Last week on NBC, Vladimir Putin, briefly stated the Tsarnaev brothers came from an area with a long history of war and terrorism. Although Putin seemed aggravated beneath his calm countenance, he has a point. The Tsarnaev family came from Chechnya and frequently moved in order to avoid war. Within Tamerlan and Dzhokhar’s lives alone, they endured the fall of the Soviet Union, and two major Chechnya wars.
One college acquaintance, Eric Machado, mentioned that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev once said, “In relation to acts of terrorism, he said ‘it was not a serious issue if you come from a place where I come from.” This bothered Machado, making him more alert about Dzhokhar’s feelings toward the sensitive subject of terrorism in post-9/11 America. Dzhokhar came from an entirely different world, and it is important to understand that world, why he felt that way toward terrorism, and why he assisted his brother, Tamerlan, in committing the Boston Marathon bombing. Why did this seem normal or acceptable? Take any American and have him/her raised in Chechnya or the surrounding areas, and the same person would have a vastly different world view.
Tsarnaev Family History
On October 21, 1986, Tamerlan was born in Northern Caucasus when it was a Soviet state. He lived through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and in 1992, the Tsarnaev family moved to Chechnya to return to their origin. Due to the upcoming first Chechnya War, the family fled 2,300 miles to the country of Kyrgyzstan.
On July 22, 1993, Dzhokhar was born in a Chechen refugee camp in Kyrgyzstan. In 1999, the family moved to Dagestan, which borders Chechnya on the East side. In April 2002, Dzhokhar and his father, Anzor, immigrated to the US, applying for political asylum. Tamerlan arrived later in the same year. Dzhokhar became a naturalized US citizen on September 11, 2012. Recently, the family endured divorce, and Anzor moved back to Dagestan.
Chechnya History – (1986-2002)
Chechnya has a long history of struggling dating back to Russia’s acquirement of the country in the late 1800’s to expand their empire. Since the beginning, Chechnya never truly submitted to Russian rule. However, discussing the history would be lengthy, and the purpose of this entry is to focus on the years the Tsarnaev brothers lived in the region and surrounding areas, and how these experiences could have influenced them.
America has a history of war, but America is not war-torn. The Persian Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghanistan War were exclusively overseas, and our country was unmarred with the exception of the September 11 attacks. During these times, the majority of American children attended school and played on the playground with no fear of insurgents or enemy invasion. For the Tsarnaev family, childhood was an unsafe time where terrorism “is not a serious issue if you come from a place where I come from.”
The Fall of the Soviet Union
Chechnya was anticipating their independence in wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. On October 27, 1991, Dzhokhar Dudayev was elected as the Chechen president, winning with a 90% vote.
On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union ended. Chechnya may have been joyous, awaiting their official independence, however they most likely suffered economically along with other surrounding regions. The USSR’s downfall affected some sections of Russia positively, and others did not fare well, such as the violence in the country, Georgia.
Coldwar.org perkily recants the fall of the Soviet Union as a victory. Only showing the Western perspective, the site cheers the end of the cold war and the red scare, without realizing the repercussions endured by the USSR. One of my former coworkers (whose name I will not disclose without her permission) lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, and she said it was horrible. She lived in Azerbaijan at the time, and when walking into the grocery store, there was no food. Shelves were empty. It was chaos. People would steal rampantly. If her family did find food, they took as much as possible. Her example was if there were only potatoes left in the store, they were only going to live on potatoes for the whole week.
Tamerlan was in North Caucasus, age 5, and Dzhokhar was not yet born. While millions of five-year-olds in America whined over eating their vegetables, children in some parts of the fallen Soviet states had no food. No one could afford to be picky and demand something else, while Americans happily ate hotdogs, potato chips, and fast food. Ex-Soviet children went to bed hungry, while American children would claim to be full then request dessert in the next breath. There is nothing wrong with children enjoying a prosperous nation with full stocked grocery stores, but the point is to compare the perspectives to the less fortunate.
The First Chechen War - (1994-1996)
Even though Dzhokhar Dudayev was elected president of Chechnya and he openly declared independence in 1991, Russia did not acknowledge it. In 1993, Chechnya declared official, full independence, and Russia still did not confirm it. There are two main reasons why Russia will not let go of Chechnya. 1. Chechnya has direct access to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which are rich in oil. 2. There are oil and gas pipelines already going through the Chechnya region, and the pipelines are owned by Russia. Uninstalling the pipes and forfeiting the oil would hurt the Russian economy and their trade with the Middle East. The Chechens during the first war simply wanted freedom.
Russian forces tried to overthrow Dudayev in 1993 and 1994, but failed. In August 1994, political opponents bombed a telephone station and a railroad in Moscow. Dudayev called for a state of emergency in September 1994, limiting entry and exit to the region, closing roads, and enforcing a curfew.
December was the deadliest point in the war. On December 10 through 11, 1994, Russian troops and Pro-Russian Chechens invaded Chechnya to re-establish Pro-Russian government. They targeted military and civilians. They bombarded the capital, Grozny, with 4,000 detonations per hour, destroying the city. Residential and public buildings, a hospital, and an orphanage were demolished. About 100,000 people were killed.
Chechen separatists reacted by taking people hostage. During May 1995, in a Budennovsk hospital, Chechen rebels seized hundreds of hostages. Russian forces killed over 100 people trying to stop them. This was only once hostage incident led by Chechen separatists.
The war continued with Russia making indiscriminate attacks, and Chechens fighting back with terror. Both sides tortured and executed. About 1,500 Russian troops and 25,000 civilians were killed by April 1995.
The war ended with the assassination of Dzhokhar Dudayev on April 21, 1996. An aircraft carrying a satellite directed missile aimed and a shell hit him when he was using his cell phone. Despite Russia winning the war, the public opinion of Russia was lowered immensely. Human rights organizations denounced Russia’s military actions. Russia made more violations of international humanitarian rights and human rights than the Chechen separatists did. Russia also prevented civilians from being evacuated during attacks including the bombing in Grozny on the fateful two days in December 1994.
The Tsarnaevs at this point
The Tsarnaev family was lucky enough to have left Chechnya by 1993. Still, they were living in a refugee camp in Kyrgyzstan, where Dzhokhar would soon be born. The camp was filled with other Chechens with whom they could all identify. Knowing that the capital of their beloved homeland was destroyed and 100,000 of their own people were killed within two days by 4,000 explosives per hour inevitably had an effect on the Chechen refugees, the Tsarnaev family; including their two sons. Tamerlan was 8, and Dzhokhar was only 1 when the December attacks in Grozny occurred. Throughout the duration of the first war, Tamerlan was ages 8-9 ½, and Dzhokhar was ages 1-2 ¾. Tamerlan was more impressionable at that point; more able to intelligently perceive what was going on with his world. Plus he was influenced by his fellow Chechen refugees and his deeply religious family. Tamerlan would later influence his brother, Dzhokhar, with his acquired perspective of reality.
Comparatively 4,000 bombs per hour makes 2 bombs in a day in Boston seem mild; not nearly as atrocious.
On a side note, is it any coincidence that Dzhokhar’s name is the same as the first Chechen president’s? Dzhokhar is not in the top 10 most popular names in Russia. It is possible that Dzhokhar was a very popular Chechen name due to Dudayev’s significance. The parents were probably pro-separatists, but not necessarily terrorists because Dudayev was pro-independence but not truly violent.
Returning to comparison, Western life was heavily contrasted to the struggles in Southern Russia, past and present.
In America, babies are born in hospitals, not refugee camps. American children at Tamerlan’s age commonly have simpler problems such as receiving a bad grade on a test, bickering with siblings over the remote, and not wanting to dress up in ugly clothes on special occasions. The only war-cries are from children pretending to battle with Nerf guns. They only play war. The sounds of bombs do not haunt their memories. However, there are horrific cases of child abuse, sexual abuse, bullying, school shootings, etc. Though the whole country is not in a constant state of fear, and terrorist attacks and bombings do not occur as often in America as it did in the Southern regions of Russia.
The Second Chechen War – (1999-2006)
General Aleksandr Lebed promised to give aid to Chechnya for the damage sustained from the first war. He never gave it. As a result, there were more radicals, and gangs grew larger, and extremism flourished.
In August 1996, the Khasavyurt accords were signed by Chechnya. In December 1996, the Russian military withdrew from Chechnya. Almost immediately thereafter, Chechen gangs conducted a series of kidnappings. In 1996-1999, 1,300 people were kidnapped. Victims included Russian military conscripts, Yeltsin’s envoy, Russian television journalists, and 60 foreigners.
In March 1999, Russia’s most vital envoy to Chechnya, General Gennady Shpigun, was abducted in an airport in Grozny. Russia reacted by deploying troops to the Chechen border, and threatened attack if he was not released. In the same month, there was an explosion in Vladikavkaz, North Caucus, killing 60 people.
In August 1999, Vladimir Putin was elected Prime Minister, and he refused to negotiate with the Chechen rebels because they were terrorists.
In October 1999, Russian originally claimed that they invaded just to capture bandits hiding in the Chechen mountains, but their real reason was to compensate for the humiliation of Russia’s reputation. They called their new war, the “Crusade against terrorism.” To some degree the idea was buyable since Chechnya violated the Khasavyurt accords by not fulfilling the need to stop crime and terrorism. Since the first war, Chechnya became crime ridden and lawless.
An unknown number of thousands were killed on both sides. Both Russia and Chechen separatists were exaggerating their death tolls on the offensive side and minimizing their own casualties, thus a proper death toll was never confirmed. It also revealed their priorities in what each side wanted to believe. Both sides strived to kill, and thought that whoever lost the most people was the loser. They minimized their losses because they were afraid of looking weak. Each wanted to optimize enemy deaths as if they were keeping score. Though, the scores were not calculated honestly. Their egos were in winning the war, not as much regarding human life. They did not care about the people they killed, just how many.
The Chechen rebel commander during the beginning of the war was Shamil Basayev, and his army was known as Riyadus Salihin. He was later replaced by an Islamic radical, Doku Umarov. By 2002, Chechen rebels became more Islamic. Implementing Sharia Law became a new goal in addition to Chechnya's independence. Attacks after this point included suicide bombings, and the notorious Beslan Massacre in 2004.
The Tsarnaevs at this point
The Tsarnaev family “fled” to Dagestan due to the Second Chechen War. They may still have been fleeing problems in Kyrgyzstan or they moved again to Chechnya or North Caucasus before 1999. By the end of 2002, the family immigrated to the US and settled in Boston, Massachusetts. During these years, Tamerlan was 13-16, and Dzhokhar was 5-8 years old. Dzhokhar spent the remainder of his childhood in America. Most of Tamerlan’s youth was spent in a refugee camp or near warzone countries.
American teenagers experience unrequited love, malicious gossip, family tensions, and other typical first world problems - not civil war, nor terrorist kidnappings. Although there are bad neighborhoods filled with gangs in America – at least it is not the whole country that is populated with gangs.
Tamerlan became an Islamic radical, and was closely watched by the FBI and the Russian FSB. In contrast, Dzhokhar embraced Western culture. He loves American TV shows, junk food, music, etc. According to his tweets on Twitter, he loves the shows, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, and Breaking Bad; music artists such as Dr. Dre and Peter Frampton, and other things like Nutella, Frosted Flakes, and Pizza. He liked sleeping, playing with a Rubik’s Cube, and wanted a BMW. However in regards to America, he tweeted, “a decade in America already, i want out.” This could have been part of his façade covering his darker side, or he was truthful and he was only omitting his Chechen terrorist side.
©2013 Caroline Friehs
Originally posted: May 1, 2013
References
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