Vice President J.D. Vance visited Azerbaijan and Armenia this week aiming to advance a peace agreement to resolve nearly 40 years of conflict between the two South Caucasus countries.
During his travels, Vance signed respective bilateral agreements with Armenia and Azerbaijan to strengthen the United States’ relationship with each country. However, there is an often-overlooked dynamic where pressure from the United States could advance progress: Azerbaijan’s ongoing crackdown on its civil society and the detention of more than 300 political prisoners.
The repression of Azerbaijan’s civil society poses a significant stumbling block to achieving a lasting and enduring peace agreement because many of those in prison have been targeted for seeking accountability from Azerbaijan’s leadership for corruption that plagues the country. This record of unaddressed corruption under Ilham Aliyev’s leadership could impact the United States’ ability to mobilize financial backing to support the peace deal’s promised economic incentives.
Under previous U.S. administrations, Azerbaijan’s leaders have leveraged participation in a peace deal as a shield against international criticism of their targeted repression of citizens who denounce corruption and kleptocracy and call for accountability. The United States is now offering economic opportunities to Azerbaijan as incentives in the peace talks, but it should use the negotiations to demonstrate that advancing essential freedoms in Azerbaijan and a peace deal must go hand-in-hand. The United States should insist that Azerbaijan’s leadership unconditionally release and drop charges against these journalists, academic researchers, opposition party, and other civil society leaders as assurance that it is seriously committed to implementing crucial institutional and economic reforms.
Why it matters
The agreement the United States seeks to mediate between Armenia and Azerbaijan is largely based on commercial projects that would provide strong economic incentives for the two neighbors to work together.
Central to the peace proposal is a transportation route through both Azerbaijan and Armenia that promises to increase bilateral trade and benefit the United States and Europe’s strategic interests by establishing a geographical alternative to Russia and Iran for moving oil, grain, and other goods through Central Asia.
Although the infrastructure corridor was presented at the trilateral U.S.-Armenia-Azerbaijan summit at the White House in August 2025, a financing mechanism has not yet been publicly identified. Azerbaijan’s record of corruption could complicate efforts to do so, unless its leadership demonstrate efforts to implement reforms.
Azerbaijan’s economy is heavily dependent on oil production and exports. These are largely run by state-owned and elite-linked companies whose activities are generally shielded from public accountability mechanisms by a lack of transparency and weak institutional oversight.
State contracts are especially vulnerable to being captured by individuals linked to the country’s current leadership.
For example, a recent $36 million-contract to build a stadium in the Nagorno-Karabakh region as part of its postwar reconstruction was granted to two companies that the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and independent Azerbaijan media have found to be linked to individuals tied to the Aliyev family as well as the relatives of the current minister of youth and sports.
Silencing calls for accountability
Independent media, academics, and other researchers have repeatedly documented suspicious business practices and economic activity that point to corruption at the highest levels. Rather than investigating such allegations of corruption, the Aliyev regime has consistently responded by throwing those who raise questions into prison.
Currently, more than two dozen journalists are in Azerbaijan prisons. Most are affiliated with three independent outlets that are internationally recognized for reporting on corruption – Abzas Media, Meydan TV, and Toplum TV.
Particularly troubling to the United States should be the detentions of Farid Mehralizada, who worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani-language service Radio Azadliq and was sentenced to nine years in prison in June, as well as Ulviyya Ali, who served as Voice of America’s Azerbaijan correspondent until the Aliyev government revoked its license a few months before her July 2025 arrest.
The authorities in Baku seek to silence a wide range of civil society voices who have called for greater public accountability. Anar Mammadli, the founder of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center and co-founder of the Climate Justice Initiative, has been in detention since April 2024 – two months after Aliyev declared victory in a highly criticized presidential election, and several months before Baku played host city to the U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP29.
Economist and anticorruption researcher Gubad Ibadoghlu, whose detention the George W. Bush Institute has previously highlighted, remains under house arrest and close surveillance. The Aliyev regime intensified harassment of opposition parties, arresting dozens of Azerbaijan Popular Front Party members throughout 2025, including its chairman, Ali Karimli, and other party leadership.
Prison authorities continue to isolate and intimidate those already behind bars.
Bahruz Samadov, a prominent supporter of peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia who received a 15-year prison sentence in June, fears a recent decision to move him to a closed prison on the outskirts of Baku that is notorious for housing the most dangerous criminals could result in a deliberate attempt to silence him permanently.
“I have legitimate concerns that the state plans to physically end my life using someone else’s hands,” he wrote in a letter from prison published last month by the independent Caucasus regional media outlet OC Media.
What’s next?
The economic incentives envisioned by the United States’ proposed peace plan offer significant benefits to the country at a crucial time: Projections show that Azerbaijan faces economic vulnerabilities without structural reforms and economic diversification.
However, unless the Aliyev regime demonstrates a commitment to improving its business environment, the United States should withhold U.S. government-backed financial resources that are at a high risk of being siphoned off for improper use and corrupt private gain. Recruiting private sector investors to support such infrastructure development would also be complicated under these conditions.
The years-long crackdown on civil society and political opposition suggest the Aliyev regime remains resistant to open public debate that would foster greater transparency, accountability, and rule of law necessary to reforming and growing the country’s economy.
Freedom for Azerbaijan’s jailed civil society leaders should be a crucial prerequisite Baku must demonstrate before the United States takes further steps to lineup economic resources to support the proposed peace plan and transportation corridor between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
