Azerbaijan Become a Disney Travel Agent Near Me

If you're looking for oil, good caviar or a jumping-off point for a trek into the Caucasus Mountains, this small country sandwiched between Russia and Iran on the Caspian Sea may be just the place.

Baku is one of the region's more lively cities, a boomtown again after years of Soviet stagnation. The rest of Azerbaijan, however, remains largely underdeveloped, with a barren mountainous landscape, poor infrastructure and cumbersome post-Soviet bureaucracy.

Azerbaijan isn't an easy place to navigate for the average traveler, but it's worth a few days on an itinerary of the region, if only to get a flavor of the entrepreneurial spirit thriving in the country as it seems on the verge of unlocking the economic potential of its offshore oil reserves.

The BTC pipeline, which runs from Baku on the Caspian Sea through Tbilisi, Georgia, to Ceyhan, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean, has become an important tool to help Azerbaijan develop its offshore oil reserves. The country’s strategtic location just north of Iran makes it a player in the international oil game.

Note that the border with Armenia remains closed as a result of ongoing separatist activity and some violence in the province of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Geography

History

Although the actual ethnic makeup of Azerbaijanis is unknown, they are thought to stem from an ancient Turkic people. Their capital, Baku, located along the old Silk Route that ran from China to Europe, prospered as early as the ninth century. Trade was eventually overshadowed by the oil industry, and by the early 1900s, Azerbaijan was pumping half the world's oil supply.

Azerbaijan is fundamentally Turkish and Persian in its culture, though the most immediately apparent influence comes from Russia, which dominated the region for more than 175 years. After more than a century of Russian rule, Azerbaijan enjoyed only a three-year period of independence following the collapse of czarist rule in 1918. In 1921, Azerbaijan was incorporated into the Caucasian Federation, and later became part of the Soviet Union.

The early 1990s were a troubled time for Azerbaijan: Violence erupted during the last days of the Soviet Union, when Soviet forces tried to quash a growing pro-independence movement, and when tensions with Armenia escalated over control of the ethnically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region. Violent clashes erupted between Armenians and Azeris on the streets of Baku. A 1994 cease-fire has held, for the most part, despite the lack of a final peace settlement. But the war generated tensions that continue to poison the region's politics. Former KGB General Heidar Aliyev, who ruled Azerbaijan for much of the time from the 1970s until his death in 2003 (first as Communist Party First Secretary, then as elected president) was succeeded by his fast-living son Ilham, who won presidential elections in October 2003. Though these elections were likely marred by fraud, the Aliyev family has at least brought a measure of stability to a country racked by civil strife and bordering local war zones in Chechnya and South Ossetia.

Azerbaijan's greatest asset remains its oil and gas, which it continues to produce and refine in massive quantities. Multimillion-dollar deals signed with several major British and U.S. oil companies have secured the country a future as a Western-backed oil-exporter. A US$4 billion pipeline, chiefly financed by British Petroleum and due to open in summer 2005, will link Baku to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, allowing Azerbaijan to export its oil directly to world markets. More significantly, the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline seems to have brought a sea change in Russian policy towards Azerbaijan. For much of the 1990s, Moscow encouraged separatist conflicts all over the Caucasus in order to prevent the newly independent republics from growing rich and powerful. But now, the Kremlin's attitude is much more friendly and constructive. Moscow is looking to Baku for support in squashing Islamic radicalism (which the largely secular Azeris fear almost as much as the Russians). And, as many Russian oil majors are now involved in Azeri oil projects, Azerbaijan seems a lucrative investment.

Snapshot

The chief attractions of Azerbaijan are mountainous terrain, spas, historical sites, an attractive seacoast and cave settlements.

Azerbaijan will appeal to travelers who are looking for something truly different, who are accustomed to travel in the former Soviet Union and who enjoy roughing things a bit. Don't go expecting varied shopping, nightlife, deluxe accommodations or a relaxing vacation—unless you stick to Baku and have some contacts among the city's hard-partying expats.

Potpourri

For the third time in about 100 years, the country has adopted a new alphabet. The use of the Latin alphabet has replaced Cyrillic, which had replaced the use of Latin before that. Before the first switch to the Latin alphabet, Arabic script was used. Do learn how to phonetically read the Cyrillic alphabet. It may come in handy. Keep your eye out for examples of all three alphabets.

In Baku, there is a park overlooking the Caspian Sea known as Martyr's Lane, where casualties of Azerbaijan's recent battles are buried. Mourners are a common sight.

Although the population of Azerbaijan is predominantly Shiite Muslim, as is the population of Iran, conservative Iranians abhor Azerbaijan's much more secular version of Islam.

Oil has been part of Azerbaijan's identity for centuries. Marco Polo wrote that there were springs in Azerbaijan filled with a black substance that was "good to burn," and Herodotus also mentions fiery wells in his writings.

While in Baku, try to see one of the excellent classical concerts by the Philharmonic Society. Many are sponsored by Western oil companies trying to ingratiate themselves with the Azerbaijanis.

The war with Armenia has taken its toll on the country: A fifth of Azerbaijan remains under Armenian control, and more than 1 million Azerbaijanis—one-eighth of the population—are refugees in their own country.

The ad hoc nature of Azerbaijan's development means that officials are approachable (and if necessary, bribable)—don't be shy in asking embassy or oil-company staff for help and advice to get your problems solved. Indeed, most foreign companies employ "fixers"—usually government officials on the company's payroll as consultants—to handle their bureaucratic problems. As some foreign embassies are still situated in the major hotels, your neighbor at dinner may well be your ambassador.

Some 20 million Azerbaijanis live in Iran and make up roughly one-third of that country's population. Nationalists on both sides of the border have called for reunification, either as an independent state or as part of Iran, but Tehran and Moscow would undoubtedly squash any real political movement toward a Greater Azerbaijan.

Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest religions and dedicated to the worship of fire, was begun by the prophet Zoroaster in Azerbaijan. The religion's rites are thought to originate in the ancient worship of natural gas leaks from the ground, which were set on fire by lightning.

The name Baku comes from bad kube, meaning "city of winds."

One of the key strategic struggles of World War II was a race to control the Baku oil fields. Control of Caucasian oil would have consolidated the German Reich's control over the rest of Russia. However, Hitler allowed his forces to be diverted into the epic Battle of Stalingrad, which halted the German advance into the Caucasus at Grozny, Chechnya.

One of Baku's biggest liquid exports isn't oil—it's freshwater to the desert city of Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan, which is located across the Caspian Sea. Tankers ply the route daily.

The height of Baku's oil boom in the 1890s—which led to the new town's exuberant art-nouveau architecture—actually occurred before the invention of the motorcar. The oil was used to make kerosene, or lamp oil, and after 1912, to power British warships. The invention and popularization of electricity was thought to be a disaster for the industry until Henry Ford pioneered the first mass-produced automobile in 1908.