The Roman god Janus after whom the month of January is named is always shown with two faces, one looking forward and one looking backward.  Thus, it is at the turn of each new year that people both consider what they have been through and where they are going.  2009 has been a year full of events full of meaning for Azerbaijan and its relationship with the world.  What follows are the reflections of some of Azerbaijan’s leading analysts and practitioners about both what has occurred in 2009 and what may lie ahead in 2010 ...

There is a long-standing tradition in journalism that articles written at the end of a year list the achievements and the shortcomings of their subject and then talk about how the individual or country involved will build on the former and overcome the latter in the year ahead.  But as President Ilham Aliyev wisely pointed out this month, “2009 was not an ordinary year.”  And it deserves a special approach, one that focuses not on the mix of successes and failures in the usual sense but on new challenges that have emerged and the ways in which Azerbaijan has been working to...