Chechnya has seen decades of war, terror

MAKHACHKALA, Russia — The two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings have their ethnic roots in Chechnya, a part of the Caucasus Mountains that has spawned decades of violence — from separatist wars to suicide attacks, blood feuds and hostage sieges.

Authorities have not linked Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to any insurgent groups, and the Kremlin-backed strongman who now leads Chechnya says the brothers got their inspiration in the U.S., not the troubled region in southern Russia.

“They weren’t living here. They were living, studying and growing up in America,” Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said in an interview on Russian television. “They have been educated there, not here.”

The families of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a gun battle with police in Massachusetts overnight, and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, left Chechnya long ago and moved to Central Asia, according to the Chechen government.

Before arriving in the United States a decade ago, the brothers lived briefly in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, a neighboring, violence-wracked Russian province where their father resides.

The conflict in Chechnya began in 1994 as a separatist war, but became an Islamic insurgency dedicated to forming an Islamic state in the Caucasus. Dagestan has since become the epicenter of the insurgency.

Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after the first Chechen war, leaving it de-facto independent and largely lawless, but then rolled back three years later following apartment building explosions in Moscow and other cities blamed on the rebels.

Kadyrov has Moscow’s carte blanche to stabilize Chechnya with his feared security services, which are accused of killings, torture and other rampant human rights abuses.

The Tsarnaev brothers lived in the region only briefly as children, but appeared to have maintained a strong Chechen identity. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s first name is the same as Chechnya’s first separatist president, who was killed in a Russian airstrike.

The suspects’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., urged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to turn himself in, saying: “He put a shame on our family, the Tsarnaev family. He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity.”

In the interview on Russian TV, Kadyrov offered his condolences to the Boston Marathon victims, but placed the blame squarely on the United States.

He added on Instagram that “the roots of this evil are to be found in America,” but offered no explanation. He also criticized U.S. authorities for failing to capture the older brother alive.

Russia has relied on Kadyrov, a ruthless former rebel, to bring a degree of stability to Chechnya in recent years. But the Islamic insurgency has spread to neighboring provinces, with Dagestan — sandwiched between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea — now seeing the worst of the violence. Militants launch daily attacks against police and other authorities.

Militants from Chechnya and neighboring provinces have carried out a series of terrorist attacks in Russia, including a 2002 raid on a Moscow theater, in which 129 hostages died, most of them from the effects of narcotics gas that Russian special forces pumped into the building to incapacitate the attackers.

In 2004, militants from Chechnya took more than 1,000 people hostage at a school in Beslan, and the siege ended when gunfire erupted after explosions tore through the gym. More than half of the 330 people who died were children. There also have been numerous bombings in Moscow and other cities.

The Obama administration placed Chechen warlord Doku Umarov on a list of terrorist leaders after he claimed responsibility for 2010 suicide bombings on Moscow’s subway that killed 40 people and a 2009 train bombing that claimed 26 lives.

Russia faced strong international criticism for its indiscriminate use of force against civilians and other rights abuses in Chechnya. The two separatist wars killed an estimated 100,000 people, and Russian bombing reduced most of Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, and many other towns and villages to rubble, sending tens of thousands fleeing.

The federal forces suffered heavy casualties in the hands of lightly armed rebels, who relied on their centuries-old warrior culture and knowledge of rugged terrain to offset the Russian edge in firepower. The Chechens’ successes were reminiscent of their exploits in 19th-century battles against a czarist army that spent decades trying to conquer the Caucasus.

In recent years, militants in Chechnya, Dagestan and neighboring provinces have largely refrained from attacks outside the Caucasus.

Russian officials and experts have claimed that rebels in Chechnya had close links with al-Qaida. They say dozens of fighters from Arab countries trickled into Chechnya during the fighting there, while some Chechen militants have fought in Afghanistan.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Friday that the Russian leader had long warned the West about the dangers posed by the Chechen rebels.

“Back at the time when we had a war raging in the Caucasus, Putin repeatedly said that the terrorists shouldn’t be divided into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs,’ they mustn’t be played with, differentiated into categories,” Peskov said, according to Russian news agencies. It was an apparent reference to Western reluctance in the past to agree to the Kremlin branding rebels in Chechnya as terrorists.

The U.S. has long urged Russia’s government and separatist elements in Chechnya not aligned with al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations to seek a political settlement.

Washington provided aid to the area during the high points of fighting in the 1990s and in the early 2000s, and has demanded human rights accountability. But the U.S. always backed the territorial integrity of Russia, never endorsing the separatists’ desire for an independent state. And it has supported Russia’s right to root out terrorism in the region.

Dozens of Chechens have trained in Pakistan’s northwest frontier of Waziristan, but most have returned to Russia to fight.

Recently, however, the al-Qaida inspired group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has made strides at recruiting European fighters for attacks against the West, according to Noman Benotman, a former jihadist fighter who now works for the London-based Quillium Foundation.

The TTP, which has supported attacks in response to U.S. drone strikes, was linked to the failed 2010 attack in New York City’s Times Square.

In recent years, people from Chechnya have faced charges in several European countries.

In 2011, a Danish court sentenced a Chechen-born man to 12 years in prison for preparing a letter bomb that exploded as he was assembling it in a Copenhagen hotel.

Last month, Spain’s Interior Ministry said French and Spanish police arrested three suspected Islamic extremists in an operation in and around Paris. A statement said the suspected activists were of Chechen origin and believed linked to a terror cell dismantled in August in southern Spain.

That same month, a Turk and two Russians of Chechen descent were arrested and jailed in Spain on charges of belonging to an unidentified terror organization and possession of explosives. They have since been released while investigations continue.

The U.S. security think tank Stratfor said Friday that if the Tsarnaev brothers had any link to al-Qaida, or one of its franchise groups, it would “likely be ideological rather than operational, although it is possible that the two have attended some type of basic militant training abroad.”

Stratfor added that the Boston bombings highlighted the fact that “the jihadist threat now predominantly stems from grassroots operatives who live in the West rather than teams of highly trained operatives sent to the United States from overseas, like the team that executed the 9/11 attacks.”

“There will always be plenty of soft targets in a free society, and it is incredibly easy to kill people, even for untrained operatives,” it said.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

A firefighter stands in silence before a panel bearing the names of L. John Regelbrugge and Kris Regelbrugge during the ten-year remembrance of the Oso landslide on Friday, March 22, 2024, at the Oso Landslide Memorial in Oso, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘Flood of emotions’ as Oso Landslide Memorial opens on 10th anniversary

Friends, family and first responders held a moment of silence at 10:37 a.m. at the new 2-acre memorial off Highway 530.

Julie Petersen poses for a photo with images of her sister Christina Jefferds and Jefferds’ grand daughter Sanoah Violet Huestis next to a memorial for Sanoah at her home on March 20, 2024 in Arlington, Washington. Peterson wears her sister’s favorite color and one of her bangles. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
‘It just all came down’: An oral history of the Oso mudslide

Ten years later, The Daily Herald spoke with dozens of people — first responders, family, survivors — touched by the deadliest slide in U.S. history.

Victims of the Oso mudslide on March 22, 2014. (Courtesy photos)
Remembering the 43 lives lost in the Oso mudslide

The slide wiped out a neighborhood along Highway 530 in 2014. “Even though you feel like you’re alone in your grief, you’re really not.”

Director Lucia Schmit, right, and Deputy Director Dara Salmon inside the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
How Oso slide changed local emergency response ‘on virtually every level’

“In a decade, we have just really, really advanced,” through hard-earned lessons applied to the pandemic, floods and opioids.

Ron and Gail Thompson at their home on Monday, March 4, 2024 in Oso, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
In shadow of scarred Oso hillside, mudslide’s wounds still feel fresh

Locals reflected on living with grief and finding meaning in the wake of a catastrophe “nothing like you can ever imagine” in 2014.

The view of Mountain Loop Mine out the window of a second floor classroom at Fairmount Elementary on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
County: Everett mining yard violated order halting work next to school

At least 10 reports accused OMA Construction of violating a stop-work order next to Fairmount Elementary. A judge will hear the case.

Imagine Children's Museum's incoming CEO, Elizabeth "Elee" Wood. (Photo provided by Imagine Children's Museum)
Imagine Children’s Museum in Everett will welcome new CEO in June

Nancy Johnson, who has led Imagine Children’s Museum in Everett for 25 years, will retire in June.

Kelli Littlejohn, who was 11 when her older sister Melissa Lee was murdered, speaks to a group of investigators and deputies to thank them for bringing closure to her family after over 30 years on Thursday, March 28, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘She can rest in peace’: Jury convicts Bothell man in 1993 killing

Even after police arrested Alan Dean in 2020, it was unclear if he would stand trial. He was convicted Thursday in the murder of Melissa Lee, 15.

Ariel Garcia, 4, was last seen Wednesday morning in an apartment in the 4800 block of Vesper Dr. (Photo provided by Everett Police)
Everett police searching for missing child, 4

Ariel Garcia was last seen Wednesday at an apartment in the 4800 block of Vesper Drive. The child was missing under “suspicious circumstances.”

The rezoned property, seen here from the Hillside Vista luxury development, is surrounded on two sides by modern neighborhoods Monday, March 25, 2024, in Lake Stevens, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Despite petition, Lake Stevens OKs rezone for new 96-home development

The change faced resistance from some residents, who worried about the effects of more density in the neighborhood.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, left, introduces Xichitl Torres Small, center, Undersecretary for Rural Development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture during a talk at Thomas Family Farms on Monday, April 3, 2023, in Snohomish, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Under new federal program, Washingtonians can file taxes for free

At a press conference Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene called the Direct File program safe, easy and secure.

Former Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy Jeremie Zeller appears in court for sentencing on multiple counts of misdemeanor theft Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Ex-sheriff’s deputy sentenced to 1 week of jail time for hardware theft

Jeremie Zeller, 47, stole merchandise from Home Depot in south Everett, where he worked overtime as a security guard.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.