Monday, December 31, 2007

Week 24-31/12: The new great game…

…is not a game at all!
The recent tragic events in Pakistan are a general warning …

The media in Caucasus dedicated comparatively less attention to the murder of Benazir Bhutto than the western ones. Partly as a consequence of their local-focused strategy, partly –probably- led by the need not too stress too much an event which creates a long wave of instability.

In Azerbaijan, in particular, information assessed from the very beginning that responsibilities were to be cast on Al Qaeda, dropping any reference to any other hypothesis. The country, which has approximately 70% Shia Muslim and 30% Sunni, faced already in the past wahhabits infiltrations. Starting from 1998, the fax claiming responsibility for bombing of the USA Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam was sent from Baku. In Guantanamo is detained one Azeri citizen. A couple of azeri mosques (Abu Bakr and Cuma) are considered to be linked to Sunni or Shia terrorist groups, coming from bordering Dagestan and Iran.

Azeri government is active in facing the terrorist danger, but it is also playing the card of justifying its authoritarian rule as a tool to prevent a color revolution… but a green one!

In judging how much a religious revival is indeed dangerous, the role played by religious in society, how much the state should interfere and, even more, if it is allowed to limit citizens’ rights, it is mandatory to use caution, coherence and a good deal of tact&discretion.

Otherwise the risk is to support dictatorships in the name of a secular state that can happen to be as harsh and cruel as its opposite.
Or to make sheer democracy activists seem like nothing more than other countries’ agents.

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