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Suspect brothers in Boston bombing had roots in volatile North Caucasus region

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: WASHINGTON -- With pressure-cooker bombs, indiscriminate casualties and a massive police manhunt that paralyzed a city, the Boston Marathon bombing and the ensuing search for ethnic Chechen suspects has given Americans a sense of North Caucasus-style violence.

But even though the prime-suspect brothers had early roots in the volatile region, there were only oblique indications Friday that their family ties in the troubled provinces of Chechnya and Dagestan in southwest Russia had any link to the motive behind Monday's terror attack in downtown Boston.

While authorities and counterterrorism experts were combing through Facebook pages, tweets and other public links to the two brothers -- Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 (killed early Friday), and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar, who was arrested Friday night after the massive manhunt -- their connections, if any, to North Caucasus or Islamic insurgencies were unclear.

What did seem clear Friday was that the Tsarnaev brothers had spent part of their boyhoods in the North Caucasus region (in the younger brother's case, just a few years) -- before moving to the former Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan and then gaining admission to this country, as refugees, about a decade ago. Both were legal residents, with the younger brother becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen last year.

Their parents, who were with them for years in the U.S., are living at the moment in Dagestan,  a troubled Russian province adjacent to Chechnya where there have been struggles between moderate Muslims and radical Islamists.

Is that perfectly clear? If not, you are hardly alone. It will likely take awhile for investigators to sort out the backgrounds, contacts and possible links of one or both of the Tsarnaev brothers with Chechnya, Dagestan, and insurgents in the North Caucasus region.

In the meantime, it helps to know a bit about the history of the region, which has been the site of ethnic, religious and political struggles with Russia for more than two centuries.

Chechens are an ethnic minority, most of whom live in Chechnya, in neighboring provinces in Russia's North Caucasus region (such as Dagestan) and in former Soviet states. Most Chechens are Muslim, and some have become radicalized in recent decades. After the Soviet Union broke apart two decades ago, Chechen separatists used violence to seek independence, leading to two (technically, civil) wars with Russia that devastated the country in the 1990s.

"The north Caucasus have been in conflict with Russia for centuries," said James V. Wertsch, an expert on identity questions in Russia and its former states who is vice chancellor for international affairs at Washington University in St. Louis. "The region is filled with people who are completely unrelated, historically and linguistically, from Russia."

Wertsch, an anthropologist who directs the university's McDonnell International Studies Academy, said in an interview that Chechnya "was the focus of horrendous bombing and killing during conflicts with Russia in the 1990s. It's now under the governance of a strongman whose father had been killed by rebels. He rules with an iron fist.

"It's a region with a lot of poverty and many radical networks. It is fairly quiet now compared to what it was like during the worst of the conflicts. But every week, there are police or others killed by rebel attacks in the region, which remain troubled. They do enlist some radical fighters."

While the conflicts between Russia and the North Caucasus states started out as mainly separatist, nationalistic movements, the Chechnya conflict that began in 1994 eventually was led by Islamic insurgents. When that first conflict ended, Russian troops temporarily withdrew in 1996, but then returned three years later in retaliation for several apartment-building explosions -- in Moscow and other Russian cities -- that Russians blamed on Chechen terrorists.

In the following years, rebels from Chechnya and other North Caucasus provinces carried out several terror attacks in Russia, including a wrenching hostage-taking raid at a Moscow theater in 2002 that led to the death of 129 hostages. In 2004, more than 330 children and adults died after Russian forces stormed a terrorist-occupied school in the southern Russian city of Beslan.

Chechen warlord Doku Umarov -- who claimed responsibility for the 2010 suicide bombings on Moscow's subway that killed 40 people and a train bombing in 2009 that killed 26 -- has been added to the U.S. terrorism list. However, this country has urged Russian leaders and Chechen separatists who are not aligned with al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations to discuss a possible political settlement.

Even though the Chechnya violence has begun to cool off as a result of the iron-fist rule of the Moscow-backed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, the Islamic-influenced insurgency movement has spread to Dagestan (where the brothers' parents are now) and other nearby provinces. Dagestan, bordered by Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, has emerged as a center of violence in recent years, with police and other authorities often attacked by rebels.

"In places like Dagestan there is a struggle going on between radical and moderate forces," Wertsch told the Beacon. "It's important to realize that there are indeed moderate forces trying to create a viable life there."

In the last couple of years, the rebels' violence has been focused within Dagestan and Chechnya rather than on potential terrorist targets in Russia and elsewhere. The Kremlin contends that rebels in Chechnya had close links with al-Qaida, noting that some Chechen militants fought with insurgent forces in Afghanistan.

"There are connections," between some Chechen insurgents and Islamic radicals, observed Wertsch. "Chechens have been found, sometimes after having been killed, in Afghanistan, for example. So there is a kind of network. But there are also lots of people in the region who are trying to find ways to create a peaceful, more secular life."

The father of the two Boston-bombing suspects, Anzor Tsarnaev, is temporarily living in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. He told the Associated Press and other news outlets on Friday that he believes his sons are innocent of the bombing and were "framed" by U.S. authorities seeking someone to blame for the bombing.

Both the father and mother contended in interviews with news organizations that their sons had never been affiliated with Islamic radicals, although the mother said the older son (Tamerlan) had become more interested in the political aspects of Islam a few years ago. They said the boys had been grateful to the U.S. for accepting family members as refugees in 2002.

While friends and relatives of the brothers said they knew of no contact they might have had with terrorist groups, some investigators said there appeared to be references to Islamic groups on social media sites tentatively linked to one or both of them.

Most of the speculation about possible Islamist ties has focused on the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Government officials told the Associated Press that he had traveled to Russia last year and returned to this country six months later. Authorities are trying to determine what he did during those months.

According to another report, an FBI agent -- possibly at the request of Russian officials -- interviewed Tamarlan Tsarnaev a couple of years ago about possible extremist links, but found no immediate evidence of such ties.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin condemned the Boston bombing Friday as a "disgusting" act and offered to help U.S. authorities in any way he could. If there is any link to North Caucasus insurgent groups, the Russians can offer extensive databases on Chechen rebels and related groups.

The Kremlin-backed Chechen strongman, Kadyrov, issued a social-media statement Friday saying that any effort to link the Tsarnaev brothers to Chechnya "will be in vain. They grew up in the United States; their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. It is necessary to see the roots of this evil in America."

U.S. authorities said that the elder Tsarnaev brother did not enter this country until he was about 20 years old. The younger brother, arrested late Friday, had arrived in the United States at age 8, officials said.

Clearly, there was some information-sharing behind the scenes among U.S. and Russian law enforcement and counterterror experts this week. In fact, the White House said Obama talked Friday with Putin, who “expressed his condolences on behalf of the Russian people for the tragic loss of life in Boston.“

Obama thanked Putin for “the close cooperation that the United States has received from Russia on counter-terrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack,” the White House said.

The two leaders “agreed to continue our cooperation on counter-terrorism and security issues going forward.” 

In a statement late Friday at the White House, Obama described the Boston bombing suspects as terrorists and acknowledged that many unanswered questions remain about their motivations. “The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers,” the president said.

Even so, Obama cautioned Americans against rushing to judgment before investigations into their motives and contacts are completed.

“When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it's important that we do this right,” the president said. “That's why we take care not to rush to judgment — not about the motivations of these individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people.”

Rob Koenig is an award-winning journalist and author. He worked at the STL Beacon until 2013.