One of our favorite targets for 1998, and for all years, is the conservative "human rights" group Freedom House. Last year, we reported on how Freedom House was lauding the supposed gains for human rights in the Ukraine at just about the same time that a major Freedom House executive, Mark Palmer, was entering into lucrative business deals in that country.
Now, it seems a similar charade is taking place in Azerbaijan, where U.S. oil companies are slavering over vast oil and gas reserves. A whole host of former government officials are helping the oil companies get a foot in the door in Azerbaijan, including former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Zbig is on the payroll of Amoco, the largest US investor in Azerbaijan's oil fields, which could produce 3 million barrels per day by 2010.
One of Brzezinski's tasks for Amoco is to improve the image of Azerbaijan and its president, Geidar Aliyev. This is no easy feat as Aliyev's regime is guilty of terrible human rights violations. Furthermore, Congress has been much more sympathetic to Armenia, with which Azerbaijan fought a bloody war a few years back.
But Brzezinski has fallen to his task with relish. The New York Times interviewed him last year when it was preparing a major story on Azerbaijan and he told the newspaper that Aliyev is "a real cool cat". Last July, Brzezinski testified before Congress that Azerbaijan and other former Soviet republics had lived under communist rule for seven decades and should not be expected to establish democracies in a short period of time. (Brzezinski expressed far less understanding about the need to transition to democracy after the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza regime in Nicaragua.)
Zbig also sits on the board of Freedom House, which has become one of Aliyev's most fervent supporters. Last year, Azerbaijan was one of only two countries that Freedom House elevated from the category of "not free" to "partly free", an improvement which Azerbaijan and the oil companies have been using on Capitol Hill to win support for Aliyev. Freedom House claims that it moved Azerbaijan up due to "the emergence of a more vibrant civic life" in the country. Meanwhile, Freedom House president Adrian "Sticky Fingers" Karatnycky money from the US Agency for International Development to travel to the capital of Baku on a fact-finding mission.
Here's another coincidence: after resigning from his post as national security adviser, Anthony Lake also took a position on the board of Freedom House. There's only one mystery that remains. What oil company payroll is Lake on? CP
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