Quote Originally Posted by Stan View Post
...
I'd say "support base" rather than sanctuary...You can run, but you can no longer hide
Particularly in view of the fact that most such 'sanctuaries' are provided by nations that may have mixed emotions about doing so but on balance would prefer not to be viewed as a sanctuary. While the Nation, per se, would rather not, there were / are generally enough people who do support the cause to enable that support base to exist to one degree or another.

Cambodia is a good example; so is Thailand during the Malayan Emergency, Pakistan then and now, Haiti to the DomRep and of course, Laos -- which suffered the indignity as much due to the odd qualities of the US Ambassador of the time as any other reason.

In all those cases, the sanctuary provider broadly would have preferred to not be that but for either political or military reasons, was not able to do more than voice a pro forma objection. In the case of Thailand, continued British protests didn't do much good because the Thais were not able to control the border. So the SAS did some cross border stuff (so I was told by guys who were there and involved -- but it's well buried, I haven't been able to find it in writing anywhere). A lot of our Cambode and Lao ops are open source, more are not. Same's true with Pakistan.

The big difference today is that Turkey (small), Syria and Iran -- and probably to a limited and covert extent, Saudi Arabia -- are capable of denying sanctuary or support but choose instead to support it...