Things go boom

[Cain]

Ok, so they killed one of them...

Word is they're from Chechnya.

Chechnya?

Cain, what do you know about the various political/radical factions over there?  My world politics is for shit.

Chechnya almost certainly means Islamist extremists.  There were more nationalist factions over there, but they got co-opted in the 90s.

FSB (Russian intelligence) wiped out the leadership of the largest group over there, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, in 2006, with the assassination of Shamil Basayev and others by truck bomb.

Since then, the main insurgent group in the region has been the Caucasian Front, the military wing of the so-called Caucasian Emirate.  Dokka Umarov, the "President" of the Emirate, is said to have links to Al-Qaeda.  Of course, everyone has "links" to Al-Qaeda nowadays, so make of that what you will.  According to the UN documents pursuant to that allegation, he had particular links with the Islamic Jihad Group and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, both of which had camps in Afghanistan and subsequently fled into the NWFP of Pakistan after the 2002 invasion.

Umarov, despite having international Islamist tendencies of the kind that Al-Qaeda have, has nevertheless urged his own people not to get involved in the Syrian insurgency and presumably this also applies to other overseas adventures.

While the Chechen insurgency assumes a lower press profile nowdays, it is probably worse than it was in the early 2000s, as violence has spread into Ingushetia and Dagestan.  There are also fears that Sochi, the site of the Winter Olympics, will also be targeted by insurgents.

According to Nafeez Ahmed, a UK based academic and expert on international security issues:

From the mid-1990s, bin Laden funded Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab to the tune of several millions of dollars per month, sidelining the moderate Chechen majority. US intelligence remained deeply involved until the end of the decade. According to Yossef Bodanksy, then-Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in 'yet another anti-Russian jihad, 'seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces'. US Government officials participated in 'a formal meeting in Azerbaijan' in December 1999 'in which specific programmes for the training and equipping of mujahidin from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon', culminating in 'Washington's tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US "private security companies"... to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.' The US saw the sponsorship of 'Islamist jihad in the Caucasus' as a way to 'deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism'.

Bodansky is not the most reliable of sources, in my opinion, but I have long suspected that there were tacit links between Al-Qaeda, the CIA and local Islamist insurgents in the Balkans and Caucasian mountains throughout the 1990s.  Sibel Edmonds has also made similar allegations which would seem to support the Turkish support angle.  During the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, the latter made use of mujahideen provideded by the Pakistani ISI, especially as special forces operating behind Armenian lines of control.  The Turkish Grey Wolves, a fascist terrorist group with links to the Department for Special Warfare, a Turkish intelligence outfit which did a lot of work with the CIA, were also present in Azerbaijan, and one of their members was even a cabinet member.

Azerbaijan is also interesting because of its links to the American Republican establishment, in particular the Neoconservative movement.  The  US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce had on its "Honorary Council of Advisors": James Baker, Lloyd Bentson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney (resigned after the Nov 2000 election), Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu. Richard Perle was a Trustee; until his State Department appointment, Richard Armitage sat on the Board.

There were reports of Chechens fighting alongside Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but they were never verified.  One problem is that it seems locals called any light-skinned Russian-speaking militant a "Chechen", regardless of actual ethnic origin.  Secondly, Al-Qaeda itself had a good reasont to imply their presence, as it suggested the jihad was more international and less Pashtun and Arabic.  The Taliban has denied the presence of Chechen fighters in the country, but then the Taliban has also denied that there are Uzbeks and Arabs fighting alongside them, which is...well, very wrong, to put it mildly.

[Suu]

De Facto martial law has been extened to all of Boston.

Are you in the lockdown area?

Let's just say they locked down our public transportation in Providence also, and we're 50 miles away.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

De Facto martial law has been extened to all of Boston.

Are you in the lockdown area?

Let's just say they locked down our public transportation in Providence also, and we're 50 miles away.

feck.

[Cain]

Surviving brother is from Kyrgyzstan...

Dzhokhar is a Chechen name.  It is, in fact, the name of the first President of the Chechen Republic.

[Suu]

De Facto martial law has been extened to all of Boston.

Are you in the lockdown area?

Let's just say they locked down our public transportation in Providence also, and we're 50 miles away.

feck.

It looks like our buses are running, but no Boston-bound buses or trains are moving. Reports of armored police at the stations, so walking downtown should be AWESOME.

[Cain]

Merged the cop shooter thread with this one.

Not sorry for any confusion this causes readers.

[LMNO]

De Facto martial law has been extened to all of Boston.

Are you in the lockdown area?

It's been extended to all of Boston.

[LMNO]

Merged the cop shooter thread with this one.

Not sorry for any confusion this causes readers.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

Merged the cop shooter thread with this one.

Not sorry for any confusion this causes readers.

it's cool. Watching the BBC live feed atm

[LMNO]

Ok, so they killed one of them...

Word is they're from Chechnya.

Chechnya?

Cain, what do you know about the various political/radical factions over there?  My world politics is for shit.

Chechnya almost certainly means Islamist extremists.  There were more nationalist factions over there, but they got co-opted in the 90s.

FSB (Russian intelligence) wiped out the leadership of the largest group over there, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, in 2006, with the assassination of Shamil Basayev and others by truck bomb.

Since then, the main insurgent group in the region has been the Caucasian Front, the military wing of the so-called Caucasian Emirate.  Dokka Umarov, the "President" of the Emirate, is said to have links to Al-Qaeda.  Of course, everyone has "links" to Al-Qaeda nowadays, so make of that what you will.  According to the UN documents pursuant to that allegation, he had particular links with the Islamic Jihad Group and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, both of which had camps in Afghanistan and subsequently fled into the NWFP of Pakistan after the 2002 invasion.

Umarov, despite having international Islamist tendencies of the kind that Al-Qaeda have, has nevertheless urged his own people not to get involved in the Syrian insurgency and presumably this also applies to other overseas adventures.

While the Chechen insurgency assumes a lower press profile nowdays, it is probably worse than it was in the early 2000s, as violence has spread into Ingushetia and Dagestan.  There are also fears that Sochi, the site of the Winter Olympics, will also be targeted by insurgents.

According to Nafeez Ahmed, a UK based academic and expert on international security issues:

From the mid-1990s, bin Laden funded Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab to the tune of several millions of dollars per month, sidelining the moderate Chechen majority. US intelligence remained deeply involved until the end of the decade. According to Yossef Bodanksy, then-Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in 'yet another anti-Russian jihad, 'seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces'. US Government officials participated in 'a formal meeting in Azerbaijan' in December 1999 'in which specific programmes for the training and equipping of mujahidin from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon', culminating in 'Washington's tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US "private security companies"... to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.' The US saw the sponsorship of 'Islamist jihad in the Caucasus' as a way to 'deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism'.

Bodansky is not the most reliable of sources, in my opinion, but I have long suspected that there were tacit links between Al-Qaeda, the CIA and local Islamist insurgents in the Balkans and Caucasian mountains throughout the 1990s.  Sibel Edmonds has also made similar allegations which would seem to support the Turkish support angle.  During the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, the latter made use of mujahideen provideded by the Pakistani ISI, especially as special forces operating behind Armenian lines of control.  The Turkish Grey Wolves, a fascist terrorist group with links to the Department for Special Warfare, a Turkish intelligence outfit which did a lot of work with the CIA, were also present in Azerbaijan, and one of their members was even a cabinet member.

Azerbaijan is also interesting because of its links to the American Republican establishment, in particular the Neoconservative movement.  The  US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce had on its "Honorary Council of Advisors": James Baker, Lloyd Bentson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney (resigned after the Nov 2000 election), Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu. Richard Perle was a Trustee; until his State Department appointment, Richard Armitage sat on the Board.

There were reports of Chechens fighting alongside Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but they were never verified.  One problem is that it seems locals called any light-skinned Russian-speaking militant a "Chechen", regardless of actual ethnic origin.  Secondly, Al-Qaeda itself had a good reasont to imply their presence, as it suggested the jihad was more international and less Pashtun and Arabic.  The Taliban has denied the presence of Chechen fighters in the country, but then the Taliban has also denied that there are Uzbeks and Arabs fighting alongside them, which is...well, very wrong, to put it mildly.

So other than "USA is Satan", are there any motivations for blowing up the marathon on tax day?

[Suu]

What tickles me, is that they didn't even try to flee the city this week.

[EK WAFFLR]

Ok, so they killed one of them...

Word is they're from Chechnya.

Chechnya?

Cain, what do you know about the various political/radical factions over there?  My world politics is for shit.

Chechnya almost certainly means Islamist extremists.  There were more nationalist factions over there, but they got co-opted in the 90s.

FSB (Russian intelligence) wiped out the leadership of the largest group over there, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, in 2006, with the assassination of Shamil Basayev and others by truck bomb.

Since then, the main insurgent group in the region has been the Caucasian Front, the military wing of the so-called Caucasian Emirate.  Dokka Umarov, the "President" of the Emirate, is said to have links to Al-Qaeda.  Of course, everyone has "links" to Al-Qaeda nowadays, so make of that what you will.  According to the UN documents pursuant to that allegation, he had particular links with the Islamic Jihad Group and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, both of which had camps in Afghanistan and subsequently fled into the NWFP of Pakistan after the 2002 invasion.

Umarov, despite having international Islamist tendencies of the kind that Al-Qaeda have, has nevertheless urged his own people not to get involved in the Syrian insurgency and presumably this also applies to other overseas adventures.

While the Chechen insurgency assumes a lower press profile nowdays, it is probably worse than it was in the early 2000s, as violence has spread into Ingushetia and Dagestan.  There are also fears that Sochi, the site of the Winter Olympics, will also be targeted by insurgents.

According to Nafeez Ahmed, a UK based academic and expert on international security issues:

From the mid-1990s, bin Laden funded Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab to the tune of several millions of dollars per month, sidelining the moderate Chechen majority. US intelligence remained deeply involved until the end of the decade. According to Yossef Bodanksy, then-Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in 'yet another anti-Russian jihad, 'seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces'. US Government officials participated in 'a formal meeting in Azerbaijan' in December 1999 'in which specific programmes for the training and equipping of mujahidin from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon', culminating in 'Washington's tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US "private security companies"... to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.' The US saw the sponsorship of 'Islamist jihad in the Caucasus' as a way to 'deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism'.

Bodansky is not the most reliable of sources, in my opinion, but I have long suspected that there were tacit links between Al-Qaeda, the CIA and local Islamist insurgents in the Balkans and Caucasian mountains throughout the 1990s.  Sibel Edmonds has also made similar allegations which would seem to support the Turkish support angle.  During the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, the latter made use of mujahideen provideded by the Pakistani ISI, especially as special forces operating behind Armenian lines of control.  The Turkish Grey Wolves, a fascist terrorist group with links to the Department for Special Warfare, a Turkish intelligence outfit which did a lot of work with the CIA, were also present in Azerbaijan, and one of their members was even a cabinet member.

Azerbaijan is also interesting because of its links to the American Republican establishment, in particular the Neoconservative movement.  The  US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce had on its "Honorary Council of Advisors": James Baker, Lloyd Bentson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Dick Cheney (resigned after the Nov 2000 election), Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, John Sununu. Richard Perle was a Trustee; until his State Department appointment, Richard Armitage sat on the Board.

There were reports of Chechens fighting alongside Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but they were never verified.  One problem is that it seems locals called any light-skinned Russian-speaking militant a "Chechen", regardless of actual ethnic origin.  Secondly, Al-Qaeda itself had a good reasont to imply their presence, as it suggested the jihad was more international and less Pashtun and Arabic.  The Taliban has denied the presence of Chechen fighters in the country, but then the Taliban has also denied that there are Uzbeks and Arabs fighting alongside them, which is...well, very wrong, to put it mildly.

As usual, Cain is brilliant. Thank you.

[LMNO]

What tickles me, is that they didn't even try to flee the city this week.

I find that quite odd, myself.

[Cain]

Not any good ones.  The insurgents more see Russia as the Great Satan - which makes sense, when Russian troops are occupying the area and doing all the sort of things an occupying army normally does.  You know, shooting people in the face, torture, demolishing buildings suspected to be habouring militants, rape, looting and that fun stuff.

However, just because they're (probably) Chechen doesn't necessarily mean they're doing this for Chechen nationalist reasons.

[Cain]

What tickles me, is that they didn't even try to flee the city this week.

I find that quite odd, myself.

From the sound of it, they were planning more bombings.  They had bombs to use against the police chasing them, after all.