Chechnya, located in the north Caucasus
region, has been a thorn in Russia’s side for centuries. First czars,
then Soviet leaders and Russian presidents fought independence movements
there. Now Chechnya is under the iron-fisted rule of Moscow’s
pro-Russian leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Charles King, a Caucasus
expert at the Wilson Center, said “It is certainly the case that the
North Caucasus have been over the course of the last 20 years and one
would say even over the course of the last 200 years, a rather violent
place where secessionist movements have been relatively common. It was a
region of the Russian Federation described as the single greatest
security threat to the Russian state by the Russian authorities some
time ago.”
For more than a decade, Chechen militants engaged
in terrorist acts: from blowing up airliners, bombing the Moscow metro,
seizing a theater in the Russian capital or a school in North Ossetia.
But analysts - including King - caution not to jump to conclusions
about the Boston bombings, allegedly carried out by Tamerlan and Dzhokar
Tsarnaev, two brothers who are ethnic Chechens and came to the United
States at least eight years ago.
“We don’t know much at this
point about the political motivation for their alleged action,” said
King. “We don’t know much about the way in which they might have become
radicalized - and I think probably at this point speculating about the
real Chechen angle on this would be kind of speculating about the
Scots-Irish angle on someone like Timothy McVeigh.”
King said
“We do not focus on the specific ethnic background of perpetrators - in
a way, there is a more frightening side of this - it is the domestic
American angle rather than the international one.”
Robert Legvold of Columbia University said there is no evidence of an international conspiracy.
“There are no reports that the older brother had gone off to some kind
of an exercise in Pakistan or places that some of these Americans have
gone to that have gotten involved with al-Qaida or related groups,” said
Legvold. “Certainly to assume that Chechnya or anybody else in Chechnya
has anything to do with these two, that seems to me to be completely
off base.”
Legvold cautioned about U.S. media reports about
the alleged bombers. “The majority of Americans don’t have a clue as to
what Chechnya is or where it is, or what this is all about,” said
Legvold. “So there are going to be some unfortunate associations done in
the public on the U.S. side. The media is already confused about this
kind of thing a bit.”
Experts said during these times of heightened tensions, cooler heads must prevail.
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