I agree with you - a total cock up. This is getting a little too dangerous.
For the second part of the post, though I would respectfully disagree. Access to ports or oil had little to do with the intervention of the USSR in Afghanistan (which is what I assume you are referring to), any more than its more recent activities in Chechnya do. The old Soviet Union was an empire comprising a number of Islamic colonies along its Southern flank. Signs that the empire was crumbling were evident long before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and in particular, the rising militant Islamic movement (from the fall of the Shah in Iran onwards) meant that the USSR had to prevent the spread of militant Islamism into its empire. The route North from Iran goes through Afghanistan, which therefore had to be neutralized. The same thought process is at work today in China, where the Urghur minority (which is mostly Muslim) is being suppressed-often brutally-, to prevent an Islamic independence movement from gaining hold.
Current Events » in reply to re: There may be a positive side to all this.
re: There may be a positive side to all this.
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