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| | Russia & Muslims ~ Johnson's Russia List 5-29-02 |
 | | And in this context, paradoxically, the Muslim community is even weaker-in the sense of being more vulnerable to repression-than the rest of society, given the highly asymmetrical relationship between the Kremlin and everybody else. |
 | | Russian Muslims, positioned as they are in the country's strategically vulnerable and pivotal territories, if systematically excluded from government, the social elite, and from decision-making processes, may eventually become a destructive force in one such future explosion. |
 | | That the West could be inadvertently drawn into such a conflict by self-styled agents of a top-down Westernization, acting on the West's behalf but in their own interests, is a dangerous prospect, and one that suggests the need for greater attention to these issues both within Russia and beyond. |
| www.cdi.org /russia/Johnson/6277-13.cfm (545 words) |
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