Baku's Second Oil Boom (AZE) (100 images)

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In the late 19th century, Baku, an ancient Silk Road city that is the capital of modern Azerbaijan, was home to some of the world's first oil discoveries. Oil barons like the Rothschilds and the Nobels made their fortunes off its shores in the Caspian. The Soviet Union invaded in 1920, nationalizing all industry and sending the profits to Moscow. State Oil Company officials boast that Baku Oil was the engine of the Red Army in the Second World War.

The emergence of a powerful figure, Heydar Aliyev, the leader of Soviet Azerbaijan and the strong man eventually emerged from the chaos of the break up of the Soviet Union once again on top. Heydar bequeathed the nation to his son, Ilham, in 2003 in presidential elections. In 2005, the 1,100 mile-long Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline route, one of the United States' biggest post-Cold War geopolitical victories, once again shipped offshore Caspian crude to the West via the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The resulting windfall brought the ruling Aliyev family an estimated $64 million per day. The pipeline project is often referred to as the "Contract of the Century."

In an oligarchic, post-Soviet mafia state where control is largely centralized around the President's apparatus and a handful of billionaire oligarch's administrative capacity is largely provided by the apparatchiks of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party. The KGB still exists and society is controlled through various mechanisms such as bribery and corruption. Loose bonds and social networks thrive as a means of survival in a society where connections are king. Dissidents are jailed, democracy and Islamist demonstrators arrested, often beaten and occasionally disappear.

In Baku, the results of the first decade of oil windfalls in the country's Second Oil Boom are evident in the numerous high-rise construction developments, marble fountains, public parks and underpasses as well as the designer tastes evident along the wide Neftchiler Avenue. While divisions in society remain rife and the power and money concentrated in the hands of a few, the elite is experiencing the life and accoutrement of new money internationally. Baku is getting a Dubai-esque facelift over the remnants of Ottoman tastes and the accompanying Francophilia fading.
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