attack was thwarted here on Monday, and it's getting some play in the news and the blogosphere. The attack has temporarily shut down the British Embassy and greatly reduced operations for American concerns in Baku.

There are a few interesting aspects to the event as I see it here. The first is the Shiite angle, which does a few interesting things. Iran certainly is a neighbor, but I think it is probably not the driver of this attack. Despite a certain growth in religious self-identity in the country since the Soviet collapse, I don't see much indication that it has penetrated very deeply, or turned toward radicalism. In the south, Wahhabi mullahs are making inroads, but from what I've seen, they're viewed with suspicion. Beards are not only not worn, for example, but seen as slightly suspect. The north has a greater number of Sunni adherents, and although that could suggest ties to Daghestani and perhaps Chechen Sunnis, I've seen little sign of that, either. Most of the religious influence seems to be coming from Jordan and Turkey, and especially in the case of Turkey, seems more directed at fostering stronger inter-governmental ties than at fostering any kind of fundamentalism.

Moreover, border control seems fairly strong. It's hardly surprising to me that the would-be terrorists used local weapons (which lead to the timely discovery that these weapons were missing): drug interdiction efforts are very strict (hardly a day goes by when we don't see some drug runner getting caught on the 5 o'clock news), and guns are even harder to get in, due to worries about said weapons getting to Garabagh.

The north is equally quiet. I know a police officer in a mountain town who got into a gunfight with a group of Chechens quite a few years ago. However, it was long ago, and the men were gangsters, holding up cars for money, not radicals. Since those four men were shut down, there haven't been any real problems that I'm aware of.

Another brief word about the military connection. Given the fact that every Azeri male must serve two years, it isn't impossible that some more or less fanatical young man might get access to weapons - as apparently happened here. But as this incident has illustrated, the corruption in the military seems to extend only to the huge sums of oil money being kicked toward the top brass. So it isn't surprising that when a weapons cache went missing, it was discovered fairly quickly. And the soldier in question marked himself even more conspicuously by deserting - a very major red flag for this country.

One other thing has struck me about this attack - that's the much-repeated quote about a "horrifying, large-scale attack." I can't really imagine an attack using 20 grenades, a few automatic rifles, and a machine gun as being terribly large-scale, especially if directed against two embassies (either simultaneously or not). I wonder what we're not being told in this regard?

The overall mood here seems very quiet, and not at all anti-American. I doubt, overall, that this will amount to much.