What should Obama do about Chechen sleeper cells?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Boston suspect's web page venerates Islam, Chechen independence

(Reuters) - Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev posted links to Islamic websites and others calling for Chechen independence on what appears to be his page on a Russian language social networking site.

Abusive comments in Russian and English were flooding onto Tsarnaev's page on VK, a Russian-language social media site, on Friday after he was identified as a suspect in the bombing of the Boston marathon.

Police launched a massive manhunt for Tsarnaev, 19, after killing his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a shootout overnight.

On the site, the younger Tsarnaev identifies himself as a 2011 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It says he went to primary school in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, a province in Russia that borders Chechnya, and lists his languages as English, Russian and Chechen.

His "World view" is listed as "Islam" and his "Personal priority" is "career and money".

He has posted links to videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war and to Islamic web pages with titles like "Salamworld, my religion is Islam" and "There is no God but Allah, let that ring out in our hearts".

He also has links to pages calling for independence for Chechnya, a region of Russia that lost its bid for secession after two wars in the 1990s.

The page also reveals a sense of humor, around his identity as a member of a minority from southern Russia's restive Caucasus, which includes Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and other predominately Muslim regions that have seen two decades of unrest since the fall of the Soviet Union.

A video labeled "tormenting my brother" shows a man resembling his dead brother Tamerlan laughing and imitating the accents of different Caucasian ethnic groups.

He has posted his own joke: "A car goes by with a Chechen, a Dagestani and an Ingush inside. Question: who is driving?"

The answer: the police.

Elsewhere on the Internet, a photo essay entitled "Will box for passport" shows the older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev practicing boxing at a gym. The captions identify him as a Chechen heavyweight boxer, in the United States for five years.

"I don't have a single American friend," one caption quotes him as saying. "I don't understand them."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/19/us-usa-explosions-suspect-site-idUSBRE93I0JL20130419

Edited April 19, 2013 by The Patriot

[Sarah Elle-Même 660]

Do we know that they are affiliated with the Chechen militants/separatists? Or is this still just speculation?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Do we know that they are affiliated with the Chechen militants/separatists? Or is this still just speculation?

Since when does that matter?

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Pure speculation on the part of the OP.

[GandD 5,966]

Options 1-4 are the same person.

Well option 3 is a little less of the same person,.

Edited April 19, 2013 by GandD

[SMR 368]

In response to the original question, the best option is to outlaw guns and pressure cookers. Also nails, ball bearings, cars, circuit boards, and cell phones. I can't believe how easy it is to get your hands on those types of dangerous things.

[Sarah Elle-Même 660]

These guys could have done what they did for a million reasons, but being part of the Chechen nationalist insurgency doesn't fit well. Their beef is mainly with Russia, land of my parents. So I do know a thing or two. There's no evidence there are "Chechen sleeper cells" in the US.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

In response to the original question, the best option is to outlaw guns and pressure cookers. Also nails, ball bearings, cars, circuit boards, and cell phones. I can't believe how easy it is to get your hands on those types of dangerous things.

You forgot remote control toys.

Edited April 19, 2013 by The Patriot

[Sarah Elle-Même 660]

In response to the original question, the best option is to outlaw guns and pressure cookers. Also nails, ball bearings, cars, circuit boards, and cell phones. I can't believe how easy it is to get your hands on those types of dangerous things.

[JohnR! 5,495]

Since when does that matter?

I hope they get this one alive... I would be interested in learning who/what is behind the entire kerfuffle....

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

From Boston to Chechnya to Moscow: the chain of terror that unites US and Russia

The United States may have become a target for Chechen terrorists in the wake of the harrowing Beslan school hostage crisis nearly 10 years ago, an expert explained today.

The world watched in horror in 2004 as armed Islamic separatist militants, some Chechen, occupied a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, and killed more than 380 people.

Security expert Simon Bennett said the tragedy bridged a gap between the US and Russia by establishing a mutual threat - fundamental Islamic terrorism.

Dr Bennett, director of the Civil Safety and Security Unit at the University of Leicester, said: “One of the few things in the past five or 10 years that has brought the Russians and the US closer together is the perceived threat from Islamic terrorism.”

He explained that in the wake of the Beslan crisis there would have been close collaboration between the Russians and the West through agencies such as the CIA.

Dr Bennett went on: “The Chechnyans and fundamentalists would have been aware of the bridging of the gap between Russia and the US.

“If Chechnya want an easy target, why not fly to the US on a temporary visa and attack a prestige event.

“If those two guys had carried out that attack in Moscow, the repercussions would have been severe because the Russian state under (president Vladimir) Putin is not reluctant to go in hard. They would know that wouldn't happen in America.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/from-boston-to-chechnya-to-moscow-the-chain-of-terror-that-unites-us-and-russia-8580538.html

The blow-back is already beginning.

[mota bhai 2,675]

lol@kerfuffle

[BaBamSam 239]

The blow-back is already beginning.

The thing about that article is that American media had not referred to Chechen attackers as "terrorists" through these events, but referred to them as "rebel fighters", "guerrillas", "insurgents", etc. Now that the attacks could've potentially (not sure if it was Chechen agenda yet) happened here, we're quick to label them "terrorists" and the events terrorism. Bit hypocritical, as usual.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Chechnya and the Boston bombing: link, if established, would be unprecedented

If it is established that the bombs in Boston were planted by Chechens, it would mark an unprecedented development: the first time militants from the former Soviet republic have carried out a deadly attack outside Russia.

In their long, violent struggle against the Kremlin, Chechen radicals have hit soft targets before. In 2010, two female suicide bombers from Dagestan blew up the Moscow metro, killing at least 40 people and injuring 100. A year later, another suicide bomber struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport; he killed 37 and wounded 180. There have been murderous attacks including one on a school in Beslan in 2004, where 334 hostages died, most of them children.

But the bombing of the Boston Marathon, which police suspect was perpetrated by two Chechen brothers, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are something altogether new. It is so far unclear how significant is the trail that appears to lead from the mountains of the North Caucasus – the scene of a simmering ongoing insurgency – to the boulevards and suburban houses of North America.

After 18 years, two wars, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives the conflict in Chechnya and Russia's southern backyard more generally has changed. From 1994 to 1996, Boris Yeltsin fought a war against mainly secular Chechen separatists who wanted – like other ethnic republics after the collapse of the USSR – their own nationalist and constitutional state. In the period 1999-2004, Vladimir Putin – Yeltsin's steely successor – fought a second Chechen war. The aim was to definitively crush Chechen separatism.

In recent years, however, the Kremlin and its regional proxies have been battling a different kind of enemy. This new generation of insurgents has an explicitly Islamist goal: to create a radical pan-Caucasian emirate ruled by Islamic law, a sort of Afghanistan under the Taliban. The movement's leader, Doku Umarov, unveiled this ambitious vision in 2007. He vowed to liberate not only Russia's Muslim North Caucasus but a large chunk of European Russia.

Umarov also suggested that devout Muslims should think internationally. His comments, later softened, said: "Today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Palestine our brothers are fighting. Everyone who attacks Muslims wherever they are, are our enemies, common enemies. Our enemy is not Russia only, but everyone who wages war against Islam and Muslims."

This call to global jihad may perhaps offer a motive for an attack inside the US. The new generation of twentysomething rebels is also exploiting a powerful new weapon: the internet. The main Chechen rebel website, kavkazcenter.com, posts reports from the jihadi movement worldwide: from Syria, where Chechen diaspora fighters are battling government forces in Aleppo, from Pakistan, and from Turkey.

Over in the North Caucausus, meanwhile, the Kremlin is carrying out a brutal and rolling counter-insurgency campaign. Its focus is Dagestan, the neighbouring state to Chechnya, and now a hotbed of violent jihadist rebellion. Three weeks ago, Umarov appealed to Chechen fighters abroad to come home to take part in the fight.

Cerwyn Moore, an expert on the insurgency in southern Russia at Birmingham University, said he was surprised it may have spilled over into the US. "It's a marked change. It seems very odd. There have never been attacks like this outside Russia." He added: "You have a group of people who have lived outside Chechnya because of the second Chechen war. This is also an inter-generational thing."

Odd or not, the Boston bombings play perfectly into the Kremlin's hands, ahead of Russia's 2014 Winter Olympics, to be hosted in Sochi, not far from where the current insurgency is raging. It reinforces Putin's claim – first made in 1999 – that his violent methods are justified to quell a ruthless rebellion by terrorists prepared to take innocent lives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/19/boston-bombing-link-chechnya-unprecedented

[JohnR! 5,495]

The blow-back is already beginning.

I love these op-eds... They read like a Jackie Collins novel...