Key Aliev Aides Reportedly Fired in Azerbaijan as Karabakh Tensions Rise

Vahid Aliev

Staff shakeup comes amid increasingly edgy relations with Caucasus enemies Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

(Transitions Online) – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev “appears to have sacked” his top military and security advisers, Vahid Aliev and Meherram Aliev, amid a wider reshuffle of his administration, Caucasus analyst Emil Sanamyan tweeted 1 June.

The background to Aliev’s (pictured) decision to restructure his staff remains murky as the tightly controlled local media have mostly remained silent about it, although as EurasiaNet.org writes, “it appears to be a continuation of the intricate intra-clan balancing act that included the appointment of Ilham Aliev’s wife, Mehriban Alieva, as the country’s vice president.”

Intriguingly, the shakeup comes amid an investigation into alleged Armenian spies in the Azerbaijani military, following months of increased fighting with Armenian-backed Nagorno-Karabakh.

A government statement on 7 May briefly announced the arrests of a number of military personnel and civilians on charges of spying for Armenia, Sanamyan reported for the University of Southern California’s Focus on Karabakh.

Social media posts have talked about the arrest of between 40 and 60 people, most of them soldiers.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are closer to war than at any point in the past two decades, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned in a report released last week.

A year ago more than 200 soldiers and civilians died in the worst outbreak of fighting since the 1994 ceasefire that resulted in the de-facto independence of Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, which is still internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory.

Since January deadly attacks with heavy artillery and anti-tank weapons have risen, with a significant uptick in May, ICG says, including an Azeri attack on Armenian positions with self-guided missiles.

• One of the Aliev lieutenants reportedly sacked, Vahid Aliev, has been a high-ranking member of the security apparatus for 15 years and an increasingly prominent political figure, according to EurasiaNet. It is not known whether he is related to the president.
• The official claims about Armenia spies in the military “seem doubtful for a number of reasons,” Sanamyan says – first of all, because most military issues are kept out of the public eye. And second, the intensity of hatred between the two countries would make any Armenian effort to recruit spies extremely difficult.
• The announcement was likely “intended to send a political message to the public, rather than serve to inform it,” the analyst comments.