arleta counterculture: Chechnya: How a remote Russian republic became linked with terrorism

The main suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing are said to be two brothers from Chechnya, a mountainous and mainly Muslim republic in southern Russia that has been the scene of cyclical revolts and brutal crackdowns by Moscow's forces for the past 200 years. Though Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev have spent most of their lives outside of Chechnya, their postings on YouTube and the Russian-language VKontakte social media site illustrate a proud attachment to their ancestral homeland and offer many hints that both identified closely with Chechnya's defiant and fiercely independent mountain warrior traditions.

Where is Chechnya?

Chechnya is one of eight mainly Muslim ethnic republics that sprawl across the northern face of the Caucasus Mountains ? which contain some of Europe's highest peaks ? between the Black and Caspian Seas. The region is a patchwork of separate nationalities, speaking wildly different tongues, who have a history of intense animosity between each other that's eclipsed only by their historic tensions with Russia.

The approximately 1.2 million Chechens, whose republic occupies about 6,600 square miles in the center of the chain, are a fierce mountain people who speak Noxchi Mott, a language that's incomprehensible to most of their neighbors ? but which was one of the three languages, along with Russian and English, that the younger Tsarnaev claimed to speak fluently on his VKontakte page.

How did it become part of Russia?

The Caucasus region was conquered by Czarist Russia, whose armies took three decades to overcome the resistance of the guerrilla warriors. The long war, whose brutal and treacherous nature was brilliantly captured by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in his last novel, Hadji Murat, was finally won by Russian Gen. Mikhail Yermolov, who used scorched earth tactics, hostage taking, and deliberate bloody civilian massacres to crush the Chechen rebels.

Chechnya has erupted in revolt every time the Russian grip has weakened ever since, notably amid the chaos following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was so infuriated by Chechen disloyalty in World War II that he ordered the entire Chechen nation ? half a million people ? deported to Central Asia in 1944. An estimated 150,000 Chechens died on the bitter winter march.

The Chechens were allowed to return home after Mr. Stalin died, but they declared independence as the USSR crumbled in 1991. The Russian Army invaded in 1994, but withdrew in defeat after two years of futile war and an estimated 80,000 mostly civilian casualties.

After winning independence, however, the Chechens failed to build a viable state. Leading warlords such as Shamil Basayev and the Jordanian-born Khattab embraced Islamist ideology and sought to export their revolution to neighboring republics. Russia, now led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, invaded again in 1999.

How did Chechnya become linked with terrorism?

During Russia's second assault on Chechnya, most of the little republic's first wave of independence-seeking leaders, who had espoused secular nationalism, were either killed or defected to the Russian side. Militant Islamists, seeking to create a Caucasus-wide "caliphate," took over the movement and found tactical inspiration, as well as material support, from Middle Eastern Islamist terror networks like Al Qaeda. The Islamist insurrection has since spread to neighboring republics, especially Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Chechen-led terrorists have struck repeatedly in the Russian heartland, notably a mass hostage-taking at a downtown Moscow theater in 2002 that killed 130 people and a horrific school siege in Beslan, North Ossetia, that killed 330 people, half of them children. A double suicide bombing by "black widow" terrorists ? wives of rebels killed by Russian security forces ? left 40 people dead in a 2010 Moscow metro attack and another suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport the next year left 35 people dead.

What is Chechnya like today?

In 2009 the Kremlin declared victory in Chechnya, pulled its army out, and left the republic under control of a pro-Moscow strongman named Ramzan Kadyrov. Under Mr. Kadyrov, Chechnya has enjoyed a stunning economic rebirth, financed mainly by subsidies from Moscow.

But Russian human rights monitors allege the republic has become a legal black hole, where opponents of Kadyrov are rounded up by official death squads, and critical journalists sometimes turn up bullet-ridden and dead on the side of the road. In defiance of the Russian constitution, critics say, Kadyrov is also imposing sharia law in the republic, and meting out punishment to those who disobey.

Still, Kadyrov can rightly claim ? as he routinely does to visiting celebrities ? that Chechnya is practically the safest place in the turbulent northern Caucasus these days.

How will the alleged involvement of Chechens in the Boston bombings affect US-Russia relations?

Since the beginning of the second Chechen war, Mr. Putin has tried to convince US leaders that Russia's war in Chechnya is a chapter of the global war against terrorism, and that the US should stop criticizing Russia's brutal crackdown there and join forces with Moscow.

This argument has gained little traction in Washington, where the often horrific outcomes of Moscow's campaign to pacify Chechnya have made it difficult to see things Putin's way. Despite repeated rumors about Chechen involvement with anti-American terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, little solid evidence has ever turned up.

But the Chechen brothers who allegedly carried out the Boston Marathon bombing might prompt US leaders to rethink that approach.

arleta counterculture

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Chechnya: How a remote Russian republic became linked with terrorism

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