LETTER FROM BAKU: Azerbaijan is a place most of us would have difficulty finding on a map. Yet we have a good deal in common. Like the Irish, the Azeris are experiencing a boom. The difference is that their success is based on the country's vast oil and gas reserves.
The Bush administration likes Azerbaijan and, when you arrive in the capital, Baku, it is easy to see why. The smell of oil hangs heavily in the air. It has to compete with an even stronger odour of gas that's almost overpowering when you turn on the tap in your hotel room. Waking up in the middle of the night, you wonder if it's all over and whether you'll ever breathe fresh air again.
There are massive oil rigs in the bay and the landscape is dotted with those awkward-looking, angular drilling appliances that are shaped like a horse's head, busily drinking the black liqueur from the earth. The surrounding countryside stretches for miles, with a mountain range in the distance. "Just like Texas," says Rizvan, my Azeri guide, laughing.
But there's a lot to like about Baku. Pollution notwithstanding, there is a raw energy and excitement about being in an oil town. This is what it must have been like in the Gold Rush days in America during the late 19th century. It takes five hours to get there from London and everyone on the plane except me seemed to be a Scottish oil rigger, reminiscing about the last time they went drinking in Finnegan's or O'Malley's - two pubs with Irish names in Baku.
You feel safe walking the streets of the Azeri capital. Unlike other cities, such as a certain place by the Liffey, nobody pesters you as you pass along. But you quickly begin to notice that the prosperity, as in Ireland, is somewhat unevenly distributed. Mercs and SUVs jostle with clapped-out Ladas and Samaras on the roadway and many of the people look as though they haven't had a change of clothing or certainly a change of fashion since Soviet times. Figures from 2002 showed 49 per cent of the population below the poverty line.
Azerbaijan crept out from under Moscow's boot heel in 1991 and it has many problems today. Neighbouring Armenia occupies 16 per cent of the country's landmass, as a result of an ethnic and territorial dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. This heightens the sense of fragility about the place, as though it could be whittled away by the exigencies of power politics.
There is also, by all accounts, corruption on a grand scale. Local journalists readily testify that virtually everyone in a position to do so is feathering his or her nest and that the political class is lacking in patriotism and a sense of civic duty. There is corroborating testimony from no less a source than the CIA World Factbook on the internet which states: "Corruption is ubiquitous and the promise of widespread wealth from Azerbaijan's undeveloped petroleum resources remains largely unfulfilled."
Yet there is a sense of hope in the air. Despite the obvious cult of personality surrounding President Ilham Aliyev, whose portrait is everywhere, there is also a feeling of freedom about the place or, as Michael Collins said in another context, "freedom to achieve freedom".
Ukraine is free, Belarus is on the path to freedom; perhaps Azerbaijan also is about to enter a new era.
Azerbaijan does not have the trappings of a police state and men in uniform are relatively few in number. Visiting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I was impressed by the lack of elaborate security precautions as well as the frankness of the press spokesman, Tahir Taghizadeh, who freely acknowledged there were problems while insisting, as he is employed to do, that the country is headed in the right direction.
For all its faults, including the decidedly dodgy aspects of last November's parliamentary elections and human rights concerns about the current trial of three opposition youth leaders, there is one feature of Azerbaijan that makes it a shining example today. Although the people are overwhelmingly Muslim, they cherish their small but significant proportion of Jewish citizens.
There are Jewish villages in the north of the country, I was told, and relations between Muslims and Jews are excellent. If John F Kennedy were alive today, he might well come to Azerbaijan instead of Berlin and say to those who believe Islam and Judaism cannot co-exist: "Lass'sie nach Baku kommen." Let them come to Baku.
