Chechnya and 2004
Reader Matthew McOsker sends a note pointing us to 2004 and reading for context:
Who are the Boston Marathon terrorists? Some early reports state the men are Chechen. So where does Chechnya fit into global terrorism? I found the following piece that gives a nice summary:
” On September 1, 2004, a group of Chechen terrorists took hostage and two days later murdered at least 335 schoolchildren and parents in Beslan, a town in the Russian republic of North Ossetia. The atrocity focused world attention on Chechnya. The Russian government used the event to reiterate its arguments that Chechen terrorists and foreign jihadists supporting them have ideological, financial, and operational ties with Islamist terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda.[1] Although President Vladimir Putin and top Russian security officials provided evidence of links between Chechen fighters and Al-Qaeda, European politicians and mainstream Western journalists focused instead upon the Russian army’s brutality and dismissed Putin’s claims as an attempt to gain sympathy in the West and deflect criticism of Russia’s handling of a nationalist insurgency. ”
http://www.meforum.org/744/how-chechnya-became-a-breeding-ground-for-terror
Djohar Tsarnaev’s Facebook page
Another interesting bit from the linked piece – that was written in 2005
“Information extracted from the detainees in France led investigators to another cell in north London, which possessed a stock of ricin.[59] The ensuing investigation led to raids on London’s Finsbury Park mosque,[60] a raid in Manchester during which an Algerian terrorist fatally stabbed a British police officer,[61] and arrests in Spain.[62]
The global reach of Al-Qaeda’s Chechen cells was demonstrated by the fact that the ricin’s manufacture was consistent with descriptions in Al-Qaeda manuals and in a notebook found by Russian Special Forces during a raid of a Chechen rebel base.[63] According to the Kremlin’s spokesman for Chechen issues, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the ricin investigation showed that Chechnya had become part of a “network of international terrorist organizations.”[64]”
Chechen President Statement On Boston Bombers: “Seek The Roots Of Their Evil Inside America” – from his translated statement, as released earlier by Instragram. They grew up in the United States, their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. It is necessary to seek the roots of their evil inside America.
The terrorists using bombs to announce themselves are not the greatest threat to the Republic.
The organized crime syndicate of Wall Street bankers and Washington DC are.
John Cole deduces that the men’s father worked for the governmen theret which was always aligned with Moscow against the insurgency which was in part a radical fundamentalist one. As such he would have been a target and was likely given asylum here. Further deduction suggests the boys turn to what seems to be a real cartoon version of Salafi Jihadism was a sort of turn against the father.
http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/fathers-sons-chechnya.html
He has further posts on the general topic.
”Experts on Russian terrorist networks have been quick to cast doubt on any supposed ties to the Caucasus Emirate, an umbrella rebel group aiming to build an Islamist caliphate along Russia’s mainly Muslim southern flank. The group, which has committed a series of deadly attacks across Russia over the years, has never struck outside of the country. Although the Tsarnaev brothers expressed solidarity with Chechnya’s struggling independence movement, there is no evidence of them maintaining direct links with rebels.
Neighbours and friends described the Tsarnaevs’ parents using the same words – kind, chatty, decent. “They are not fanatics – they are typical people like us,” Abakarova said.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/20/tsarnaev-brothers-dagestan-boston-bombings
My recollection, the ‘Emirate’ has recieved quite a bit from a Jordanian and, from the mid 1990s, ideology became quite developed.