Baku

Downtown Baku

Last week I travelled to Azerbaijan for some business and government meetings.  Baku is the capital city, and is located on the Caspian Sea.  Baku is the centre of a very profitable oil industry, and it's quite remarkable to see the impacts of oil money in the city.  Wide boulevards and extravagant buildings dominate, along with the gaudy light shows on buildings and towers around the city at night that several Caucasus cities are famous for.  Oil is extracted from rigs in the Caspian Sea, piped to refineries in and around Baku and then sent along various pipelines across Georgia, Russia and Turkey to ports in the Black Sea and Mediterranean for further processing and shipment.  The presence of large scale oil reserves makes Azerbaijan a highly strategic location for several major powers

Pipelines from the Baku oilfields

Azerbaijan and Baku is spending up big as the country prepares to host next year's Eurovision song contest.  A dubious showcase some may argue, but the government is throwing serious money at the image they wish to project as hosts of the contest.  Major renovation and reconstruction is going on across the city, along with a well funded publicity campaign aimed at raising the profile of the country.  

Mud thatched house in refugee community

Azerbaijan is a country of extreme contrasts.  Compared with the relative wealth of Baku, many of the rural areas are very depressed, with minimal economic opportunities or investment.  Almost 1 million refugees (or Internally Displaced Persons - IDP's) remain in the country as a result of a war with neighbouring Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region sitting across both countries.  Technically Azerbaijan and Armenia are still at war, although the conflict has remained largely frozen for the last 15 years.  Corruption is also a huge problem in the country.  

Whilst in Azerbaijan I was fortunate to visit a range of development projects in rural parts of the country's west.  These projects focus mainly on the refugee communities, and are primarily aimed at economic development.  A number of these communities live in extremely poor and difficult conditions, and many families are now second generation refugees from the conflict.  A sobering contrast to the polished streets of Baku.

On Thursday last week, Baku was hit by howling winds and heavy snow. The city basically froze as the snow fell hard and blizzard conditions prevailed.  I saw more car accidents than I care to remember as the cars slid around on the icy streets.  Late that night I flew out to Tbilisi in Georgia on an old Russian Tupolev TU154.  Old Soviet aircraft, howling snowstorm, ex-military pilots......if you weren't a praying kind of person before the flight, you surely were by the end of it:)   Actually the flight was ok, despite being greeted by more heavy snow in Georgia.  


The essence of former Soviet life and architecture is still strongly evident all over the Caucasus.  The clip below captures this very well, and I think is a profound piece of work.  Hope you can watch it and enjoy.  

Soviet era apartment blocks on outskirts of Baku

Visiting a school project with disabled children