The "Chechen trail" in Boston attack and relations with Russia
Moscow (AsiaNews) - What started as a tale of American bloodshed and bombs, the Boston Marathon bombing has suddenly become a "Russian story ". American police have identified the siblings of Chechen origin Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev (26 and 19 years old) as the two main suspects for the double explosion on 16 April killed three people, including a child of eight.
Today newspapers headlines read "A terror known to us" or "Chechen lead in marathon bombing". These words bring the country back to the 2011 "Caucasian style" Domodedovo airport attack in the heart of Moscow, that cost the lives of many. But a series of comments on websites and radio also wonder about the concept of national belonging, of identity, given that the two boys had only briefly visited and never lived in Chechnya and the Kremlin's war against separatist forces (1994 - 2007).
Tamerlan and his
younger brother Dzhokar, captured on April 20, (a young man whose ambitions
were "money and a career," as
he himself stated on social networks) seem more children of a lack of
integration and tormented search
for identity, than of jihad and Chechen independence.
If
the "Russian trail" is confirmed it would be the first Chechens attack
on the West, noted the Guardian. But
it would also be the first time to involve "impure" Chechens, who had
grown up and been educated abroad. For
ten years the Tsarnaev brothers lived in the U.S., one perhaps was already an
American citizen. Grandchildren
of grandparents who were deported to Central Asia by Stalin and children of
parents fleeing the civil war between Grozny and Moscow, they wandered with their
family through Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Dagestan. With a brief stay in Turkey. The
Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov, immediately distanced his nation from them
"they have nothing to do with us, they haven't lived here for years. Ask the
people who educated them." That
is America. Nationalists,
but also moderate commentators raised the "identity questions." "Does
a Russian passport mean you are Russians? Is a page on Vkontakte (the Cyrillic Facebook)
enough to be considered Russian? Or speak the language?".
Tamerlan, a martial arts enthusiast who had trained for the Olympics, argued that rather than compete for the team of his country of origin he would take American citizenship. At the same time, however, he also declared that he "did not have a single American friend." "I do not understand them," he said. He posted as much on Youtube touting the Islamic war and was close to fundamentalist environments.
The journalist
expert in the former USSR, Anne Applebaum noted in the Washington Post that the
two "are not the terrorists of September 11, or those of the Columbine
school massacre, but more like the bombers on the London or trains in Spain ". "They
could be Pakistanis who live in Coventry or Algerians who live in Paris." "Educated
and raised in Europe - writes Applebaum - these young men in Europe still feel
out of place. Unable to integrate, some return to a semi-mythological and
little-known homeland in search of a more defined and proud identity. Often they
do it with the help of radical preachers as happened to one of Tsarnaevs. "
Despite
a lot of evidence tending to show a plan hatched by themselves and at an "unprofessional"
the level, it remains to be seen whether there are other accomplices and if links
to Islamic groups, and to a larger network, cannot be excluded.
.png)
