Chechnya, the Russian republic whose struggle against Russia inspired the two brothers suspected of the Boston Marathon bombings, has been the center of violent separatist uprising and bloody bomb-related killings for decades.
But “mainstream Chechnyan mujahedin have not traditionally been a direct threat to the United States,” said Evan Kohlmann, senior partner of Flashpoint Global Partners, a New York-based international security consulting firm. Several other organizations do recruit Chechen fighters, however, he said.
He said the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and one of its splinter groups, the Islamic Jihad Union, both have recruited Chechen, Turks and other non-Arab Muslims to fight with them against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. According to Kohlmann, both of these groups are based in the Waziristan tribal area of Pakistan, “and these groups can be just as radical as anything al-Qaeda puts out.”
They have a strong animus against the United States,” Kohlmann said.
But he cautioned against making any assumption at this point that the bombing suspects were recruited and/or trained by foreign terror organizations.
“What happened (in Boston) is within the capability of two relatively sophisticated, homegrown individuals,” Kohlmann said. “These two people seem to have come out of nowhere.”
David Schanzer, a terrorism expert at Duke University, said the attack appeared to be “homegrown” and that the suspects appear unsophisticated and without ties to or training from international terrorist groups.
“The fact that they needed to rob an ATM to get money (suggests) they didn’t get large amount of outside funding. They had no escape plan to leave the country,” Schanzer said. “These are hallmarks of people who are not particularly sophisticated. I don’t see this as a highly planned plot. They seemed to be making this up as they go along.”
Several links have been identified between Chechen guerrillas and al-Qaeda, according to an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Despite the two suspects’ apparent affinity for the Chechen cause, anti-separatist Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said there was no link between his country and Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two brothers suspected of the Boston bombings.
“We don’t know the Tsarnaevs, they did not live in Chechnya. They lived and studied in America,” Kadyrov said Friday. “It has become habitual, everything that is happening in the world is connected to Chechens. Blame the Chechens.”
Kohlmann sent a post on his Twitter feed Friday that the official arm of the Chechen mujahedin has denied any connection between them and the Boston suspects.
Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., the uncle of the two brothers, said the family was ethnic Chechen.
Shortly after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Chechnya declared independence from Russia, a move that eventually led to war from 1994-1996 when tens of thousands died and Russian regained control of the republic.
Chechen militants have committed sporadic large-scale attacks in Russia since the 1990s. In March 2010, Chechen terrorists claimed responsibility for bombings on the Moscow subway system that killed more than 40 people. In June 2010, the State Department added Chechen rebel Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the March subway attack, to its terrorist list and froze his assets.
A 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service said in 2007 Russian security forces ran 850 sweeps through Chechnya that involved surrounding entire villages and searching every house. “Critics of the operations allege that the troops frequently engage in pillaging and gratuitous violence and are responsible for kidnappings for ransom and ‘disappearances’ of civilians,’ ” the report said.
