[LINK] Some news links about the Tsarnaev brothers, terrorism, Chechens and Chechnya

[rfmcdonald]

The Daily Beast:

• In his article "Don't Judge the Chechens Yet", historian Charles King argues that the Tsarnaev brothers' alleged acts can be best fit into a specifically American history of American domestic terrorism, with few direct links to Chechnya on their part, and warns that playing to stereotypes of North Caucasian violence could worsen things.


• Journalist Andrew Meir explains the Tsarnaevs and recent Chechen history, among other points explaining that very few Chechen refugees live in the United States (the number of 250 is raised) as opposed to the European Union and Turkey.

Foreign Policy:

• Nicholas Clayton writes of his experience interviewing a Chechen volunteer fighting with Islamists in the Syrian civil war. Clayton raises the interesting question of the Georgian government's past collaboration with Chechen militants, which apparently intensified under the recently departed Saakashvili.


• Eugene Huskey writes about the Chechen connection with Kyrgyzstan, where the Tsarnaev family lived for a time. The Chechen connection with Kazakhstan, where the large majority of Chechens were deported, is stronger; in Kyrgyzstan, Chechens are a small minority, most notable for connections with some Chechens with organized crime networks.

The New Yorker:

• David Remnick, editor of the magazine and a journalist with extensive experience of Russia, profiles the Tsarnaev family's experience, concentrating particularly on the apparent alienation of the two brothers from the country they now found themselves in.


• I've already linked to Michael Idom's post considering the vissicitudes of Russian national identity two decades after the Soviet Union's end, specifically in relation to the Chechens. I thought I'd do so again.

Slate:

• Dave Cullen wonders if the Tsarnaev brothers were like Columbine massacre perpetrators Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, with elder brother Tamerlan leading a less dominant younger brother into the plot for company.


• Anne Applebaum argues that, with no evidence the Tsarnaev brothers were part of a transnational network, their alleged crimes fall into the same category as those committed by pattern of European second- and third-generation immigrant youth alienated from their societies.