If there was ever a case of cloak and dagger, this was it: Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent working for MI6, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin with a close connection to a renegade oligarch—Russia’s “Gray Cardinal” , now also dead under mysterious circumstances—poisoned by a rare nuclear isotope on British soil by his business partner and former FSB colleagues. It was a moment when the Cold War spilled over the edge of its new order container. Richard Howell, the lawyer representing London police,��called it a “.”

Now, a British judge has ruled in a public inquiry that the two men charged with the murder by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2007—Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun—were responsible for carrying out the assassination.  concluded that: “Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me, I find that the FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev [then head of FSB] and also by President Putin.”

Russian officialdom has never been one for nuance and the word “probably” got a predictable treatment. , assuming a rather distasteful tone on behalf of the Russian Foreign Ministry, called the inquiry “a logical conclusion of a pseudo-process” with a criminal intent to “blacken Russia, its official representatives and administration.” Calling one of the most extensive investigations in Britain’s history a “theater of shadows,” she concluded that Agatha Christie had nothing on this story. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, dismissed the conclusions as “elegant British humor” and said that terms such as “probably” are not admitted in Russian law.

However, what this verdict means is that the judge found with over 51% probability that the circumstantial evidence of Russian state involvement is plausible. Had this conclusion been reached in a criminal court, Litvinenko’s widow would have won the case.

Remember Trotsky

“!” was allegedly one of the threats Litvinenko received. If his murder was indeed a warning to other “traitors,” it inadvertently brought the message across with maximum impact. Inadvertently, because in choosing a little-known radioactive substance—polonium 210—the intention was to conceal, not shock and awe.

Yet it is precisely the “secret weapon” that provided the most compelling evidence in the inquiry. Judging by the sloppy nature with which Lugovoy and Kovtun handled the substance, they were unaware of the nature of the poison. They left a radioactive trail all over London: the flights they took; the hotels they stayed in on two separate occasions; the couch of Boris Berezovsky’s office on which Lugovoy sat; Kovtun’s ex-wife’s car and apartment in Germany; and, most damning of all, the highest levels of primary contamination found in the drain of the sink in Kovtun’s room at the Millennium Hotel—he appears to have simply poured the nuclear substance down the drain.

Had they picked a simpler poison, it would have been much harder to connect the two men with the murder. The polonium trail, however, makes for incontrovertible forensic evidence that led Judge Owen to conclude that he was “sure that Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun placed the polonium 210 in the teapot at the Pine Bar on 1 November 2006.”

If they picked a poison that could only be produced in a handful of specialized, high-security nuclear facilities, it would have been much easier to argue against state and security services involvement. In terms of its traceability, the poison prove to be “very expensive” indeed.

Had this case happened in isolation, and not been one in a line of  carried out against Russia’s critics, it may not have made the Kremlin look the ghoul that it currently does. When you stand in the middle of a crime scene dripping with blood, it becomes increasingly difficult to contest the accusatory glare of a dying man who points a finger right at you.

Unlikely Heroes

Since Russia denied Britain’s 2007 extradition request, which led to four diplomats being expelled from the United Kingdom, Lugovoy and Kovtun have hardly kept below the radar. They continued to deny their involvement in the case—Kovtun suggesting most recently that . Berezovsky’s aide recalled an accident in which his boss received a mock CSKA football club t-shirt from Lugovoy that said: “POLONIUM-210 CSKA LONDON, HAMBURG To Be Continued,” and the writing on the back, “CSKA Moscow Nuclear Death Is Knocking Your Door.”

Lugovoy won a seat in the state Duma in 2007, which grants him immunity from prosecution. In March 2015, Lugovoy received a  “For Service to the Fatherland” for his parliamentary work.

Ramzan Kadyrov, another recipient of one Russia’s highest awards, has also been making headlines. The Chechen president and honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences was awarded the Order of Honor the day after he proclaimed the man accused of Boris Nemtsov’s murder a “true patriot,” in a flare of not just bad taste, but characteristic provocation.

Vladimir Putin and Ramzan Kadyrov © Shutterstock

Kadyrov has made his distaste for Russia’s “non-systemic opposition” well-known once again, when on January 12, 2016, he told journalists that those who oppose President Putin should be treated as “enemies of the people, as traitors.” His statement was  on the official government website of Chechnya, in case anyone had doubts that he didn’t really mean what he was quoted as saying.

Patriot Games

What happened next resembles theater of the absurd much more vividly than the kind described by Zakharova. Deputy Konstantin Senchenko took issue with the statement and called Kadyrov a “shame to Russia” in a scathing . A private phone conversation in which he expresses regret over the post was then  to the press, followed by a video in which he openly apologizes to Kadyrov, prompted () by a visit from one of the Chechen president’s advisers—an Olympic wrestling champion.

The Congress of Intellectuals started a petition to . The head of social policy for Chechnya  that they “sneeze upon” this condemnation—a phrase that sounds as vulgar in translation as it does in the original. Speaker of Parliament Magamet Daudov then  a photo of Kadyrov’s dog Tarzan on Instagram, stating that Tarzan “really doesn’t like dogs of foreign breeds” and “we are having a hard time holding him back.”

Pro-Kremlin celebrities started an Internet flashmob with the hashtag #, while others started filming sarcastic apologies and posting them to YouTube. On January 22, a pro-Kadyrov  was held in Grozny. Some of the  included “Don’t whine, liberal, your end is nigh,” “Only in Russia do criminals call themselves opposition” and “Kadyrov—threat to the 5^th�����DZ��ܳ���!”  to Chechen police, a million people attended. The entire population of Chechnya is less than 1.5 million.

This snowball is far from light-hearted Internet spats that take place the world over. Ramzan Kadyrov is a notorious warlord who has subdued renegade Chechnya for President Putin using extreme violence, extrajudicial killings, torture, intimidation, corruption, electoral fraud and an endless flow of Moscow money.

He has positioned himself as Putin’s backup, his . Some of the most conspicuous murders of the Kremlin’s critics lead to Chechnya—Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov—and Chechen battalions are fighting in . This latest lashing out against the opposition is all fun and games, until someone else winds up dead.

“,” Kadyrov had said. “I want him to be president forever. I love him very much, as a man can love another man.” The Kremlin has so far reciprocated the affections, urging to treat Kadyrov’s latest faux pas “calmly.”

It is one thing to claim to protect your citizens (in refusing extradition) or use brutal force to exercise control over a breakaway territory. But publicly flaunting those who have inflicted incredible pain and destruction and broken every rule in the book on their way to please you falls into a category worthy of those you most often see at The Hague.

Until Russia learns to tell the difference between due process and politicized attacks, to which the response is irreverent denial and haughty bravado, the system of criminal impunity will remain firmly associated with the regime currently in place, with Aleksander Litvinenko its unintended symbol.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On October 17, following a search at the offices of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers in the southern Russian city of Budenovsk, , the head of the branch, was arrested and charged with fraud. The 73 year old, who is disabled and suffers from diabetes, spent two nights at the detention center, and had to be taken to the local hospital following her release on October 20. She signed a recognizance not to leave, and has released a declaring her innocence.

The case is unprecedented, and not only on legal grounds. Under Russian law, it is uncommon to detain those charged with economic crimes, as well as pensioners or invalids, unless they represent a risk to society. Given Bogatenkova’s age, health and charges, the incident demonstrates the depravity that enters justice when politics are involved.

In late August, Bogatenkova was one of the first to announce that the 11 Russian soldiers earlier that month by the Committee on Human Rights were killed in . According to official statements, they were either killed during an exercise in the Rostov region on the border with eastern Ukraine, or were discharged from the Russian armed forces and entered Ukraine as volunteers. The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers stated that all were contract soldiers who were part of the 18^th brigade, stationed in . The Russian Ministry of Defense refused to comment, citing that it had no information about the death of its soldiers on Ukrainian territory.

They Were on Vacation

The claim that “ is not conducting a military operation in Ukraine” has been the official mantra propagated by the Kremlin since the annexation of , when “little green men” — unmarked Russian special forces — participated in the takeover of the peninsula. State media mentioned a Russian casualty in Ukraine in early September, claiming the paratrooper killed in Donbas was officially “” at the time of death.

In the meantime, widespread evidence of Russia’s covert involvement in the conflict has surfaced with persistent regularity. There was the case of the ten paratroopers who got “” in Ukraine during a routine border patrol, the scattered Russian and military rations, or the hushed of dead soldiers who were killed during the battle for Donetsk airport in May.

Current attempts to cover up the presence of what Minister of Defense Sergei Shoygu amusingly termed “polite people” in Ukraine is politically expedient and fits the pattern of the Russian government’s continued disregard for the lives of its soldiers, but it becomes nearly impossible to conceal in the age of Internet and smartphones.

This secrecy is a well-rehearsed policy. During the Soviet war in , planes carrying bodies of soldiers landed at night, in an attempt to cover up the escalating casualties of the conflict. During the first Chechen war, to Vitaly Bencharsky, the former head of the temporary committee on prisoners, “[T]he first time the country found out that it had prisoners of war was only on February 23, 1996,” after it was disclosed in a television program. Current attempts to cover up the presence of what Minister of Defense Sergei Shoygu amusingly termed “polite people” in Ukraine is politically expedient and fits the pattern of the Russian government’s continued disregard for the lives of its soldiers, but it becomes nearly impossible to conceal in the age of Internet and smartphones.

The site Kavkaz Uzel (Caucasian Knot) that families of the killed contractors have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements about the conditions of the soldiers’ deaths. Ukrainian bloggers published photographs of documents and weapons belonging to Russian soldiers who were killed in Donbas, while the website continues to run photos and names of those killed, captured or missing, as does . Gazeta.ru a surreal case of a paratrooper from Pskov, whose funeral was announced by his wife on the social networking site VKontakte, only to be replaced by a message stating he was alive and well. When a journalist tried to call, a man claiming to be the deceased soldier picked up the phone, yet the funeral went ahead as planned.

War is chaotic, and there are bound to be misinformation, mistakes and false accusations. Yet when the head of Chechnya’s Interior Ministry dubs claims of bodies being brought back as “blatant fabrication,” and the Russian government insists on “volunteers” fighting an ideological war in their own free time, by separatists in Donetsk, it reveals the lack of responsibility of the Kremlin for the lives of those it has commissioned to fight for it. And this is where the UCSMR becomes an irreplaceable buffer against lies, indifference and sometimes plain criminality.

A Mother’s Right

The NGO was formed in 1989 to provide legal aid to Russia’s vast army of conscripts and their parents, numbering around . Every year, the Moscow office receives over 7,000 complaints, 60% of which are against violations of human rights to life and human dignity. According to the , in 2010, Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed 14 deaths from hazing — the dreaded endemic in the Soviet, and now Russian, army — while the UCSMR put that number at 2,000.

Veronika Marchenko, head of the Mother’s Right NGO, that around 2,000-2,500 soldiers die each year, with the official figure as low as 471 for 2010. In many cases, families struggle to find out about the real causes of death — forced to accept the often mutilated, tortured bodies of their sons with no official explanations. Without organizations such as the UCSMR, they would have no one to turn to.

In today’s Russia, with its newly-found devotion to the Orthodox Church and its moral code, the price placed on human life and dignity still remains conspicuously unholy.

The mothers committees came to prominence during the first Chechen war, when the Russian government often to negotiate the release of captured soldiers, abandoned them behind enemy lines or left them for dead, including from friendly fire. Images of women who traveled to war-torn Chechnya to negotiate the release of their sons with Chechen militias will linger in the memory of anyone capable of basic empathy. Bencharsky, who confirms that by the second Chechen war, the government has abandoned all efforts to retrieve captured soldiers, says: “My enemies were not the Chechens, my enemies were in the Kremlin.”

What Bogatenkova’s disclosures reveal is not only an effort to cover up Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian Civil War, but an attempt to shirk all responsibility to those dying in it. Needless to say, there will be no compensations paid out to the families, no legal recourse to justice or even knowing circumstances of death. Little, yet a last comfort for the bereaved relatives.

A few days after the statement was made public, the Ministry of Justice listed Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg as a — a designation it denies. A deputy from Pskov, Lev Schlossberg, whose paper first published photographs of the killed paratroopers from the region, was shortly after he called for a public disclosure of casualties in Ukraine. Numerous news outlets began to recall Bogatenkova’s previous allegations of fraud (all dismissed).

In an earlier with TV Rain, Bogatenkova was unafraid: “All this dirt being splashed over me on the Internet, I always said: You can come and pour s**t over me, head to toe. But when I see a mother and son smile, and when they thank me, crying, that is my biggest reward.”

In today’s Russia, with its newly-found devotion to the Orthodox Church and its moral code, the price placed on human life and dignity still remains conspicuously unholy.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On July 3, the leader of the Chechen terrorist group “Emirate Caucasus,” Doku Umarov, released a video where he urged his supporters to disrupt the 2014 Olympic games in Sochi. In his video, he calls the games a “satanic dancing on the bones of our ancestors” and encourages “every mujahideen to apply ‘any means permitted by Allah’ to unhinge the Sochi Olympics.” In his message, Umarov also lifted a moratorium on terrorist attacks in Russia that has been active since February 2013. Due to unprecedented protests in Russia last year, he banned attacks on civilians seeing the Kremlin as a common enemy for Chechens and Russians alike. However, in his recent video message, Umarov stressed that Russia must be punished for its “.”

Soon after the video was released, the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, addressed the public and promised to annihilate the leader of the terrorist group prior the commencement of the games. Kadyrov earlier admitted that one of his biggest dreams was to kill Umarov, but added that the terrorist group leader is powerless. Kadyrov called him “a rat” that can only bubble from underground. Only five days after the video’s release, Chechen Special Forces hunted down and liquidated a prominent Umarov supporter and bodyguard of three years, Rustam Saliev. Regardless of what Kadyrov says about Umarov’s weak influence in the region, Kadyrov is still taking Umarov’s threats seriously and striving to demonstrate his dominance over the local extremist .

However, according to leading Russian expert on Islam, Alexei Malashenko, the main threat is not Umarov, but terrorists acting independently on their beliefs and desires to punish foreigners. He argues that it is not as hard to spot a group of extremists as to identify a single suicide bomber, which became evident after the Boston Bombings. He noted that the prime goal of the Umarov’s message is to scare people off the games and .  However, as of now, it is not clear whether or not terrorists will orderly attempt to disrupt the games and what will be  the scale of their effort.

Extremists to Receive Wider Support From Locals

Some experts think the negative attitude towards Moscow and the Russian government will dramatically increase as Russian Special Forces struggle to provide security in Sochi. Local police and Speznaz’s (the Russian Special Forces) hawkish behavior, caused by tremendous pressure from the top, will most likely motivate the region’s population to support extremists.

Negativity towards the federal government in the North Caucasus has always been widespread due to multiple grave and unresolved social and economic problems in the region. Corruption of federal institutions, high unemployment in Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia and other major cities have been causing frustration amongst the growing generation for years while encouraging them to look for an alternative social justice system in order to solve their problems. Eventually, the idea of a society based on Islamic law and tradition, an “Islamic space,” came onto the scene, uniting the masses who are resentful and irritated by Moscow’s policies.

Russian officials are having a hard time realizing the extent of the region’s discontent, and thus treating all anti-Moscow sentiments as actions of an Islamic opposition that simply can and should be suppressed. While it is not clear what goal the Umarov video pursued, it will certainly goad Moscow officials into working more indiscriminately with the locals to ensure utmost security. Consequently, due to the lack of understanding of the region’s core problems and absence of adequate relations between Moscow and the North Caucasus, radicalization of the region will severely accelerate. Hence, even if Russia will succeed in providing security during the Olympics, it will inevitably face ponderous consequences due to its shortsighted policy in the near future.

Moscow Allows Crime to Flourish

Meanwhile, in the midst of preparations for the Olympics, several Chechen Operational Officers – a special Moscow unit of bodyguards at the head of the Chechen Republic – have been accused of various crimes, including kidnappings, rape, torture and extortion in the Moscow region. A group of them kidnapped a mafia member who was stealing in the capital and reselling luxury cars, such as Porsche and Lexus, to other smaller cities. They tortured him for days trying to extort a large sum of money and one of the vehicles. After several days of torment, the bleeding and severely injured victim was left on a street where Moscow police found him on the verge of death.

Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents painstakingly investigated the case for more than a year. During that time they visited Chechnya to gather evidence and risked their lives digging deeper into the background and connections of the Kadyrov bodyguards. However, after preparing an irrefutable evidence base, the Moscow court released seven detainees on bail, frustrating the FSB agents and endangering them and their families. According to one of the FSB investigators, they received an order from the “top” to leave Kadyrov’s people alone until the end of the .

According to the chairman of the regional Committee Against Torture, Igor Kolyapin, kidnappings and torture are quite common in Chechnya, and are usually not pursued by court since they are mainly committed by local police or . The criminals in uniform enjoy almost unlimited freedom in Chechnya due to their proximity to Kadyrov, who, in turn, is the only suitable candidate to be the leader of Chechnya in Moscow’s eyes and, hence, is immune to any critics — even the Kremlin’s dissatisfaction.

Splashes of Chechen violence observed in Moscow are increasingly annoying for the capital’s FSB. Although Moscow officials ignore the impunity of the Chechen forces in Chechnya, they cannot tolerate it in the capital due to excessive public attention and resentment among Moscow authorities. However, it seems as though the Kremlin is determined to indulge Chechnya’s uniformed criminals in their crimes since Moscow desperately needs their help to prevent terrorist attacks in Sochi.

Dear Price for Public Opinion

The Chechen extremists will inevitably try to undermine the Russian government’s reputation by disrupting the Sochi games. However, if the powerful Putin-Kadyrov tandem applies all its resources to prevent an attack, it is dubious whether or not the terrorists will succeed. On the other hand, the games will have grave and lasting consequenses for the North Caucasus. The effects of Russian police brutality will echo far and long after the games when Moscow’s control loosens. Extremists will either aim to attack Moscow in response to the “satanic dancing” on their land, or they will ignite more Chechen civilians to revolt against the capital. Also, in case the Kremlin decides to stop the violent frenzy of Chechen militants and call them to justice, Kadyrov will lose support of his bandits and Moscow will consequently lose control over Chechnya. But apparently the Kremlin is not worried about internal disasters as long as Russia succeeds in producing a beautiful, yet fake, image of the country’s prosperity and stability for the West.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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By 

The televised images of the deserted streets of Boston and Cambridge, two of America’s oldest university centers, were a sad sight for the many former international students who studied there, myself included. At the beginning of the 1990s, the rebellious Russian region of Chechnya was already making news in the international press, but most of my friends found it hard to find on a map. Judging by recent phone calls to my contacts there, this is no longer the case.  have not only taught many of the more outward-looking Americans where Chechnya is, they have also challenged some of their beliefs.

Motive and Means

Why did the Tsarnaev brothers – one a promising boxer, successfully married into an affluent American family; the other a relatively well-to-do student – do it? The western press is searching for the culprits in a predictable direction. One commentator wrote that the Tsarnaev brothers were not die-hard Islamists, just "lone wolves, typically white and equally disenchanted, who have so often shed blood in the US." (The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is, of course, mentioned.) Another suggested the brothers had simply reacted to an insult about their ethnic origins or religion.

Rather simplistic, as the elder brother, Tamerlan, was on a Russian security services blacklist from at least 2011. The FBI and the CIA were twice warned about Tamerlan’s extremist leanings by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). These people are, however, untroubled by the facts.

Their biggest regret seems to be not the loss of life, but that . Many liberal-minded people are searching for an antidote to this poisonous "pro-Putin doubt." Don’t say the president had a point when he kept saying Islamist terrorism— in all its Chechen, Arab or other reincarnations — was a threat to both the US and Russia. And, heaven forbid, don’t say it’s also a threat to Europe. 

The problem is that the view that the Tsarnaevs had no connection to Islamist extremism in their native Russian North Caucasus just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If Tamerlan was intent on acting alone, why did he watch and spread jihadist videos on the internet, and why did he make a six-month visit to Dagestan – a hotbed of Islamist extremism – in 2012? How could the Russian security services have penetrated his thoughts, sending a signal to the FBI about Tsarnaev’s extremist leanings? Of course, it is possible to describe Chechen rebels as "nationalist," even democratic, just intent on shedding the yoke of Moscow.

Presumably, the long war and subsequent suffering "radicalized" them. This is a good parallel to the widespread view of nationalist Syrian rebels who can be provided with "lethal aid" if only they promise not to pass it on to the Islamist jihadis. The problem is that in the rebel movement in Chechnya of the 1990s, just like in  now, the border between nationalist democrats and jihadist extremists is dangerously blurred. A lot of jihadis are happy to use nationalist sentiment and even talk about free elections – if it helps get them closer to power.

Grozny, 1995

On my return from the Chechen capital after acting as an interpreter for reporters, I listen as the embattled "president" of the separatist "Chechen Republic of Ichkeria," Dzhokhar Dudayev, speaks on the radio station . Dudayev is angry: The Russian army pushed his forces out of Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, with the West giving only symbolic support to pro-Dudayev Russian human-rights activists. Russia seems to be close to victory in a war that it started rather clumsily in December 1994. Addressing a handful of mostly western journalists at his hideout, he rages: “Don’t think you can stay out of this in the West. Don’t even dream of your living your rosy-cheeked life while we are dying here.”

A few days later, Dudayev was killed by a Russian missile. His successor, "Ichkeria’s president," Aslan Maskhadov, tried to be more diplomatic. But Maskhadov’s head of cabinet, Shamil Basayev, believed by Russia to be behind heinous acts of terror, including , was more candid when talking about the West. 

“You ate sweet things and slept nicely while we were killed,” he barked into the microphone of my boss, Pascal Verdeau of the French television channel France 3, when I returned to Chechnya as an interpreter in 1997. “Don’t even dream you can sit out our next war with Russia!”

In 1997-1999, "Ichkeria" became a dangerous place for foreign journalists. At least two dozen journalists were kidnapped and many were never seen alive again. And in August 1999, Basayev, with a small army of Chechen Islamists, attacked Dagestan, saying he wanted to help an embattled Islamist minority there. In the 1990s, the western press praised Basayev, before he took between 1,500 and 2,000 people hostage in a hospital at Budyonnovsk in southern Russia, which resulted in the deaths of 147 people. After 1999, the conspiracy theory that he was a "Russian provocateur" who lured Chechnya into another war with Russia, became predominant.

My impression was different. Basayev never stopped trying to be both anti-Russian and nationalist; anti-Western and jihadist. For him, as for Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Russia and the US were parts of the defunct, decadent civilization he wanted to destroy. So the attacks in Russia and Boston are not mutually exclusive – they are complementary. 

“Anti-western and especially the anti-Semitic element was very strong in the Chechen separatist movement even before it became predominantly jihadist,” says Sergei Markedonov, an expert on the North Caucasus. 

In the view of Gordon Hahn, an analyst monitoring the so-called Caucasus Emirate (the biggest Islamist jihadist movement in the North Caucasus), the modern rebels view Russia and the West as two "Satans" and believe they must fight them in the manner of Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1980s. This opinion was echoed by Putin, who said, : “We always said that we [Americans and Russians] should not limit ourselves to declarations about this [Islamist] common threat. We should act – we should co-operate with each other. And these two criminals confirmed the rightness of this point of ours.”

Global War on the "Two Satans"

The scale of the Boston attack would be less shocking in Chechnya’s neighbours Dagestan or Ingushetia. In Dagestan especially, there are bombings at events such as parades and football games every three or four months. Just one example of this terrorism has rightly led the US to reassess the Islamist threat at home and abroad. 

Russians, Americans and Europeans know their differences and disagreements. But to Islamists, they are not important. They use Russo-Western differences for their own ends. And the West frequently falls into the trap. A typical example was coverage given to Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, mother of the two suspects, herself accused of extremist leanings in the FSB’s affidavit to the FBI on Tamerlan. She claimed her sons were "set up" by special services and is now treated with healthy scepticism by the Russian and American media.

But after a similar terrorist act in Moscow, Western media may well have given credence to her words. We saw it after the Budyonnovsk hospital outrage; the 1999 apartment bombings that killed 293; the Moscow theatre siege in 2002 that left 131 dead; and the Beslan school assault that left 334 dead. In these cases, ordinary Britons and Americans were given the impression that the Russian government was somehow the main culprit. We cherish our differences, while Islamist terrorists seek to use them.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Background 

Nestling between the Black and Caspian seas, the North Caucasus is home to a number of separatist movements, many of whom have grown into violent struggles over the past few decades and are now increasingly threatening Russia’s national interests and security.

Most of the territories at the heart of these movements are federal subjects of Russia, and have been demanding either whole or partial autonomy or campaigning for absolute freedom from Moscow’s rule for a long time. Of these, the movements centring Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, and Tatarstan, have historically been the most robust and often bloody. Chechnya, in particular, remains a thorn in the side of the Russian Federation by continually drawing global attention to its armed struggle against, what it calls, Moscow’s oppressive rule and alleged gross human rights violations.

In April 2013, international media glare once again turned to the Caucasian movement after two Chechen brothers, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, bombed the Boston Marathon.

Armed struggle in what is now known as Chechnya dates back to the 18^th century, making it arguably the world’s oldest separatist struggle in the modern history. One of the 21 republics within the Russian Federation situated in the southwest, Chechnya is home to a million people with a mix of Muslim and orthodox Christian populations, and has a long history of insurrection against the Russian rule.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, 15 republics were allowed to become independent from Russian rule, but Chechnya was not one of them. It was argued that Chechnya was an autonomous region and not a constituent republic, and therefore, did not have a right to secede. The decision resulted in Chechnya declaring independence shortly afterwards, which led to two wars with the Federation in 1994 and 1999 respectively.

The first war lasted two years and killed up to a 100,000 people amid grave accusations of beheadings, kidnappings, rape, torture, and extrajudicial executions.

The second war, led by extremist Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev, started in 1999 and sparked an Islamist uprising in the neighbouring Dagestan. Enraged by the rebellion, Russian forces invaded Chechnya a second time. The second Chechen War saw even more vicious fighting and large-scale destruction. Once again, both sides were accused of gross human rights violations and torture. Later forced to retreat, the Chechen rebels then resorted to guerrilla fighting and committing, what Russia called, acts of terror against the state, including the Beslan elementary school siege — that killed 334 people, including 186 children — the bombing of the Moscow subway, and the hostage crisis at a Moscow theatre that killed 120 people.

In 2010, Russia declared an end to its 10-year anti-terror "operation," stating that the Chechen rebels were largely neutralized. In 2007, Ramzan Kadyrov was elected Chechen president with backing from the Kremlin. Whilst some credit him for restoring order and stability to Chechnya, he is also accused of corruption and human rights violations.

By installing Kadyrov as president, Moscow was able to declare victory over the rebels and hoped to sideline the Salafist jihadists in Chechnya by striking a deal with the more religiously moderate Sufis, of which Kadyrov was one.

However, critics argue that Moscow’s gamble appears to have fallen apart. The Chechen nationalist movement has now been replaced by the Caucasus Emirate, an Islamic extremist insurgency movement and one that has been classed as a terrorist organization by the United States. According to Russian authorities, the movement has engaged in terrorist activities since early 2000 and carries links to al-Qaeda.

Why are Russia's Separatist Movements Relevant

Reigniting global debate over Russia’s bloodiest secessionist movement, the bombing of Boston Marathon by the Tsarnaev brothers has more importantly drawn attention to the starkly evolved character of the Chechen struggle in the last 20 years: the cause is no longer nationalist but predominantly an Islamist one. Having taken deep roots in the region, including Dagestan and Ingushetia, the Jihadi ideology of Chechen rebels is now acting as a unifying theme, linking their cause with conflicts beyond the region such as in Afghanistan and Syria.

Setting a dangerous precedent, the Tsarnaev brothers have also brought the Chechen struggle out of Russia for the first time. Earlier militant campaigns were limited to targeting Russian interests within the Federation, but the Boston Bombings have now expanded the playing field for the rebel movement, sparking global concerns. According to the Pew Research Centre, nearly 57% of Muslims in the Caucasus region are now concerned about Islamic extremist groups in their countries.

Considering the fragile political environment in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, any shift in sentiments in nationalist struggles across the globe on the lines of religion can potentially have a destabilizing effect on several regions in the world. This may include terrorist attacks not just in Russia and Central Asia, but also the rest of the world.

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With the Boston Bombings, public attention has returned to the subject that disappeared from the media over the last few years: Chechnya, the attackers’ country of a origin. At present, it appears that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were acting independently. There is evidence that suggests the older brother, Tamerlan — who seems to have initiated the attack — had travelled to the Northern Caucasus where he could have taken on radical Islamist views. There is no proof that there were other people from the region involved. When looking at the Northern Caucasus, it becomes apparent that Islamist violence has been limited to the region and Russia over recent years.

Chechnya: No Longer the Epicentre of Violence

The two wars in Chechnya were the most severe incidents of violence in the former Soviet Union, even worse than the civil war in Tajikistan or the secession wars in the Southern Caucasus. The first war from 1994 to 1996 was, from a Russian point of view, directed at militant separatists. This Chechen secession was conducted mainly for nationalist rather than religious reasons. But even during the first conflict, Mujahideen from Arab countries participated and pledged solidarity with the Muslim secession movement. After the ceasefire, and during a short chaotic period of factual independence for Chechnya, the process of ideological transformation within the armed underground resulted in a trans-ethical regional jihad in the Northern Caucasus.

The second conflict became a war on international Islamist terrorism, as declared by the newly-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2000. In 2007, the last Chechen underground President Doku Umarov completed the ideological transformation and geographic expansion of the resistance by declaring a Caucasus Emirate, whose jihadist agenda stretched beyond Chechnya. This led to Chechnya, which had been synonymous with the Northern Caucasus for 15 years, no longer being seen as the epicenter of violence and rebellion in the region, and it also almost disappeared from media coverage. In 2009, Moscow lifted the special status of the republic as a counterterrorism zone that had been established almost ten years earlier.

Unconventional Cultural Policies

Under the autocratic rule of the young President Ramzan Kadyrov, reconstruction took place in the republic. Some Russian commentators agreed that the young autocrat had managed a more effective Chechen secession from Russian rule than it would have ever been possible for militant separatists. While he solemnly pledges his loyalty to the Kremlin and erects Putin icons in Grozny, the despot does as he pleases. A part of this involves rather unconventional cultural policies, aimed at stealing the thunder from his opponents. While in other parts of Russia and the CIS states veil bans existed, Kadyrov, with his parole “Back to Tradition,” orders women to wear Islamic clothing in public. This happens regardless of the fact that such measures are more in compliance with his Salafist opponents than Chechen or Caucasian traditions, which should be used to counter the ideological positions of the said opponent.

Regional Jihad

Other Caucasian constituent republics have already surpassed Chechnya in terms of registered violent incidents. Overall, there were 700 victims of fighting in the Northern Caucasus in 2012, more than half of it from Dagestan — the largest Caucasian republic within Russia. Some 300 crimes connected to terrorism were registered there, compared with 180 in the rest of the Northern Caucasus. Since Chechnya has taken a few steps back, the Northern Caucasus as a whole is now seen as the worst conflict zone in Europe’s eastern neighborhood.

The majority of executed attacks are directed at local and federal security institutions on-site. This also includes official representatives of moderate Islam that refrains from violence. In Dagestan, a theological dialog between Sufism and Salafism has been initiated. As a result, attacks against prominent Sufi sheikhs who oppose militant jihad have started to take place.

When it comes to Russia, Umarov, the ideological head of the Caucasus Emirate, admonished his fighters in February 2012 to refrain from violence against civilians. He based this on his solidarity for the opposition movement against Putin. The last spectacular attack was launched on the Domodedovo airport in early 2011. However, terrorist activities by the Caucasus Emirate or other jihadist networks are expected in connection with the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February 2014. “Then the bells of Boston will also be ringing for us,” said Sergei Karaganov, a security expert close to the Kremlin, in reference to Russia’s number one prestige project.

So far, no attacks by the Caucasian Emirate targeted Europe or the US. However, it does not only spread propaganda and hatred against Russia, but against “enemies of Islam” in general, on the Internet. Therefore, it might be possible that the radicalisation of the Boston attackers was somehow connected to the Caucasian Emirate.

Because of the precarious security situation in the Northern Caucasus, Russia depicts itself as one of the main victims of global terrorism. According to a new study that looks at 158 states based on a global terrorism data set, Russia is in ninth place when it comes to terrorist attacks between 2002 and 2011. It follows countries like Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Yemen, but is still far ahead of Germany (62) or the US (42).

The Boston attacks have encouraged President Putin to engage his colleague Obama on the joint efforts for “the war on terror” – as he had did so with George W. Bush after 9/11. When it comes to the Northern Caucasus, Russia’s message is still ambiguous. It demands Western support, while at the same time it views the Northern Caucasus as a strictly domestic issue that is not a matter for international politics. It also does not accept criticism for human rights violations committed in connection to its actions in the Northern Caucasus. Nevertheless, with the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, the region will become an internationally important topic again.

*[This article was originally published by ,��and was translated from German to English by . A German version of the article was also published by EurActiv.de, Handelsblatt and Tagesspiegel.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher once called Chechen rebels "freedom fighters" but they are now seen by many as radical Islamists. Chechen Islamists have recently been making the headlines. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the two brothers who recently bombed the Boston Marathon, are suspected to be products of the radical Islamist movement that has gripped Chechnya and parts of the Chechen Diaspora. Chechen history offers clues about whether these radical jihadi Islamists are part of a broader anti-American network or whether they are working on their own.

When thinking about radical Islam in Chechnya, the period to remember is 1994-96: the "First" Chechen War. It was actually neither their first war, nor their first war against Russia. It was certainly the first war when there was a large influx of radical Islamists to Chechnya. Like the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, these fighters came to liberate their fellow Muslims from Russian yoke. They brought with them ideals of establishing an Islamic State.

A core part of Chechen identity is their opposition to Russian control. Even during the early 18th Century, Peter the Great would . It was Stalin who and other people of the region. In 1944, Stalin deported large numbers of Chechens to Central Asia, where a fifth of all Chechens died along the way. Chechnya, located in the Northern Caucasus Mountains, is still part of Russian territory.

The Chechen struggle against Russian control has been a blood-bath that plunged Chechnya into darkness. It has spent centuries trying to escape Russia and that conflict has only inflicted ceaseless tragedy upon Chechnya. The Chechen-Russian tug-of-war dates back to the 15th Century, when Chechnya combated Russian invasion by converting to Sunni Islam and . Over time, a number of Chechens have converted to Sufi Islam under Persian influence. Today, the Sufis are terrorized by radical Islamic jihadist groups who want to impose radical Sunni Islam in Chechnya.

Saudi fighters, who fought alongside Pashtun rebels during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, have spawned a generation of Chechen jihadists. The Soviet-Afghan War was a theocratic melting pot for Islamic crusaders. Osama bin Laden was one of the many radical Islamists who turned up in Afghanistan. The Western interpretation of the war as a battle against communism is a simplistic idea, popular with anti-Soviet ideologues. Radical Muslims who fought in Afghanistan did not stop fighting when the Soviet Union fell. Some targeted America, while others moved to Chechnya.

When the “First” Chechen War against Russia finally erupted in 1994, many different actors arrived to promote their ideologies. A Saudi man named Emir Khattab heard about the Chechen struggle against Russia. He started fundraising and sending Wahabi fighters to participate in the conflict against Russia. The war concluded in a peace treaty where Chechens gained considerable autonomy from the Russians. However, by the Second Chechen War of 1996-1999, Chechens became politically vulnerable because of Islamic jihadists, while Moscow’s iron fist reasserted control.

“Wahhabism” became the dominant force in the Chechen movement. Many believe that this made the Second Chechen War and its aftermath far more violent and destructive. The Chechen National Guard and Islamist militants kidnapped, bombed, and terrorized Russians in an effort to demoralize them. They even attacked Sufi mosques. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov appeased extremists by introducing Islamic law.

The second war has come to be known as “Putin’s War” because his hard-line position proved popular and propelled him to victory. The Islamic International Brigade (IIB) had launched sustained terrorist attacks during the interwar period. Russia classified the IIB as a terrorist organization, while declaring the conflict to a war against “terrorism”.

Russia might have reestablished control over Chechnya but radical Islam continues to flourish there. The most radical Islamist Mujahideen come from a number of different sects. Each of them is a product of its particular history and is often backed by an Islamic charity. For instance, the Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya is funded by a Salafist charity. Islamist Chechens continue to bomb and launch terrorist attacks in Russia.

From the information available about the  Boston Bombings, it seems that the Tsarnaev brothers are not “Jihadists of Chechnya,” but simply “Chechen Jihadists.” In other words, they appear not to be operating for a network from Chechnya but on their own. As yet, Chechen emigres do not have a strong Islamic network in the US. Only  live in the United States, which seems to be a touch too small of a population to provide a base of an entire jihadi network.

In Chechnya, radical Islam emerged because it was a means to fight for freedom from Russian rule. It does not have the ideology or the deep roots of Islamist groups that have functioned in Afghanistan. Many terrorist groups might have read and campaigned against Western modernization but they were never as fanatical or organized as their Afghan cousins. The Tsarnaev brothers were infected by a radical Islam that many Chechens have come to see as the only way forward in the fight for independence against Russia that has been going on for seven centuries. What is surprising is that they turned their ire against the US, the country whose president once called them freedom fighters.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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