The Tsarnaev Conundrum 120


Cui Bono? Putin. The alleged actions of the Tsarnaev brothers are a massive setback to the cause of Chechen nationalism. The Russian government have been trying for a decade to conflate the repression of Chechen nationalism with the western construct of “the global war on terror”, with very limited diplomatic success. Now expect to hear continually about “Al Qaeda in the Southern Caucasus” in the next few years. Events in Boston have been a massive diplomatic coup for Putin.

In the late 1830’s, Palmerston launched a (disastrous) secret service operation to ship weapons to anti-Russian rebels in modern Chechnya and Dagestan. This was contributory to the tensions that caused the First Anglo-Afghan War, and will feature in my forthcoming biography of Alexander Burnes. For almost two hundred years now there has been covert Western encouragement of anti-Russian movements in the Caucasus – which is not to say that the West was involved in or encouraged the urban terrorist wing of the Chechen nationalist movement in modern times. But links between Chechen nationalists and the US government have been maintained, and there is no support whatsoever among any significant Chechen nationalist leadership for the Boston bombings.

I cannot recommend too highly “Darkness at Dawn” by David Satter, a book which is crucial to an understanding of a key part of the modern world. Satter sets out an extremely strong case, from eyewitness interviews at the time, that The “Chechen” apartment bombings which paid such a crucial part in building the cult of Putin, were false flag – something which the British Embassy in Moscow also strongly inclined to believe. There is a history of false Chechen bombings being very helpful to Putin. These bombings are very helpful to Putin.

It is perfectly possible that this is not relevant at all, and the Tsarnaev brothers became radicalised in the United States by real, and non-Chechen related, terrorists, or simply auto-radicalised. But presuming the Tsarnaevs really did plant these bombs, just who was ultimately pulling the strings and why may be an extremely complex question – and one to which young Dzokhar Tsarnaev is most unlikely to know the real answer.


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120 thoughts on “The Tsarnaev Conundrum

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  • Tony Gosling

    One of the lad’s mums is on Sky news just now reporting that the FBI have been working with or on these 2 suspects for the last 5 years… Allowing then to amass explosives? Grenades?

  • larry Levin

    Was Litvinenko killed because he knew that the moscow bombings were false flag operations carried out by Putin’s agents to discredit Chechens in the eyes of russians and pave the way for brutal war?

  • craig Post author

    Larry,

    Well, it was one of the things he was saying, but then it’s hardly a secret. He was killed pour decourager les autres, to misquote.

  • guano

    I am very happy to learn that the US is feeding the Syrians through its Muslim friends while squeezing Assad to death. The sooner the better inshallah.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-feeds-syrians-but-secretly/2013/04/14/bfbc0ba6-a3b3-11e2-bd52-614156372695_story.html

    Radio 4’s Question time from the US last night exposed the US speakers as having swallowed Obama’s arguments in favour of drones hook line and sinker. Maybe they need blowing up, in some people’s minds, and that argument can persuade a Chechyan to get involved in a false-fag crime.

    The place was crawling with agents, whose purpose would surely be to search people carrying rucksacks. Cui bono? A chance for diverting attention from the UKUSISRUSSCHINEUROSAUDIQATAR false flag events in Syria to a Humungous outrage on US citizens at home.

  • Chris2

    from russia today’s website

    “The United States and Russia have agreed to increase their cooperation in the fight against terrorism following the deadly bombings in the American city of Boston.

    “In a telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the means to step up cooperation between Washington and Moscow on security issues, the Kremlin said in a statement.

    “‘Both sides underscored their interest in bolstering the close cooperation of Russian and US special services in the fight against international terrorism,’ the statement further read.

    “Meanwhile, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in televised remarks that “contacts will be conducted between our intelligence services.”……

  • Davy de Verteuil

    As I saw folks weep I wondered: do Syria Iraqi Somali African Yemeni Pakistani infants weep or do they have names? Rucksacks & Drone explosions kill. Putin raised false flags, sufficient to get want he wanted unlike his detractors in the West that gave us False flags to blatant Droning. America never had measure on its madness

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    “It is possible that she is saying that Anzor Tsarnaev was a soldier or security policeman for the pro-Russian Chechnyan government of Akhmet Kadyrov, established in 1999 in the course of the Second Chechnya War against the Islamic Peacekeeping Army, which had invaded Daghestan.”

    Then there’s this which was news to me….

    “Most ex-Soviet Muslims are secular and many don’t believe in God or think religion is important. Their families lived under a Communist regime for some 70 years, with its campaigns of official atheism and anti-religious indoctrination in schools. In the ex-Soviet Muslim-heritage republics, there are huge struggles between those happy in their secularism and those who are attempting to recover a Muslim identity. That struggle has played out in Chechnya as well as in Uzbekistan.”

    http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/fathers-sons-chechnya.html

  • Jemand

    Interesting post, Mr M.

    Unfortunately, we might never learn what the surviving Tsarnaev brother has to say. If he was involved in these bombings, and the conspiracy comprised more than just two angry young men acting on their own volition, he might be offered a deal to beat the death sentence to prevent geopolitical intelligence from being revealed in a public trial. Then again, the fact that the brothers are Chechen and Muslim could be completely irrelevant and there might be an altogether different, politically unremarkable explanation. We’re just going to have to wait and see. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to what conspiracy theory (of the crackpot variety) pops up first.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    The FBI interview I posted above said he was interviewed at the request of a ‘foreign government’ Which one? Russia.

    The FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the brothers suspected in the Boston bombings, in 2011, two U.S. law enforcement officials told ProPublica Friday evening. The FBI agents conducted the inquiry into suspected extremist or terrorist activity at the request of a Russian security agency, the officials said.

    “Yes he was interviewed,” a U.S. law enforcement official said. “Nothing derogatory came of it. We reported it back to the other agency, but never got anything as far as further communications from them. There was never any reason to do anything else.”

    http://www.propublica.org/article/boston-bombing-suspects-echo-home-grown-terrorists-in-madrid-london-att#

  • Fathful Reader

    Craig,

    While you now acknowledge the concept of a false-flag attack, do you still maintain that the most spectacular and obvious false-flag attack in history, was not, in fact, a false-flag attack? Because that’s the one thing that stops me taking you seriously.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    “On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called “mounting criticism” is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum – and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin’s handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov – men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west’s beloved Boris Yeltsin – and the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank – which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia’s role in helping the US restructure the “Greater Middle East” – has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow’s claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/usa.russia

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    “Author John Laughland wrote: “the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled ‘distinguished Americans’ who are its members is a roll call of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the ‘war on terror.’

    “They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be ‘a cakewalk’; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R. James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush’s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.”

    http://consortiumnews.com/2013/04/19/chechen-terrorists-and-the-neocons/

  • Kempe

    “In the meantime, I’m looking forward to what conspiracy theory (of the crackpot variety) pops up first.”

    Try the David Icke forums. The paranoid loons there were convinced it was a false flag attack, and a staged one at that, before the dust had settled. They’ve come to the same conclusion over Sandy Hook and the London helicopter crash. Hard evidence isn’t high on their priority list obviously.

  • Stephen Morgan

    Apparently he had a VK (like a Russian Facebook) page, one of them. And born not in Chechnya, but Kyrgyzstan. I also saw a site post a link to his Amazon wish list, which contained a couple of books about how to speak Chechnyan, among true crime books, organised crime books, and cassette tape about voice training.

  • Anonymous

    Why this talk about Chechnya?
    We have no info about their motives, although that this somewhat was a chechynya-attack is nonsense.
    Lets not fall in the msm-boogeyman trick to blame chechnyans or muslims for this act.

  • Parky

    I’d like to see the real evidence presented, so far we only know what we’ve been told with the now normal hysterical wall-to-wall tv and newspaper coverage since Monday’s bombings.

    You can always tell there’s something odd going on, when Sky news covers a partiicular story and throws every available resource at it and gives it maximum exposure.

    Maybe some Americans reading this blog can comment if it’s the normal practice state-side to “lock-down” a whole city and call out the armed militia when there’s a man-hunt in progress. Afterall a murder or two in “America” is hardly a rare occurance.

    Quite amazing that they have so many tooled up monkeys on-hand waiting to kick-ass and harrass joe public, what on earth do they do when there’s no emergency, hand out speeding tickets ? It’s really very scary place and best avoided if at all possible.

  • Billy Bob

    so Craig Murray is a conspiracy theorist along the lines of 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

    false flag operations, sophisticated double or triple bluffs, etc, etc.

    Unbelievable this person used to be a diplomat or something if i remember right?

    The simple explanation is some Muslims set some bombs off in America.

    Occam’s razor.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Connecting the dots does require some curiosity.

    Let’s all build a campfire and sing some songs…:)

  • Billy Bob

    Yes, connecting the dots.

    That phrase is often used, isn’t it.

    I’m sure we can look forward to all kinds of ‘analysis’ of this tragic but straightforward amateur terrorist attack from all kinds of loons.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Yet you keep returning to absorb more, or deflect and obfuscate. Toodle loo…

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/us/boston-marathon-bombings.html

    “Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed early Friday after a shootout with police in Watertown, Mass., traveled to Russia for six months in 2012. Law enforcement officials are now conducting a review of that trip to see if Mr. Tsarnaev might have met with extremists or received training from them while abroad, current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials said.”

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    I’m warming some formula for you as we speak. Solid food later.

  • Billy Bob

    Ok, I’m assuming he went to Chechenya. (Technically part of Russia). Or maybe Dagestan.

    Either of which is considered a front line for Al Quaida and there are numerous Islamic terrorists there.

    So I’m just wondering what’s weird about a terrorist doing that.

  • Billy Bob

    except everybody with a functioning brain knows that Iran is Shiite and nothing to do with the radical Sunni Islamic terrorists in southern russia, presumably.

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