Boston Bombing Suspects' Roots - A Primer from the National Security Network

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in an altercation with police this morning, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who tonight was taken into custody, are suspected of carrying out the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday. The brothers are reportedly of Chechen descent, with roots to the Russian Republic of Dagestan and the former Soviet Republics of either Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. 

The National Security Network (NSN), which was founded in June 2006 to revitalize America’s national security policy, just provided me with me an informative primer on these nations as they may relate to events unfolding today in Boston and around the world. The NSN material includes background on these locales as well as links to pertinent news stories.

Chechens have populated the mountainous Northern Caucasus for hundreds of years, according to NSN, which notes that while the subjects of Moscow's governance for two centuries, Chechnya has oscillated between de facto autonomy and being ruled by Moscow. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are reported to have left Russia in 2002 to come to the United States. 

Their uncle says that they never lived in Chechnya itself; reports indicate that Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six unaccounted-for months in Russia in 2012. Ethnic Chechens are dispersed throughout other parts of the former Soviet Union as well, discussed below in NSN’s comprehensive recap:

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From the National Security Network:

Chechen Terrorism (Russia, Chechnya, Separatist) 
Preeti Bhattacharji, Council on Foreign Relations, 4/8/13

Timeline: Chechnya 
BBC News, 1/19/2011

Chechnya. Kyrgyzstan. The Caucasus
Slate, 4/19/2013

9 Things You Need To Know About Chechnya 
Dan Oshinsky, BuzzFeed 4/19/2013

Chechnya's conflict has been ongoing throughout this generation

The fall of the Soviet Union led Chechen separatists to launch a coordinated campaign for independence and a continued Chechen insurgency, precipitating the First Chechen war (1994-1996). Parts of the insurgency took on an Islamist cast.  After 80,000 people had died, a peace deal was brokered in 1996 with an agreement on economic relations and reparations to Chechens affected by the war.

In response to two attacks by Chechens in Moscow, the Second Chechen War commenced in September 1999, Russian troops maneuvered into Chechnya and suppressed resistance through massive artillery fire.

The wars resulted in an exodus of Chechens - most to re-start peaceful lives as refugees and some to extremist groups. Chechens have been both perpetrators and victims of terror attacks inside Russia, most memorably in sieges of a Moscow movie theater in 2002 and an elementary school in Beslan, North Ossetia in 2004. In the last decade, Chechens have been connected to militant groups in the Middle East and South Asia, and faced charges in European countries.  The Washington Post notes that "in 2011, a Chechen-born man was sentenced in Denmark to 12 years in prison for preparing a letter bomb that exploded as he was assembling it in a Copenhagen hotel a year earlier.  Lors Doukayev, a then 25-year-old, one-legged resident of Belgium, was wounded when assembling the device, which is believed also to have been intended for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.  Two suspects, Elsy Issakov and Mourad Idrissov, were arrested in Paris and a third, Ali Dokaev, was detained in the town of Noyon, northeast of the French capital."

Analysis:

Putin's War in Chechnya: Who steers the course?
 Pavel K. Baev,  International Peace Research Institute, Oslo; via CSIS, 11/2004

Key Players in the Chechen Conflict New York Times via Agence France-Presse, 2000

  

Reported Russian Caucasus involvement in Boston bombings follow years of terror in Russia  Washington Post 4/19/2013

International Crisis Group Controversial Among Russian North Caucasus Experts Valery Dzutsev, Jamestown Foundation, 11/14/12

Getting the Caucasus Emirate Right Gordon M. Hahn, CSIS, 8/2011

The Alleged Dagestan Connection

The New York Times reports that the Tsarnaev family briefly lived in the capital of the Russian Republic of Dagestan before immigrating to the United States in 2002.

Dagestan is Chechnya's neighbor, the southernmost republic of the Russian Federation in the Northern Caucasus with a population of approximately 3 million, comprised of 32 indigenous ethnic groups and a small percentage of ethnic Russians. Dagestan has experienced ethnic tensions and intermittent violence since the First Chechen War in (1994-1996). Violence, however, has escalated considerably in the aftermath of the Second Chechen war (1999-2000), after which, in 2002, the Islamic insurgency Jamaat Shariat was formed with establishing Sharia Law among its goals and has since been a primary belligerent in hostilities. Unlike some surrounding conflicts, violence in Dagestan is not driven by nationalism or secessionism but by poverty, police abuses and religious conflict. The religiously-motivated conflict in the Dagestan is complex, primarily involving traditional SufiMuslims, a more conservative populations of SalafiMuslims - which Jamaat Shariat purports to represent - and secularists. In recent years, conflict has escalated dramatically. For example, in 2010, Dagestan experienced 685 casualties related to terrorism and insurgency - more than twice the number of casualties experienced in Chechnya the same year.

Inside the Deadly Russian Region the Tsarnaev Brother Used to Called Home  
Uri Friedman, Foreign Policy, 4/19/13

Dangerous Graft 
Tom Parfit, Foreign Policy, 3/23/11

Russia's Dagestan: Conflict Causes 
International Crisis Group, 6/3/08

The North Caucasus: Russia's Volatile Frontier 
Andrew C. Kuchins, Mathew Malarkey  and Sergei Markedonov, CSIS, 3/11

The Alleged Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan Connection

Conflicting reports identify the Tsarnaev brothers as having either lived Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan or having immigrated to the United States with Kyrgyzstan passports.

It would not be unusual for ethnic Chechens - as is allegedly is the case of the Tsarnaev brothers - to have originated or otherwise had ties to either of the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. In Soviet history, Chechens emigrated to both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, sometimes involuntarily, as was the case in 1944 after the 1940-44 Chechen Insurgency under Stalin. Kyrgyzstan has a population of over 5 million and has a large majority of ethnic Kyrgyz and Muslims, with a minority 20 percent practicing Russian Orthodox. Political instability has been acute in Kyrgyzstan since popular unrest in 2005 following questionable elections, after which largely peaceful opposition turned violent with the assassination of multiple members of parliament.  Kazakhstan is the largest of the former Soviet Republics with a population of just under 20 million, a majority of whom are ethnic Kazakhs - though religious affiliations are closely split between Russian orthodox and various sects of Islam.

Analysis:

Kyrgyzstan: Widening Ethnic Divisions in the South 
International Crisis Group, 3/29/12

           

Central Asia: Migrants and the Economic Crisis 
International Crisis Group, 1/5/10

Kazakhstan Introduces New Counter-terrorism Strategy 
Roger McDermott, the Jamestown Foundation, 4/9/13

Domestic Stability to Remain Kazakhstan's main priority in 2013 Georgiy Voloshin, 1/16/13 

BREAKING NEWS: San Diego Astronomers Help Discover Earth-Like Planets That Could Sustain LIfe

A team of astronomers, including two from San Diego State University, today announced the remarkable discovery of a five-planet system some 1,200 light years away with two super-Earth-sized planets that could support life as we know it.

The two planets, which both have what astronomers call "endless oceans," are the most Earth-like that researchers have found to date in terms of both size and temperature, according to William Welsh, professor of astronomy at SDSU and co-author of the study published today in Science. 

"These planets are unlike anything in our solar system. They have endless oceans," Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement today. "There may be life there, but could it be technology-based like ours?"

In an era when scientific research too often gets thrown under the bus both by politicians and the media, this is exciting news that deserves our attention. I hope it's talked about in science classes across the nation tomorrow. Funding for this work was provided in part by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The planets are located in the so-called "habitable zone," a region around a star where liquid water could theoretically exist on a planet’s surface. Since water is a requirement for life as we know it, planets in the habitable zone are particularly interesting to astronomers. 

 “The composition of the planets is not known, but it is possible they are rocky. If so, and if liquid water is present, there’s a chance these planets could harbor life,” said Welsh. “At only 60 percent and 40 percent larger than the Earth, these two super-Earth planets are the smallest planets yet discovered in the habitable zone.”

"These two planets are our best candidates for planets that might be habitable," said Bill Borucki, a space scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center who is the principal investigator for the $600 million Kepler mission.

It's estimated that he new planetary system, which is located in the constellation Lyra, is approximately 7 billion years. That's somewhat older than the solar system.

The planetary system, known as Kepler-62 (right), contains five planets, ranging from 0.54 to 1.95 times the size of the Earth. The innermost planet orbits its star every 5.7 days, while the outer one takes 267 days to complete one orbit.

The star itself is smaller and fainter than Earth’s sun with 69 percent of the sun’s mass, 64 percent of the sun’s radius, and only 21 percent of the sun’s brightness.

“Since Kepler-62’s star is only a fifth as luminous as our sun, the planets in its habitable zone have to orbit much closer to it, resulting in a much shorter year," said co-author Jerome Orosz, associate professor at SDSU. "For the two planets in the habitable zone, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f, this is 122 and 267 days."

Welsh and Orosz have been working on the Kepler mission since 2008, contributing their expertise to the discovery of dozens of new planets. “The Kepler mission continues to be a great success,” said Orosz.

Added Welsh, "All five planets are smaller than twice the size of the Earth, and one is even the size of Mars,.This is an absolute gem of a planetary system."