> > > The Russian and Indian governments might have
>> thought that there
>> could be an alliance with Washington on the premise
>> of "fighting
>> terrorists together," but "together" doesn't come
>> easily to
>> Washington. Since then, Washington has repaid
>> Moscow with the "Rose
>> and Orange Revolutions," and if it has not exploited
>> the Chechen
>> question as much as it might have back in the days
>> of the Cold War,
>> that's only because it doesn't have the means to do
>> so any longer.
>
>The Citrus Revolutions were not orchestrated by Washington; they
>were orchestrated by pissed-off Georgians and Ukrainians, and, as I
>have said earlier, they don't matter very much for a variety of
>reasons.
That sounds like sour grapes. :-> The regime changes in Georgia and Ukraine may not change things much due to their local political economies, but if they hadn't mattered at all to Moscow, it presumably would not have spent a penny on either, unless Putin has a pre-modern taste for spending for the sake of spending what he got just to show that he got it.
>The US has frozen the bank accounts of organizations funnelling
>money to the Chechens, and the late and unlamented Yandarbiyev and
>Basaev are on the international terrorist list. This is very much in
>Russia's interest.
That hardly put any dent in terrorism against Russians.
"Of the roughly 2,929 terrorism-related deaths around the world since the attacks on New York and Washington, the NBC News analysis shows 58 percent of them -- 1,709 -- have occurred this year. In the past 10 days, in fact, the number of dead has risen by 142 people in places as diverse as Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel" ("Worldwide Terrorism-related Deaths on the Rise," <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5889435/>). That's as of September 2, 2004, i.e. before the body count in Beslan.
>Squishing the Talibs is in the interests of all ex-Soviet Central
>Asian states, which is why they let US forces into them. Uzbeks and
>Kyrgyz and Tajiks are very aware of the danger Talibs represent(ed).
>They know it from personal experience.
Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Tajiks, unlike Russians and Indians, have ethnic considerations inside Afghanistan. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and <http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>