Thread: Chechen Terror Usually Aimed at Russia

Updated April 19, 2013, 1:13 p.m. ET

Chechen Terror Usually Aimed at Russia

By PAUL SONNE, ALAN CULLISON and LUKAS I. ALPERT

MOSCOW—The revelation that the prime suspects in the Boston Marathon attack are a pair of Chechen brothers who emigrated to the U.S. has put a spotlight back on a region that has been a source of violence in Russia ever since the Kremlin crushed a separatist insurgency there.

The suspects, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and their family emigrated to the U.S. in stages around 10 years ago, having fled violence that rocked Chechnya in the 1990s, a family friend told The Wall Street Journal. No motive for the Boston bombings has been publicly identified.


U.S. authorities identified two Russian-born brothers of Chechen background, one killed and the other at large, as the suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing. WSJ's Evan Perez and Andrew Arena, a former FBI special agent in charge, discuss the latest. Photo: AP.

Rebels in Chechnya began agitating for independence for their predominantly Muslim republic in the wake of the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse. The Kremlin subsequently sent in troops to quell the rebellion over the course of two bloody wars.

In recent years Chechens have carried out a series of terrorist attacks in Russia years aimed at destabilizing the Kremlin's hold on their small mountainous republic.

Some have also migrated ideologically from nationalism to radical Islam, turning up among militants in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.

Experts says there is a significant distinction between Chechens who back Chechen resistance to Russian rule and the much smaller group who have embraced global jihadi ideology.

"In these cases, the Chechen background is maybe a part of what leads them to do what they do," said Lorenzo Vidino, an expert on Chechen militants at the Center for Security Studies in Zurich." A purely nationalist Chechen would have little reason to put a bomb at the Boston Marathon."

A profile on the Russian social-networking site Vkontakte that appears to belong to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev includes a propaganda clip rallying jihadists to go to Syria to fight alongside rebels there, citing sayings from the Prophet Muhammad.

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Evan Perez and former FBI special agent in charge Andrew Arena, discuss the significance of the Boston Marathon suspects being from Chechnya, Russia. Photo: AP.

• All Video on Boston Bombings

Such videos have become commonplace in the Arab world and have even aired on extremist Sunni TV channels broadcasting from Saudi Arabia. Most Chechens are Sunni Muslims. The profile's authenticity couldn't be verified.

The most recent major Chechnya-related terrorist attack occurred at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport in January 2011, when a bomb killed at least 35 people and injured dozens more.

Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel commander, subsequently took responsibility for the attack in a video posted on a Caucasus website.

Other attacks tied to the Chechen insurgency have attracted world attention.

In 2010, about 40 people were killed in a string of attacks in the Moscow subway allegedly carried out by female suicide bombers.

In 2004, Chechen rebels stormed a school in the Russian town of Beslan, taking more than 1,000 people hostage and killing more than 300, most of them children.

Two years earlier, Chechen rebels took hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theater. More than 100 people died after Russian forces pumped a chemical agent into the theater before subduing the insurgents. The gas itself caused most of the fatalities.

The terrorist attacks strengthened the Kremlin's resolve to crush the insurgency and its refusal to negotiate.

The second war in Chechnya got under way just ahead of the turn of the millennium, as then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent in troops to crush the rebels and allied with Akhmad Kadyrov, a Chechen rebel who initially fought for independence against Russian forces but later abandoned the insurgency. Mr. Kadyrov was killed by a targeted bomb attack in May 2004.

His son, Ramzan Kadyrov, is now the president of the Chechen Republic. He has garnered the Kremlin's support by repressing much of the simmering rebellion in actions that many activists have condemned as human-rights violations.

"Any attempt to make a connection between Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs, if they are guilty, is in vain," Mr. Kadyrov said in a statement on Instagram. "They grew up in the United States. Their attitudes and beliefs were formed there.

One must look for the root of the evil in America."

The spokesman for now-President Putin, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia had received no official request from U.S. authorities for help in investigating the background of the two men.

"We still have not had any official contact with the U.S. ," he said early Friday. "We are definitely ready to assist in the investigation when an official request is made."

The Chechen rebel movement has suffered from ideological splits. Some Chechens support the nationalist cause for independence but don't sympathize with radical Islam. A more radicalized group have come to adhere to ideas tied to jihad and the creation of an Islamist state.

One example of the shift was a 2007 video released by Mr. Umarov, the Chechen rebel commander, in which he claimed to have dissolved Chechnya's borders and created a Caucasus Emirate.
In the video, which surprised some Chechens, he said the enemy of Chechen rebels wasn't just Russia but "all those who wage war against Muslims," including the U.S., Britain and Israel.

Only a few hundred Chechen families have settled in the U.S., mostly on the West Coast, said Almut Rochowanski, program director of the Chechnya Advocacy Network in New York. By contrast, more than 100,000 Chechens have settled in Europe.

"There is a very small community in the Boston area, particularly in the Watertown area," she said.

She said most arrived in the U.S. through a refugee resettlement program rather than as asylum seekers. Refugee resettlement is granted by the U.S. Embassy in the country of origin to those who are deemed to be under threat in their home country.
—Sam Dagher contributed to this article.
Write to Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com, Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com and Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@dowjones.com
　　
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"Any attempt to make a connection between Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs, if they are guilty, is in vain," Mr. Kadyrov said in a statement on Instagram. "They grew up in the United States. Their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. One must look for the root of the evil in America."

The 'root' of these brothers' evil is islam, which is the common denominator in 99% of terrorist activities all over the world.