February 12, 2011 | admin

When historians lookfor a succinct illustration of the hypocrisy of western democracies, they could do worse than turn to page 196 of this book. In March 2001, Ilyas Akhmadov, exiled foreign minister in Chechnya’s [legitimate] government, had a meeting with a top US state department official. He had high hopes. The meeting was in the capital of the world’s most powerful democracy, which had just intervened to save the Kosovo Albanians and the Bosnian Muslims from defeat.