Islam_Connection_With_The_Baltic_States

Islam Connection With The Baltic States Radical Islam's local connection With the world focused on Afghanistan and the war against terrorism, it would be very easy for even the Baltic governments to forget about the lawless and undemocratic antics of Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus. Perhaps no world leader benefited more from the terrorist attacks than Lukashenka. Just as world scrutiny and condemnation was beginning to mount after his rigged and falsified presidential election of Sept. 9, the events in the U.S. two days later took all attention away from Europe's last dictatorship. While the timing of the attacks benefited Lukashenka politically in the short term, the old collective farm boss should be worried about Moscow's new relationship with the West and NATO. It has long been known in East European military and intelligence circles that Moscow has used Lukashenka as a middleman for arms sales to countries such as Iran or Iraq, where international law or outcry would prevent such transactions. These days appear to be over, as Vladimir Putin seems genuinely serious about working with the international community to fight terrorism. The risks and headaches of continuing to use Minsk as a proxy for secret transactions with renegade countries is not worth the relatively small economic benefits it would bring Russia. While it would be a positive step if Moscow stopped working with Minsk on illegal arms lukashenka, belarus, countries, weapons, world, moscow, minsk, military, iraq, international, equipment, defense, belarusian, arms, about, year, while, terrorists, terrorist, tajikistan, should, sales, russia, over, organizations, nato, lukashenka's, known, islamic, economic, been, wprost, working, west, two, transactions