Leaving the Rails — Flying Visit to Baku in Azerbaijan
*Caroline Knowles
‘Nobody knows why Azerbaijan’s land and sea borders are closed’ snapped the woman in the shipping office in Aktau. I’d hoped to book a Caspian sea crossing to the International Sea Port in Alat in Azerbaijan just an hour’s drive south of Baku. The Azeri government aren’t saying anything about the closures. But they are deeply unpopular with citizens annoyed at restrictions on their mobility. In the absence of official announcements, explanations that are gaining traction are that the closures avoid the influx of Russian draft dodgers Georgia is dealing with; that ongoing tensions with neighbouring Iran and Armenia raise security concerns; and that the land borders are closed to make it easier to build a new high speed railway line. Take your pick. As it is still possible to fly in and out of Azerbaijan, none of these explanations except railway construction make sense. Freight can still travel by land and sea — no one wants to obstruct commerce. I scramble to reconfigure my travel plans and book flights leaving Aktau in the middle of the night — for Baku and the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Meanwhile I explore Aktau.
My introduction to Aktau, a mining town built in Soviet times, begins at the train station on the edge of town. I’m surprised by the amount of commercial and residential construction, especially the number of large grand villa-like buildings, many of which are restaurants but seem vastly outsized for this purpose. The centre of town next to the Caspian is full of billboards promising luxury waterside living and reminds me of China. The term ‘palace’ crops up constantly in connection with grand buildings: one is even called Versailles. Might these displays of wealth be the architectures of cronyism and corruption Z described as she was helping me in Almaty? Aktau is one of two Kazakhstan ports — the other is Kuryk — negotiating with the Chinese state-owned company COSCO to build a large container port. I visit Aktau Port, have a look round the customs offices, watch the gantries and railway lines that converge upon it, and of course, without a letter from someone important stay on the outside of the barriers.
That night I fly to Baku in Azerbaijan. I’ve been there before. On that occasion I took the train in the other direction from Batumi on Georgia’s Black Sea coast to Baku on the Caspian. The bus from Baku airport passes Zaha Hadid’s spectacular conference hall, gallery and museum and drops me in the centre of the city early in the morning. Baku — which combines extreme displays of luxury with the industrial poverty created around oil extraction — is lush and green and just walking up. I head for breakfast in a little café and then walk to the railway station. The elegant old Moorish station I remembered has been turned into a railway museum, although it worked perfectly well as a station, and a gleaming new building constructed next to it. The new station has a huge screen with advice on how to board the train; it has thirty-nine ticket booths only three of which are actually in use; it has masses of unused seating; and it has a wooden cabin labelled ‘sleep box’ for taking naps. Following signs to the toilets, I find they are still in construction. This is the most spectacular modern railway station. A beautiful zombie it is vastly bigger than it needs to be for the small number of trains and passengers it actually handles. But to its credit, it also functions (if unintentionally) as a public space for people working on laptops, sleeping, eating fast food from one of its concessions, or just hanging out.
Baku’s big freight station is Absheron, where cargo crossing the Caspian landing in the International Sea Port in Alat ends up. The Caspian News Bakureported (March 11, 2024) that cargo arrived along this middle corridor from Xi’an to Baku in just 11 days. This seems a bit farfetched given low train speeds on old Soviet track through Kazakhstan and the bottlenecks at the Caspian crossing. At this point, it seems that the middle corridor is powered by the hope and aspiration of optimistic transit times. Something to aim for perhaps. At the top level, Azerbaijan is a keen Belt-Road advocate and readily collaborates with China, on its own terms, in improving its infrastructure. Of course, the Azeri Government and its network of elite and construction bosses has more to gain from infrastructure projects and new oversized railway stations than other citizens. The state-controlled press is full of declarations of solidarity and co-operation between China and Azerbaijan, forging the middle corridor together, improving infrastructure, connectivity and transit times which in turn deliver (imagined?) prosperity for the people.
With this thought in mind, I head back to the airport for my flight to Tbilisi annoyed at having to leave out part of the trail I have been following so closely until now. Geopolitics intervene again.
*Caroline Knowles is an urban sociologist and the author of Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London, published by Penguin (2022) https://seriousmoneybook.com and a Global Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.
