Re: Low Tech Scenarios

You wrote: 

>Not always true. One has only to look at the Eritrea to see that you 
can >fight a sustained guerrilla war with virtually no external support 
and >come out on top. Ethiopia had every advantage, include massive 
Soviet >aid and they were defeated badly. They gained their 
independence in 1994 >and will probably become one of the premier 
countries in Africa, mostly >due to the quality of their people and 
culture.

Dammit, I was hoping no one else had ever heard of Eritrea. . . And 
Soviet Aid is a bit of an understatement, unless Foreign Aid now 
includes air support. . . But anyway, Eritrea is very much the 
exception that proves the rule--and I could also point out that 
Ethiopia was also fighting an internal civil war at the same time.

And while they undoubtedly will be the African nation to watch in fifty 
years, right now they are having a hard time becoming self-sufficient 
in food and rebuilding what's left of the urban infrastructures that 
existed in the 1950s.  Of course, they could go back to doing what they 
did the  first half of the century--being one of the major places rich 
Arabs go to get drunk, get laid, gamble away fortunes, and all the 
other stuff the strict interpretations of Islam don't permit at home.  
:)

John M. Atkinson