>
> 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
>
>