CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 150

CONTEMPORARY EURASIA
some Azerbaijanis were noticed in various military confrontations taking
place in the Caucasus, for instance, in training activities in Khatab camp
in Chechnya and Dagestan. 18 Some Azerbaijani radical organizations are
known in the country. Those are “al-Jihad”, created in 1995 by an Egyp-
tian; “Hizb ut-Tahrir”, which cell was created in Azerbaijan in 2001;
“Forest Brothers”, and “Karabakh Partisans”, involved in a war over Na-
gorno-Karabakh. Nevertheless, as Sargis Grigoryan noted, underground
activities and continuous persecutions do not allow having a complete
picture about roots and those, who hold radical Islamic fundamentalist
ideas. 19 However, nowadays it is clear, that some external and internal
factors, unresolved confl icts all facilitate the creation of fertile soil for
radicalization.
Domestic factors
State response to radicalism
When external infl uence became noticeable in independent Azerbai-
jan, the authorities adopted the “Law on Freedom of Religious Belief”,
which was to control the activities of religious groups in 1992. Every
following amendment imposed greater restrictions on religious groups.
The image of Azerbaijani authorities trying to reduce the infl uence of re-
ligious radical groups looks like a justifi cation to use counterterrorism ac-
tivities and persecution. 20 Being suppressed by the authorities, religious
groups take a more radical stance and strengthened their infl uence. Ac-
cording to the United States Commission on International Religious Free-
dom’s (USCIRF) annual report of 2017, “Increasing authoritarianism...
and suppression... [have] fostered the emergence of a religious political
opposition that the government has sought to discredit by linking it to
terrorism....”. 21 The repressions and restrictions became not only stricter
after 9/11 22 , but also let the authorities legitimize their actions as counter-
terrorism. 23 The suppression only strengthened the thoroughness of reli-
18
19
20
21
22
23
Sargis Grigoryan, Islamakan armatakanutyuny Kovkasum, (in Armenian) [Islamic Radical-
ism in the Caucasus], (Yerevan: Yerevan State University Publishing, 2017), 67.
Ibid. 67-69
Julie Wilhelmsen, “Islamism in Azerbaijan: How Potent?,” Studies in Confl ict & Terrorism,
32:8, (2009): 726-742; Geybulla, Radical Islam or Government Paranoia in Azerbaijan, 9-11;
Anar Valiyev, “Foreign Terrorist Groups and Rise of Home-grown Radicalism in Azerbai-
jan,” Journal of Human Security, (2008): 95-112.
US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Annual Report 2017: Azerbaijan Chap-
ter, https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/fi les/Azerbaijan.2017.pdf (accessed December 7,
2018).
Souleimanov and Ehrmann, The Rise of Militant Salafi sm in Azerbaijan and its Regional Im-
plications.
Wilhelmsen, Islamism in Azerbaijan, 732.
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