Staff reshuffle and continuation of Azerbaijani security agencies transformation

Last week, Ilham Aliyev held a staff rotation of the heads of the Interior Ministry and State Security Service. Ramil Usubov, the long-standing representative of the Azerbaijani government, who headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan since 1994, was appointed the Security Council Secretary, and Madat Guliyev, the former head of the State Security Service, became the head of the Ministry of Defense Industry. Thus, the government reshuffle begun in April 2018, after the presidential elections in Azerbaijan, has been basically completed. By the current decision, Ilham Aliyev solved two tasks - he strengthened the Security Council and saved the Ministry of Defense Industry undergoing an organizational crisis after Minister Yavar Jamalov’s death in June 2018, who was of the founders of the modern military-industrial complex of Azerbaijan. What tasks will the security agencies of Azerbaijan solve in the coming years?

Security Council

Why do the majority of observers believe that the transfer of Ramil Usubov to the Security Council is an enhancement of this structure under the president?

Like the Russian equivalent, the Azerbaijani Security Council is an advisory body under the president, who appoints the head of government, the chairman of parliament, the heads of law enforcement agencies and the foreign ministry, and other senior officials as necessary. We need to understand that although the president holds meetings, determines their agenda, the preparation of the meeting itself and the management of the staff administration are completely under the authority of the organization’s secretary. In Azerbaijan, from the very moment of the Security Council creation (1997), the duties of its secretary until the appointment of Usubov were performed by Ramiz Mehdiyev, the head of the presidential administration. The direct drafting of documents and instructions is performed by the Assistant to the President for Work with Law Enforcement Bodies and Military Issues, Fuad Aleskerov.

At first, the Security Council carried out purely analytical and organizational functions, and, in comparison with the same Russian structure, it seemed to be rather an incomprehensible body gathering in emergency cases. However, over time, the set of tasks assigned to be coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and security agencies demanded its strengthening in a practical and applied direction, and the need arose for the establishment of a regular ‘Security Services Cabinet of Ministers’ in Azerbaijan. Naturally, such a function of the Security Council is already beyond the scope of pure analytical and deliberative and requires the organization of the apparatus by people working in this area. Now the Azerbaijani Security Council will not only solve the tasks of developing fundamental documents in the field of security, formulate development strategies in various areas of state activity, but also coordinate the activities of the Interior Ministry, the Security Service, and the Ministry of Defense. Due to these reasons, it was necessary to appoint an experienced security official to the position of Security Council Secretary. In addition, the international factor should not be neglected. Security Councils become the structures of international diplomacy. Thanks to the Russian initiative to hold annual meetings of high representatives in charge of security issues, the Security Council is becoming an important mechanism for informal communications between different countries. Not only common challenges are discussed, but also joint programs and arms export issues.

New tasks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and State Security Service 

The genesis of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Internal Affairs is closely related to Ramil Usubov’s biography. He cannot be ignored when we speak of the political and structural design of the Azerbaijani authorities as a whole.

Twenty-five years in charge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan is a significant phenomenon requiring analysis. Usubov built a fairly effective and stable to various shocks system, managing and neutralizing conflicts within the department. In the post-Soviet countries, as a rule, there are many strong and ambitious leaders in the ministry, where an appropriate level of leadership is needed. In Azerbaijan, this is a complex mechanism with many corporate interests tied, including on the regional aspects.

If we analyze Usubov’s biography, we will see that it nearly repeats the key and most crucial moments of the Azerbaijani history. The politician was born in Khojaly shortly after World War II. In the 1970s, he worked as an inspector of the criminal investigation department of the Department of Internal Affairs in Khankendi (Stepanakert), then, in 1975, became the head of the criminal investigation department of the Shusha Regional Department of Internal Affairs, and from 1980 to 1984, he worked as deputy head of the Internal Affairs Department of the Nagorny Karabakh Autonomous Region. Basically, he witnessed the initial phase of inter-ethnic confrontation and armed conflict. Shortly after the return to Azerbaijan of Heydar Aliyev, Usubov was appointed the head of the Interior Ministry of the Nakhichevan Autonomy, and a year later, in the spring of 1994, he headed the Interior Ministry of the Republic.

To complete the picture, the study of the genesis of the Azerbaijani security forces should be carried out considering a historical and political aspect. If we consider the Soviet Union as a semi-periphery of the global technological core (the Eastern bloc with its ideology and economic practice), then the position of the subjects of the Union, including Russia, that became the separate states after its collapse, objectively pushed them to the periphery of technology and investment. Being trapped in such a position, in order not to fall behind at all, Azerbaijan needed, first, the mobilization of the state apparatus, secondly, the mobilization of investment resources, and finally, the mobilization of security, severely undermined by the Karabakh conflict and internal political confrontations. Therefore, each minister of the typical Aliyev’s cabinet of the 1990s, and not only the security bloc, required the ability to rigidly build their bureaucratic apparatus. But at the same time, their personal ambitions and career growth were possible, as well as an ability to create business not contradicting the big task (that is, the very principle of mobilization).

Hence, there were bundles of business with officials, affiliate schemes that encourage entrepreneurial activity in the areas controlled by the apparatus of various departments.

And here the question arises of the limits of accumulation, in other words, the degree of influence of the emerging ‘privileged’ groups on the economy as a whole and their political loyalty.

Azerbaijan faced several similar crises. Usubov coped with the attempted coup (October 2005), carried out several major anti-corruption campaigns, which resulted in almost the entire change of the economic bloc of ministers in a few years (the most resonant was the dismissal of the head of the Ministry of Communications, Ali Abbasov, in November 2015, the dismissal of the head of the Ministry of Transport, Ziya Mamedov, in February 2017 and the subsequent investigation of their activities).

Thus, Usubov is the person who Ilham Aliyev still trusts. Although opposition media often write about him as an odious leader, Usubov was not among the figures mentioned in the major anti-corruption investigations of the Western media.

The current tasks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Service are related not so much to the current law enforcement activity, as to the general atmosphere of successful achievements in Azerbaijan. The hard frame of departments was built. In the period of consolidation of the production and income means in the hands of the state, it demonstrated its effectiveness. The current stage of Azerbaijan’s development is characterized by the opening of "horizontal gateways", reducing the share of the state and facilitating business access to financial resources. There is a task to reduce the shadow sector, to increase the money supply in the country to empower the consumer spurt that is strengthening the economy. Within these priorities, the MIA and the State Security Service are required to systematically reduce the risks of doing business. There is a wide range of activities: from maintaining a safety culture in a country that is attractive for international tourism (here preventing both the risks of political extremism and hooligan manifestations in the domestic environment), to stopping cases of forced weaning of business by competitors, preventing illegal actions by government representatives. All this work is directly reflected in the final position of Azerbaijan in international ratings.

That is why Ali Nagiyev’s appointment as the head of the State Security Service of Azerbaijan is reasonable. Previously, he served as head of the Economic Crime department at the MNS, then he was the first deputy minister of National Security Ministry and then the deputy head of the Main Department for the Fight Against Corruption under the Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan.

The State Security Service will monitor and identify the shadow economy cases. According to independent experts, this area in Azerbaijan has been falling not for the first year, and now it reaches 30-32% of GDP on average per year, which, by the way, is probably lower than the share of the shadow economy in Russia, reaching 40%. Tax reform, as well as the general policy of digitization of public services and economic activity in the country, will contribute to reducing the shadow zone factor.

Defense industry

Madat Guliyev, the systemic reformer of the security services, was appointed the head of the Ministry of Defense Industry. Since 2004, he headed the National Bureau of Interpol in Azerbaijan. Since February 2011, he worked as the Deputy Minister of Justice, he was reforming the penal system (he was the head of the penitentiary service). In 2015, by order of Ilham Aliyev, he was appointed first deputy minister of the National Security Ministry. And in this position, he carried out the presidential reform in the division of the Ministry of National Security to the service of State Security, which he headed and the Foreign Intelligence Service, which was headed by Orhan Sultanov.

The future of the Ministry of Defense Industry after the death of its first leader, Yavar Jamalov, is discussed in the context of recent appointments. The fact is that the Ministry of Defense was established in 2006 as a structure that united the remnants of the Soviet heritage of the Republican military industrial complex, which at that time was able to manufacture ammunition for various types of equipment and carry out its deep repair.

Also at the initial stage, the question of organizing the export of armaments was already raised.

After the death of Jamalov, the government decided to create a full-fledged concern on the basis of the Ministry of Defence Industry, combining production and export. In mid-January, Ilham Aliyev signs a decree on the establishment of Azersilah OJSC.

To some extent, this concept of management and organization of the military-industrial complex could be perceived as an analog to the Russian, where the pyramid of manufacturing concerns is headed by Rosoboronexport. Nevertheless, for a number of organizational reasons, it was decided to abandon this scheme. The difference in scale with the Russian military-industrial complex played a role in order to simply copy the scheme, and there was no need to duplicate the functions of the ministry by the state-owned concern. Therefore, the decree on the creation of Azersilah OJSC was annulled.

Now the task of Madat Guliyev is to carry out the transformation of the Ministry of Defense Industry, which implies the creation of various enterprises for the production of weapons and ammunition with single management of their export. The defense segment in the Azerbaijani manufacturing industry in different years reached 70% (in 2014, in terms of the capitalization of enterprises and the growth of the segment). Export prospects are associated with growing indicators of the global market of the civilian UAVs - up to 40% of the global UAV market falls on small countries such as Azerbaijan (the potential capacity of the Middle East and Asia in 2017 exceeds $ 500 million). The annual growth of agricultural UAVs reaches 30%.

Another factor is the wide range of own products (at the annual exhibition ADEX, about 250 items of the domestic assembly are presented: from small arms to ammunition). Azerbaijan has already entered the markets in the early 2010s with some products. According to Western publications, the Ministry of Defense Industry of Azerbaijan negotiated the export of large-caliber ammunition for mortars, RPQ-7V2 grenade launchers, and sniper rifles to Iraq. The export of riflescopes was discussed with the US and Russian companies. According to official data, already in 2013, Azerbaijan exported weapons worth $ 123 mln, in 2015 - $ 100 mln. Just recently, after the appointment of Guliyev, Moscow hosted the 5th International Military-Technical Forum "Army-2019", where the deputy head of the Azerbaijani Defense Industry Ministry met with the Director General of Rosoboronexport and discussed the preparation of a framework agreement on the production of defense products.

Summing up, it should be noted that the result of the reforms will be the strengthening of security agencies and the correction of their work, taking into account new demands of civil society, complex international challenges and the tasks of the country's economic development.