Okay, gotta say I told you so …
FIRST: Sept 8 –
“Remember what happened in Angola and Sierra Leone and the infamous “blood diamonds”.
The insurgencies started with population support. As this support diminished through government activities,
the insurgents moved to the illegal diamond trade to continue to support their fight even without the people’s support The FARC continue to do that now, using cocaine trafficking to maintain their life style.
In the same way, even if the U.S. and West can eliminate population support for al-Qaeda and allies,
it will also have to remove funding from criminal sources, in particular narcotics trafficking.”
Look at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26409842/
SECOND: August 29
“So now that South Ossetia is independent, what about North Ossetia? What about Chechnya? What was that 15 year war all about if not independence, finally resolved by killing vast numbers of Chechens. What about Ingushetia? Dagestan? What about the Avars who don’t even have a region named after them?
Russian has set in motion a process of its own invention which has the potential to keep the Caucasus in turmoil for another generation.”
Check out: http://www.eng.tatar-inform.ru/news/2008/08/26/19024/ and http://ww4report.com/node/6006/print and http://article.wn.com/view/2008/09/10/Separatists_in_Russia_see_hope_in_South_Ossetia_and_Abkhazia/.
Sorry, I should have included mention of Tatarstan in the original blog.
