Oil's Vital New Power

Azerbaijan might be secular, but it is hardly democratic. Local elections in 2005 and the presidential vote that brought Ilham Aliyev to power in 2003 were both flawed, according to U.N. and American election observers. A free press? Hardly. One afternoon in December, TIME's team was taken to a police station near Baku and questioned for three hours about our activities. In Baku, the late former President's face peers down from billboards, and a huge statue of him stands in one of the many Heydar Aliyev parks. On the third anniversary of Aliyev's death, in December, government television channels aired round-the-clock programming about his life. The footage aired also on large screens on street corners.

But can Azerbaijan grow richer without growing freer? Some Azeris believe Western governments prefer energy security to political freedom, as was sought in the 2004 revolution in Ukraine--a major transhipper of natural gas to Western Europe. "The U.S. will never support democrats in Azerbaijan because of their oil interests," says Guluzadeh. But Azeris might start to demand more democracy if oil revenues do not trickle down. The country is listed as one of the world's most corrupt by the Berlin-based Transparency International. "The average citizen is very suspicious of the government," says a Western official in Baku, who did not want to be named. "But if the oil wealth is not distributed, you will see people wanting a change."

Back in the oil terminal outside Baku, Bala Mirza, the engineer at the computer monitor, says he has already reaped benefits from the new oil boom. His life is barely recognizable from those days when he earned $10 a month on that offshore Soviet rig. Since joining the pipeline project in 2003, he has bought a car for himself and for his father, who worked in Soviet oil production for 30 years. But the real test of how Azerbaijan has changed will be the future of Mirza's daughter, who is now 10. "When all our oil is finished, say, in 50 years from now, there should be no problems for her." So until then, party on, Baku.