Great! So Now We Have to Worry About Chechen Terrorists?

As the images of the two Boston bombing suspects appeared on MSNBC last night, I freeze –framed one on the DVR so my wife and sister-in-law Krimhilde could see it. It was the one of the younger perp with reversed white baseball cap and showed him in profile. I told my wife and sister-in-law to look closely at the profile and the aquiline nose, facial contours then remarked: “This guy is not American, at least not native –born!”

I suggested he probably came from one of the southern breakaway, former Soviet Republics, maybe either Kyrgyzstan, or possibly Chechnya. But, in any case, the guy’s white face was too foreign -looking to be a born n’ bred Yankee. My wife found this an incredible observation and resisted that conclusion.

This morning, on turning on MSNBC I learned the perps IDs were confirmed: Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechens who had moved to the U.S. in 2002. The older (26) Tamerlan was killed after a shootout in Cambridge this a.m. and he’d apparently been run over by the younger punk trying to make a getaway in a Mercedes.

Thanks to the FBI finally releasing images of the suspects, as I’d advised in my blog post from night before last, the two bombers were exposed. Last night – realizing they were made- the brothers went ape shit, killing an MIT campus policeman then holding up a seven –eleven. Now the younger –as I write this – is still on the loose.


What happened to make these two ingrates- given U.S. residency after fleeing their homeland (with  the younger awarded a scholarship while in a Cambridge high school) - snap? One can only surmise, but given their Chechen background  (at least of their parents) maybe they believed the U.S. was somehow involved in the Chechen bloodshed.

To give some background: the conflict in Chechnya began in 1994 as a separatist war, but quickly morphed into an Islamic insurgency dedicated to carving out an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus. 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.

Chechnya has stabilized under the steely grip of Kremlin-backed local strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel whose forces have been accused of massive rights abuses. But the Islamic insurgency has spread to neighboring provinces, with Dagestan, sandwiched between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea.
Militants from Chechnya and neighboring provinces have carried out a long series of terror attacks in Russia, including a 2002 hostage-taking raid in a Moscow theater, in which 129 hostages died, a 2004 hostage-taking in a school in the southern city of Beslan that killed more than 330 people, and numerous bombings in Moscow and other cities.


The Obama administration placed Chechen warlord Doku Umarov on  list of terrorist leaders after he claimed responsibility for March 2010 double suicide bombings on Moscow's subway that killed 40 and a November 2009 train bombing that claimed 26 lives.  In recent years, however, militants in Chechnya, Dagestan and other neighboring provinces have largely refrained from attacks outside the Caucasus.

But who knows? Maybe Monday's Boston Marathon mayhem is the first manifestation that the Chechen separatist terror has come to U.S. shores. We don’t know unless the pair’s background is scoured and connections to Chechen radicals is confirmed. Also, whether in fact they were operating alone or under instructions from Chechen warlord Doku Umarov.


On the other hand,  their uncle (Ruslan Tsarni) who lives in Maryland came out to meet the press (NBC) this morning and rejected any implication that there were any Chechen connections at all, portraying the two nephews merely as "losers" who were unable to adapt and assimilate into American life.  See, e.g.  http://www.salon.com/2013/04/19/tsarnaevs_uncle_experiences_an_immigrant%e2%80%99s_shame/


 Even as he said that, however, the rumblings of there being a third suspect manifested - though the authorities have finally laid that one to rest.

I admit then that my conjecture of a domestic, Right wing  anti-government terrorist was wrong, though I did get the race correct.   (Mikey the Maggot demands I  "apologize" for de facto  insulting all racist, Right wing anti-gov't  white 'Murican loons like him. But I will do that when he apologizes for being wrong on: biblical inerrancy, biblical literalist interpretation, Evolution, the Big Bang, and putting up hateful, bigoted detritus on the graffiti board he calls a blog.)

As for any "Islamic" connections,  we don't know that yet. In any case, even if some link to al-Qaida or other radical Islamist terrorist organizations (i.e. in Chechnya)  is found, it would not be advisable for the U.S. to go in and bomb the Chechens! The Russkies and Mr. Putin would not take kindly to it, any more than we would if Russians bombed southern Mississippi after a pro-Confederate sympathizer from Biloxi was found to have tried to bomb Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence.

So the moral is:

Let the Russians take care of any Chechen Islamic or other terrorist problems themselves. We’ve already shelled out more than we can afford on our own wars on terror without starting another!

If the remaining perp is merely  a "loser" as his uncle proclaims, try to capture him and bring him to trial. Otherwise, get him dead or alive.

Questions remain: If the younger one is captured alive, and found to have actual radical Chechen connections, will he be dispatched to Guantanamo to await trial?

How about waterboarding? Is that planned in order to learn if he knows if any other Chechen cells are operating?

Inquiring minds want to know!