Wojtek writes:
This, btw, also applies to Chechnya, Basque, Tibet, Kashmir, Kosovo and similar nationalist-separatist movements. --------------
I write:
I gotta say I'm a hell of a lot more sympathetic to your position than I would have been before I moved to the FSU. What benefits did Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, etc. get from independence? Civil wars, dictatorship and poverty. Not to mention Chechnya, which used to manufacture high-tech goods for the USSR, and spent its period of independence devolving into a hellish gangster state. My support for Chechen separatism is zero. Just what the world needs, a (quasi-)state based on Shuriah law with an economy based on kidnapping, drug running, banditry and the slave trade. Maskhadov, Dudayev etc. have done nothing for the Chechens other than help make their lives a living hell.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal