President Ilham Aliyev visiting the town of Susha, in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, on 15 January 2021. (SPUTNIK/SIPA)
President Ilham Aliyev visiting the town of Susha, in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, on 15 January 2021. (SPUTNIK/SIPA)
As the host of the upcoming COP29 in Baku, the president of Azerbaijan is using every means at his disposal to ‘punish’ Emmanuel Macron for his support for Armenia – including boosting anti-colonial activist Kemi Seba.
When it was confirmed that Beninese activist Kemi Seba had been arrested in Paris on 14 October, the Baku Initiative Group (BIG) in Azerbaijan was among the first to react, saying: “We consider this arrest to be a manifestation of the neo-colonial policy that France has been pursuing in Africa for many years.”
The organisation, set up in July 2023 at the instigation of the Azeri executive, describes Seba, a critic of French policy in Africa and an outspoken supporter of Vladimir Putin, as a “political prisoner”. Seba was released after 48 hours in police custody.
The BIG is the brainchild of the all-powerful Ilham Aliyev, the 62-year-old authoritarian who has been president of Azerbaijan for 20 years. From 2019 to 2024, he was also secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement, the forum of 120 countries not formally aligned with any major power bloc, before handing it over to Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.
With COP29 shortly to be held in Baku, from 11 to 22 November, Azerbaijan’s support for Seba, via the BIG, is casting a harsh light on the tensions between Baku and Paris – and on the development of an Azeri-African policy.
On 3 October, just before he visited France, Seba was invited to Baku at BIG’s expense to headline a conference on “French neo-colonial policy in Africa”. Before an audience of Azeri officials and a handful of African sovereignty activists, he described Azerbaijan as a “sincere” ally in his fight against “Emmanuel Macron and his mother Brigitte [sic]”.
Unlimited presidential mandate
Coming to power in 2003, Aliyev was first elected after being endorsed by his father, the ailing President Heydav Aliyev. Four reelections followed this, all won hands down with around 85% of the vote – the results of which were criticised by the opposition and international observers.
In February 2024, the New Azerbaijan Party candidate secured victory with more than 92% of the vote. A constitutional reform passed by referendum in 2009 removed the limit on the number of terms a president can serve, and another in 2016 saw five-year presidential terms become seven-year terms.
Aliyev has ensured that he has a firm grip on the country’s institutions, and is also regularly accused of nepotism. In 2017 he appointed his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, as vice president, a post made to measure. In the event of a vacancy in the office held by her husband, the presidency reverts to her.
In the months leading up to COP29, the president has increased arrests of activists, journalists and human rights defenders, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch. Many dissenting voices also pointed to the lack of transparency regarding oil and gas revenues – 36% of the country’s GDP depends on hydrocarbons – at a time when Aliyev has been organising a summit devoted to environmental protection. The same criticisms were levelled at Qatar, the host country of the previous COP event.
‘Caviar diplomacy’
Aliyev has appointed one of his loyalists to head up COP29, Mukhtar Babayev. Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources since 2018, this 50-year-old has made a career within the national oil company, Socar, of which Aliyev was vice-president from 1994 to 2003.
In the run-up to the conference, Babayev has visited several African countries. In Kenya at the beginning of March, he met William Ruto. Then in April, he visited the Republic of Congo, whose president Denis Sassou Nguesso paid an official visit to Azerbaijan the same month. The two countries have signed major agreements and memorandums in the oil and military fields.
According to an Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) survey published in 2021, Azerbaijan also sold Brazzaville more than 500 tonnes of arms between 2015 and 2020.
While some 30 African heads of state and government have confirmed their attendance at COP29 (including those of Algeria, Benin, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, Gabon, Senegal and Rwanda), notable by their absence will be France’s Macron and the United States’ Joe Biden.
Close to Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a key military ally, Aliyev has also grown closer to Putin in recent years. The Russian president visited him in Baku last August. This warming of relations took concrete form in 2023 during the Nagorno-Karabakh offensive, which resulted in Azerbaijan invading – or “reclaiming”, according to Baku – the region and Russia failing to support Armenia despite their historic alliance.
It is at this point that Macron has drawn the ire of his Azeri counterpart. Paris strengthened its ties with Yerevan at the end of 2023, with major agreements on the delivery of arms and the training of Armenian soldiers, despite the efforts made by Baku through “caviar diplomacy” symbolised by figures such as the current French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati. The latter has also made numerous trips to Azerbaijan.
In retaliation, Aliyev has stepped up his lobbying on neo-colonial issues in the French overseas territories. At the heart of Azeri interference are French Guiana, Martinique, Corsica and French Polynesia. In July, the BIG invited pro-independence activists from New Caledonia to Baku and has been stepping up its support for movements against the high cost of living in Martinique. The invitation to Seba, a thorn in the side of French policy in Africa, is just the latest step in cooling relations with Paris
