[Fired by a potent mix of
blood codes, separatist yearnings and Islamic militancy, Chechen groups have
staged a string of intermittent but spectacular attacks in Moscow and elsewhere
in Russia since the 1990s. They have bombed trains, planes and subways, attacked a rock concert and slammed a
truck bomb into a hospital. In 2002, they seized a crowded theater in Moscow,
an attack that culminated in a commando raid that killed 130 hostages.]
By Peter Baker and C. J. Chivers
 |
| Picture Courtesy: Flashpoints |
WASHINGTON —
The possible motivations of the two brothers linked to the Boston Marathon bombings
are as yet publicly unknown. Of Chechen heritage, they lived in the United
States for years, according to friends and relatives, and no direct ties have
been publicly established with known Chechen terrorist or separatist groups.
Yet, with at least one
brother talking of Chechen nationalism on the Internet, their reported
involvement in the marathon attack throws a spotlight back on one of the
darkest corners of nationalist and Islamic militancy, and to a campaign for
separatism and vengeance responsible for some of the most unsparing terrorist
acts of recent decades.
Fired by a potent mix of
blood codes, separatist yearnings and Islamic militancy, Chechen groups have
staged a string of intermittent but spectacular attacks in Moscow and elsewhere
in Russia since the 1990s. They have bombed trains, planes and subways, attacked a rock concert and slammed a
truck bomb into a hospital. In 2002, they seized a crowded theater in Moscow,
an attack that culminated in a commando raid that killed 130 hostages.
In the spring of 2004, a
bomb placed in a stadium in Grozny, the regional capital, killed the Kremlin’s handpicked Chechen president.
That summer, female suicide bombers with hand grenades brought down two Russian passenger jets nearly
simultaneously, killing 90 people.
Days later, a group of
terrorists working for Shamil Basayev, the one-legged separatist military
commander who was then Russia’s most wanted man, stormed a public school in the small town of Beslan,
in a nearby republic, leading to the deaths of more than 300 people, most of
them schoolchildren, their parents and their teachers.
Such violence had
typically been confined within Russia.
Reports, often based on
little more than rumors or Kremlin-sourced leaks, of extensive Chechen
involvement in terrorism or insurgencies elsewhere have been a staple of public
commentary on such violence since 2001.
These reports — of
Chechen snipers and bomb-makers appearing in one conflict after another, and of
Chechens filling the ranks of armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere —
often proved to be exaggerated.
Chechnya’s
battles with Russia and against Russian rule had been fought in recurring if
irregular cycles for centuries; Chechens did not have to travel to find their
foes, much less their targets. In interviews many Chechen emigrants and
fighters have emphasized that they consider their enemies to be local, not
foreign.
But in time outside
influences crept into the North Caucasus’s homegrown war, and the moves and
countermoves between Russians and Chechens spread beyond Russia’s borders.
Two wars erupted between
Russia and Chechen separatists in the 1990s. The first had old roots. Many
Chechens, an independent Muslim people of the highlands, have long chafed at
what they view as Russia’s imperial rule. With the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, Chechen separatists perceived a fresh
chance to claim their own state.
Chechnya’s oil reserves
provided an incentive for both sides to refuse to yield their claims, and Islam
colored the fight. Arab fighters appeared in Chechnya with the onset of the
first war, saying they had come to help fellow Muslims fight oppression.
By the mid- and
late-1990s, several training camps operated almost openly in rural Chechnya,
led in part by a foreign jihadi, Ibn al-Khattab.
Later, however, many
Chechens said the Arab influence had declined amid tensions between the Sufi
Chechens and Sunni Arabs, who typically adhere to different Islamic traditions
and practices. In addition, the allure of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan,
Chechens say, drew many Arab fighters away from Chechnya’s mountains.
And yet the ripple
effects of the Chechen wars eventually played out in 2004 in the Arab emirate
of Qatar, where Russian agents assassinated an exiled Chechen leader with
a car bomb, and on the streets of Vienna in 2009 when Chechens gunned down a fellow Chechen who
had broken from the Kremlin-supported leadership in the republic to file a
complaint in the European Court of Human Rights. The complaint detailed torture
by the Russian-backed security services, and the republic’s current president,
Ramzan A. Kadyrov.
Just a week ago, the
United States put Mr. Kadyrov, a former rebel turned ally of President Vladimir
V. Putin of Russia and the primary subject of the torture complaint, on a
secret list of Russian citizens banned from the United States for human rights
abuses, according to people briefed on the list.
Curiously, the most political of the video clips posted
on social media by one of the Tsarnaev brothers was not aimed at the West, but
at Mr. Kadyrov, who is loathed by many Chechens and regarded as a vicious
Kremlin stooge.
Mr. Kadyrov on Friday
dismissed the Tsarnaev brothers and any ties between the Boston bombing and
Chechnya. “The roots of this evil are to be found in America,” he said in a
post on Instagram.
With all its longstanding
crosscurrents, and partly because of its seeming remoteness and small scale,
the Chechen conflict has long confounded American leaders and policy makers.
Boris Yeltsin, president
of Russia immediately after the Soviet breakup, launched a war from 1994 to
1996 to re-establish control of the region. As Mr. Yeltsin’s prime minister,
Mr. Putin ordered a second war in 1999, after a brief period of Chechen
self-rule that was characterized by criminality and accusations of terrorism.
Mr. Putin waged a
relentless campaign that included carpet bombing and the indiscriminate
shelling of Grozny, with more ordnance than any European city had endured since
World War II.
While the United States
has shared intelligence on Chechen militants with the Russian government over
the years, American officials have been reluctant to be too associated with
Moscow’s Chechnya policies, which resulted in the destruction of Grozny, the
deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and the indiscriminate imprisonment of
many young men. Then, as open resistance declined, control was maintained by
flagrantly rigged elections and collective punishment.
At one point during
President George W. Bush’s administration, a debate broke out over a proposal
by a National Security Council official to effectively partner with the
Russians in fighting Chechen rebels. Other officials from the State Department
and Pentagon vociferously opposed it, arguing that the United States should not
ally itself with the Kremlin’s tactics.
By then what had started
as a separatist revolt had partially assumed a jihadi cast. The Chechen cause
had been adopted by the likes of Osama bin Laden and other foreign radicals,
who tried to insinuate themselves into the struggle; several Chechen rebel
leaders embraced Islam as a rallying cry.
Bin Laden’s top deputy,
Ayman al-Zawahri, had traveled to Russia in 1996 to explore the possibility of
relocating operations to Chechnya and was arrested on a visa violation, only to
be released several months later. Mohammed Atta, a future Sept. 11 hijacker,
and other members of a Qaeda cell initially wanted to join the jihad in
Chechnya but were told it was too hard to get in and were advised to go to
Afghanistan instead.
With the defection of
some rebels like Mr. Kadyrov and his father, Moscow eventually re-established
control over most of Chechnya. Much of Grozny was rebuilt.
But the separatist
insurgency has never been extinguished. Whether the Boston bombing was tied to
it is still unclear, but a generation of young Chechen men have never known a
peaceful homeland, coming of age as young Muslims with few prospects at home in
the Caucasus, and difficulties finding a place abroad.
Peter Baker reported from Washington, and C.J.
Chivers from the United States.
