The role of “Fire alarm team” in Azerbaijan - OPINION

02:27 27-06-2012 Jasur Sumerinli, the director of “Doctrine” Journalists’ Military Research Center

First, I would like to stress that there is not any law and rule to regulate the activity of “Fire alarm team” (media and NGOs which are interested in defence and security sector - this expression by Peter Feaver, USA prof.) in Azerbaijan. That’s why we can’t talk the official role of NGOs and media in civil-military relations. But we can talk about an example – for instance, last years, the group of NGOs and the Ministry of Justice established the special mechanism, which called The Public Committee of public control over penitentiaries. But it is a only sample in this field.

Unfortunately, we have not similar committee in defense sector.
But it is important to clarify the role of media and NGOs in legislation and decision-making process. Even not official, unformally Azerbaijan’s NGOs and media structures have chance to influence on some decision-making process in parliament and in government structures. For instance, the organization which I lead – “Doctrine” Journalists’ Military Research Center prepared number of legislation proposals and sent them to the parliament last year. There were suggestions about welfare of servicemen, how government must strengthen the social glory of military men. Some other NGOs in our Coalition realized several projects about military issues. I would like to stress that the Council on State Support for NGOs under the President supported several projects of NGOs about military issues. This is very important issue, but is not enough.

But in majority government is not interested in activities of NGOs and media structures in defense and security sector. There are a lot of number trial proceedings in Azerbaijan related with newspapers’ articles about defence reforms. Media tries to pay more attention to army situation, official structures, specially the Ministry of Defence tries to stop similar publication. During last year 5 officials from Ministry of Defence of Azerbaijan filed a number of lawsuits against to one of famous newspapers of Azerbaijan Republic “Yeni Musavat” related to articles where were mirrored the corruption facts in Ministry of Defence. Now the officials from MOD wanted about 500 thousands euros from these newspapers. In other hand, the power structures, specially the Ministry of Defence lead black PR company against several newspapers, NGOs and websites where enlightened the problems in Azerbaijan Army. MoD is not interested to answer media questions about military reforms.

That’s why I think that the role of “the alarm team” is not effective in Azerbaijan’s military decision-making process. But I hope that Azerbaijan government will realize the different obligations which were mirrored in several documents which signed with OSCE and NATO. Specially, IPAP, PAP-DIB (Partnership Action Plan – Defence Institutions Buildings) and other ambitional documents give great opportunities to take measures in this field.

(it was presented in conference “Reform Initiatives for Caucasian Security Institutions”, 26 June 2012, Istanbul)