Let’s go back in 1996 and a “weird” accident that involved a member of Gray Wolves and of Turkey’s deep state
The November 1996 car accident in which Turkish “baba” Abdullah Catli, a former member of the Grey Wolves wanted by Interpol on drug trafficking charges, lost his life – a senior official of the Turkish Interior Ministry also died in the crash –, and where Sedat Bucak, the head of a Kurdish clan and a member of the Turkish parliament for the Just Path party, was seriously injured, has had repercussions in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Indeed, both Catli and Bucak, who have links with the Turkish far-right as well as with drug trafficking and the funding of the militias in Kurdistan, had visited the highest Azeri authorities on several occasions since 1995. Moreover, a report by MIT – the Turkish military counterintelligence service – indicated that Catli, acting as an agent of both MITEM – the Turkish civilian counterintelligence service – and the Turkish police, had arranged the setting up of a heroin network targeting Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands from Baku. The same report said he had established drug-processing laboratories in the Nakhichevan enclave.
In 1995, the clans that were fighting for power in Azerbaijan diversified their activities and took drug trafficking on board. This was facilitated by the turmoil resulting from the planned construction of a pipe-line for exporting the vast oil reserves lying under the Caspian Sea and the arm-wrestling which still opposes Moscow and Ankara. Baku is still an important center for the manufacturing of synthetic drugs, while heroin trafficking networks are mutating.
Clans at the Top of the State
The April 1995 “coup” which resulted in the elimination of Rovchnan Javadov, then the minister of the interior who together with his clan controlled both the interior ministry’s Special Troops, or OPON, and organized crime in the port of Sumgait, confirmed that the Nakhichevan clan and its strongman, Gueidar Aliev, the current president, had won the day and grabbed total power in Azerbaijan. Until 1995, the Sumgait mafia, for example, controlled an important part of the Afghan opium traffic, which it brought through southern Kirghizistan, the preserve of warlord Bekmanat Osmonov. Osmonov is involved in narcotics and arms trafficking in the region. He supplies military equipment, for the most part to members of the opposition in Tajikistan, in exchange for opium from Afghanistan, which he then delivers to Azerbaijan. The opium is transformed into heroin at Sumgait, before being taken on to Turkey by members of the Azeri Grey Wolves. This group, led by Alexander Guamidov, is a carbon copy of the extreme right-wing Turkish group of the same name.
Simply because all the factions in presence are involved in drug trafficking in one way or another, the changes in the balance of power between the Azeri clans which traditionally have acted as predators of the wealth generated by oil and influenced how the oil sector was developed, also mean changes in the Caucasian drug networks. Nowadays, the man at the top in Baku is no other than Adig Aliev, a businessman linked to British and American oil companies and the son of Azerbaijan’s president. The Grey Wolves have understood the implications of the victory of the Aliev clan in Baku and now work with the Nakhichevan mafia. Thus, heroin is about to radically alter the political alliances among mafia groups throughout the Caucasus, be it in Armenia, Georgia, or Azerbaijan. And state authorities in the region are using narcotics as a diplomatic weapon. For Russian authorities, Azerbaijan is becoming the second nest for criminal activities, after Chechnya, leading some to suggest that the Aliev regime could be a target for liquidation by Moscow. It seems that Russia considers that the Aliev clan was too greedy in negotiations on Caspian oil production.
Initially, the Nakhichevan mafia was very seldom involved with narcotics. As long as it limited itself to diverting Azerbaijan’s oil or organizing customs rackets, only the Azeri parliament was concerned (according to President Rasul Guliev, more than US $135 million was extortioned in 1994 by Baku customs agents). But in 1994 the Nakhichevan clan signed the “Caspian Petroleum Accord”, which plans to build an oil pipeline through Armenia and Nakhichevan to the Gulf of Alexandretta (Turkey), which presupposes a normalization of relations with Armenia and an end to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Since the accord, Russia and the other Azeri clans have joined forces to foil the project. The remarks of Suret Gusseinov and former Defense Minister Rahim Gaziev, who escaped from a Baku prison in September 1994 with the help of Russian intelligence officers, demonstrate this position clearly. Gusseinov and Gaziev, whose friendship with the Russian military has never been a secret, indicate their objective is the overthrow of the Aliev regime, the cancellation of the “Caspian Petroleum Accord” in its current form, and the dismantling of the Nakhichevan mafia. A pro-Russian military/political organization, the “Citizens’ Union,” was then created, whose members include Ayaz Mutalibov, former president deposed in 1992, and Colonel Aliakram Gumbatov, president of the short-lived self-proclaimed Republic of Talysh-Mugan, located on the Iranian border. Gumbatov escaped from a Baku prison at the same time as Gaziev. Another important clan, that of the late Rovchnan Javadov, who is implicated in drug trafficking but opposed to the Nakhichevan mafia, appears to have joined their cause. The Aliev clan’s only remaining allies are the Grey Wolves, who are pushing the clan towards a rapprochement with Turkey, and the refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, known as eraz.
The eraz, driven from their homes in their thousands, and with little hope of returning, live in extremely precarious conditions under tents and in abandoned freight wagons around Baku. Discriminated against by the people of Baku, the eraz camps, like those of Georgian refugees from Abkhazia, have become fertile ground for criminal activity and provide a steady supply of government-manipulated henchmen. The government has led the eraz to believe that the lands held on the Russian border by anti-Aliev clans, and currently inhabited by Lesghians from Daghestan, who are considered a threat to Azerbaidjan, could be handed over to the eraz. The Nakhichevan clan and the Aliev regime, between which it is sometimes hard to make a distinction, owe a debt to the Grey Wolves and to the eraz. They therefore turn a blind eye to their illegal activities, in particular narcotics trafficking, all the more so since these activities provide a remedy to the extreme poverty which could fuel more problems for Aliev and his allies. In Azerbaijan, heroin is for some, like the Nakhichevan mafia, a source of profits; for others, like the Grey Wolves, a source of financing and a means of establishing political power; and for others, the eraz, it is a strategy for survival. Moscow benefits from the situation.
After pushing Armenia to adopt more radical positions and to sign a military cooperation agreement guaranteeing the presence of Russian troops in Armenia, Russia is ever since “worried” by the insecurity generated by what it calls “Azeri racketeers and drug traffickers” on Georgian territory, as well as by sabotage operations aimed at the Russian gas pipeline supplying Armenia with natural gas. Armenia’s minister of defense has grasped the message perfectly well. During an interview in late April, the minister announced that “his country would take political steps and would not hesitate to use force against these traffickers.” He added that he “reserved the right to pursue them into Georgia and Azerbaijan.” As if by coincidence, Armenia-Azerbaijan border incidents quieted down at Ganja, located in the region of Eulakh, preserve of Aliev’s mortal ennemy, Suret Gusseinov. However, Russian military intelligence (GRU) “predicts” that border incidents will increase around Nakhichevan.
The Nakhichevan Hub
The Azeri enclave of Nakhichevan is in the process of becoming a hub for a variety of trafficking activities. Long a refuge for clans battling for power in Azerbaijan, Nakhichevan is one of the most frequented passages for opium networks supplying heroin laboratories in Turkey. The fiefdom of the Aliev clan and a refuge for Abulfaz Elchibey, Azerbaijan’s first elected president who was overthrown following the Azeri defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh, Nakhichevan lives with a strong Turkish influence. The Azeri Grey Wolves, whose ideological battle cry is pan-Turkism, have mounted a strong presence since the Armenian mafia left the Azeri port city of Sumgait on the Caspian Sea. When the city was under Armenian influence, opium arrived direct from Tajikistan, with no intermediaries. The Armenian/Russian nomenklatura in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, traded the drug for timber, furniture, and basic necessities. Transformed into heroin in Sumgait, the drug was then sent on the “Caucasus route” and, after crossing Georgia, was sent on from the Black Sea port of Sukhumi towards the Balkan route. Cut off from the heroin laboratories in Sumgait, Armenian criminal organizations have retreated into Armenia or to Nagorno-Karabakh, where they converge with routes used by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), supplied from Iran. Today, Nakhichevan remains a “land at peace” where networks run by the pro-Turkish Grey Wolves, the anti-Turkish PKK, and the Armenian Dachnak Party live together, all enjoying the protection fostering illicit trafficking. However, the status quo is not stable.
Iran, in order to show its displeasure at having been excluded from the Caspian oil accord, is forging increasingly close ties with Armenia and its “protector,” Russia (the construction of a gas pipeline between Iran and Armenia was recenly announced). Nakhichevan leaders, realizing their land could be caught in the middle, are nevertheless aware of the political stakes of narcotics, and are acting with great caution. That is why PKK traffickers do not appear particularly worried.
Neither Azerbaijan nor Turkey want to set a match to the Nakhichevan powder keg, through which the future oil pipe-line could possibly pass. As such, they turn a blind eye to the trafficking. In addition, it is difficult to tell which heroin laboratories are controlled by Turkey’s friends and which are controlled by its foes. Istanbul, therefore, is content with acting as policeman in Iraqi Kurdistan, knowing full well that the drug routes cross that area only marginally.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/master8885/Government/cocaine.html
