Thursday, September 09, 2004

RUSSIA

International Herald Tribune: The pattern is global, but the causes are local

PARIS Terrorism and the measures adopted against it acquire reciprocal momentum that is all but impossible to stop once a certain threshold has been crossed. That threshold was crossed in Russia last week, with potentially enormous consequences for civil liberties in that country, for civil peace in the Caucasus and possibly for the existing peaceful relationship between Russia and America.

This is why issues of nationalism, irredentism and religion - the usual motives for terrorist outrages - are so desperately dangerous. Ignored or misinterpreted, assigned to spurious international causes, they can do immense damage. They have to be dealt with in their natural dimensions

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