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Caucasus

Geidar Aliev Kicks The Bucket

2003-12-12

Former Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliev, a former KGB general and Communist Party chief who brought stability to a nation plagued by insurgencies, died Friday at the Cleveland Clinic. Aliev had been admitted to the hospital Aug. 6 for treatment of congestive heart failure and kidney problems. Hospital spokesman Cole Hatcher declined to provide details of the cause of death Friday.
"One or the other, flip a coin"
His son, Ilham Aliev, succeeded him in office following Oct. 15 presidential elections in what many claimed was the first dynastic handover of power in a former Soviet country.
Ilham is already grooming his son to succeed him.
The elder Aliev stifled dissent, censored news media and enforced a blockade on archrival Armenia. But he remained widely popular in Azerbaijan, where he cultivated the image of a wise grandfather who is not to be crossed, and decorated the streets with his portraits and slogans.
Theyâll be painting icons with his face on them now.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Aliev rose through the ranks of the Soviet secret police under dictator Josef Stalin and became head of the Azerbaijani KGB in 1967. He was a protege of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. From 1969 to 1982, he ran Azerbaijan as the republicâs Communist Party leader. He became a candidate member of the national partyâs Politburo in 1976 and a full member in 1982, reaching the pinnacle of Soviet power. Aliev returned to his native Nakhichevan, an autonomous region on the border with Iran and Turkey that is separated from the rest of the nation by a long strip of Armenian territory. In 1990 he became chairman of Nakhichevanâs legislature and deputy chairman of the national legislature. Two years earlier, fighting had broken out in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan. Armenian fighters drove Azerbaijani forces from the disputed region and seized nearby areas of Azerbaijan proper.

This was after the Azeris had swooped down on N-K to do a little ethnic cleansing in the military equipment they'd looted from the Soviets. Since the Armenians had done a little looting, too, the results were pretty tragic for the Azeris...

In 1993, humiliated by their battlefield losses, some 45,000 soldiers seized control over about half the country and demanded the ouster of President Abulfaz Elchibey.

It was easier to get rid of Elchibey than it was to get rid of the Armenians, even after they cut off the electricity to N-K in the winter time...

Aliev became parliament speaker in a government reshuffle forced by the rebels. Elchibey fled, and Aliev took his place. "If I were not here (in 1993), I do not know what would have happened with the republic," Aliev later told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. "After all, no one was found besides me who could save the people. ... Azerbaijan would have split into several parts."
Just a kindly grandfather type, heâll be missed. Hey, some people still miss Joe Stalin.

Posted by:Steve

#4 Former Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliev, a former KGB general and Communist Party chief who brought stability to a nation plagued by insurgencies

Yeah! A Golden Oldie!
Kidney Failure again? Geez... I guess the US leads in that kind of plumbing too. Speaking of course of (for profit) dialysis centers on every block.

Posted by: Shipman 2003-12-12 4:20:54 PM

#3 Ululating day for the Armenians I guess.

Posted by: True German Ally 2003-12-12 4:01:53 PM

#2 Could we be on a roll here? How about Turkenbashi? And Qazi's got a bum ticker, too...

Posted by: Fred 2003-12-12 3:30:04 PM

#1 Aliev and Noorani down in the same day. Any word on Mubarak or Arafish????

Posted by: seafarious 2003-12-12 3:20:02 PM

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