Charles Taylor may find that in accepting this support he has taken on more than he can handle. In my forthcoming book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery) I discuss how the Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenes appealed to Muslims for help in a dynastic dispute. They came into Europe and stayed.
John VI was not the first Christian ruler to make alliances with Muslims; nor was he the first to pay for doing so. But his alliance may have had the worst long-lasting effects. Unfortunately, the short-sightedness of modern Western rulers makes them all liable to be the next John VI Cantacuzenes. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Liberia’s exiled former president, Charles Taylor, received money recently from an al-Qaeda operative and is trying to destabilize west Africa, prosecutors for Sierra Leone’s U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal said Tuesday.
Chief prosecutor David Crane said Taylor harbored members of al-Qaeda including those who allegedly took part in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1997, and was allegedly in contact with a member of the terrorist network as recently as last month.
“Al-Qaeda has been in west Africa. It continues to be in west Africa, and Charles Taylor has been harboring members of al-Qaeda,” Crane said, adding that he believes west Africa is going to become the next Afghanistan.