Chechen Terrorism and the Vindication of Vladimir Putin. By Jacob Heilbrunn. The National Interest, April 19, 2013.
How Vladimir Putin Could Help Boston. By Fred Kaplan. Slate, April 19, 2013.
Russia, US may face a shared threat. By Simon Saradzhyan. Boston Globe, April 20, 2013. Also find it here.
Jihad in Russia: the Caucasus Emirate. IISS, December 2012.
Investigators explore possible link between Boston bombing suspect and extremist group. By Catherine Herridge. FoxNews.com, April 20, 2013.
Northern Caucasus is an epicenter of Islamism. Interview with Uwe Halbach. Deutsche Welle, April 20, 2013.
Chechnya Casts a Long Shadow Over the Boston Marathon Bombings. By Cerwyn Moore. The Telegraph, April 20, 2013.
Chechnya and the Bombs in Boston. The Economist, April 20, 2013.
War-torn Caucasus may be at root of the brothers’ rage. By Dan Peleschuk. USA Today, April 20, 2013.
The Boston Bombing Suspects Were Reared by Both Chechnya and America. By Julia Ioffe. The New Republic, April 19, 2013.
Chechnya’s centuries-long bloody strife goes global. By Stephen Kinzer. The Guardian, April 19, 2013.
Chechens: Legendary tough guys. By Laura Miller. Salon, April 20, 2013.
Chechen war expert: “This is a big deal.” By Christopher Swift. Foreign Policy, April 19, 2013.
Boston Attacks Turn Spotlight on Troubled Region of Chechnya. By Peter Baker and C.J. Chivers. New York Times, April 21, 2013.
Russians, Chechens Worry About Boston Fallout. By Leonid Bershidsky. Bloomberg, April 19, 2013.
The Roots of Chechen Rage. By Oliver Bullough. Foreign Policy, April 21, 2013.
The Chechen Connection. By Anne Applebaum. Slate, April 19, 2013. Also at the Washington Post.
Applebaum:
One or
both of the brothers might well have been in touch with Chechen separatists,
whose websites they were reportedly reading. They could even have been in touch
with al-Qaida. But I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. Chechen terrorists have
in the past been more anti-Russian than pro-Islam. They were never
anti-American.
Look,
instead, at another possibility—one that is in some ways more disturbing than
the convenient “foreigners who hate us” explanation. Although very little has
been confirmed, the behavior of the Tsarnaev brothers looks less like that of
hardened, trained terrorists and far more closely resembles the
second-generation European Muslims who have staged bombings in Madrid, London,
and other European cities. Educated and brought up in Europe, these young men
nevertheless felt out of place in Europe. Unable to integrate, some turned
toward a half-remembered, half-mythological homeland in search of a firmer,
fiercer identity. Often they did so with the help of a radical cleric like the
one the Tsarnaev brothers may have known. “I do not have a single American friend,”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev reportedly said of himself. That’s the kind of statement that
might have been made by a young Pakistani living in Coventry or a young
Algerian living in Paris.
We don’t
expect to hear it from someone who grew up in Boston, a city that has taught
generations of foreigners to become Americans in a country that likes to think
of itself as a melting pot. But now it might be time to change our
expectations. These terrorists are a lot less like the 9/11 attackers and a lot
more like the men known as the Tube bombers of London or the train bombers of
Spain. Our response is going to have to be different—very different—as well.
