Daily Times

When the news of the recent Boston bombings flashed through multimedia sources, most people in the US, and many in the world, feared the worst. The fear was that it was another of the al Qaeda plots or some other like-minded Islamic jihadist group revisiting the United States on the lines of the September 11 bombings that killed around 3,000 people. Even after it seemed fairly clear that the new tragedy was nowhere near that scale, people waited for more bombs to explode, not knowing how deep the tentacles of this supposedly new jihadist plot were. When it was found that it was the work of two brothers of Chechen/Dagestan origin who had spent over 10 years growing up and educated in the US, the question the authorities would now like to explore is: why did they do it? Of the two brothers, 26 and 19 years of age, the older died in a shootout with the police, and the younger was nabbed hidden in a boat of a suburban house. Obviously, he would face lengthy interrogation, as and when he recovers, to help the authorities fill in the gaps of this terrible tragedy killing three people and injuring over 260.

The casualties by themselves do not convey the scale of the tragedy but the accompanying scenario of what might have been a terrorist plot, with international ramifications, tended to make it into a hydra-headed monster. American people can live with their internal gun slingers and crazy killers targeting school children and the likes but put in a Muslim name or names (in this case Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who has been killed, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is seriously wounded) and you have a terrorist plot with al Qaeda connection! Apparently, these two guys of Chechen/Dagestan origin, living in the United States for over ten years, could not be other than Islamic terrorists, while the one who killed 26 people (20 of them children) at a US school, is just a lone mental case with access to army-type guns and ammunition. When the two pressure cooker bombs exploded near the finishing line of the Boston Marathon, the immediate conclusion in many people’s minds was that it was bigger than what it seemed with al Qaeda imprints and connection.
An immediate question would arise, and should have been raised that if it were part of an al Qaeda connection, which supposedly is a global centre somewhere with all the resources, why would these two guys be packing nails and ball bearings in a pressure cooker to create terror? They would have done something much more dramatic and lethal. Couldn’t these two guys be simply loners like other homegrown killers who simply got lost in the vast American melting pot?

There is a difference here, though. The older brother, now killed, seems to have turned to religion, with suggestions of Islamic radicalism. He is said to have visited Dagestan and was turning to watching videos of jihadist preachers. It is not surprising though that some people turn to religion when they cannot make sense of things around them. Tamerlan is reported to have said at some point that he had no American friends and really did not understand these people. Which would mean that he was deeply alienated from his adopted country, and was looking for a spiritual connection with his old religion and culture that took him to visit Dagestan, where an on-off Muslim insurgency against Russian rule goes on.
At that time, the FBI (then reportedly asked by Russian authorities about Tamerlan’s antecedents) had given him a clean chit, though the agency is now coming under intense criticism from some quarters in the US for taking him off their radar. So far, there is no proof that the two brothers were part of any internal or international terrorist plot. Indeed, the regional umbrella group, The Mujahideen of the Caucasus, has denied any link with the brothers saying that they (the Mujahideen) “are not fighting against the United States of America. We are at war with Russia, which is not only responsible for the occupation of the Caucasus but also for heinous crimes against Muslims.”

But in the United States, since the 9/11 tragedy, there is a tendency to tar a crazy or demented Muslim(s), prone to killing for whatever reasons, with global terrorism. And there was even suggestion at some political level, though thankfully rejected by the US authorities, that Dzhokhar should be treated as an ‘enemy combatant’ and locked up like the Guantanamo Bay detainees. It appears that he will be charged with using weapon (s) of mass destruction to create mayhem, which seems like resurrecting the Saddam era non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD). How two pressure cooker bombs become weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is a little difficult to comprehend. When it comes to any suggestion of terrorism, there is a tendency in the US to jump to pre-ordained conclusion. But, at least, in the case of Tsarnaev brothers, no such connection is emerging because there is none. According to Thomas Menino, the Mayor of Boston, “All of the information that I have [suggests] they acted alone, these two individuals, the brothers.”

It would, therefore, appear that they got lost somewhere along the way in their lives, the younger brother, 19, greatly influenced by his 26-year elder brother who got drawn to religion. Piecing together Tamerlane’s narrative of his short 26-year life, moving from one place to another within the Caucasus, in Kyrgyzstan and the United States, The New York Times reported, “Wherever he went, though, he did not quite seem to fit in. He was a Chechen who had never really lived in Chechnya, a Russian citizen whose ancestors were viciously oppressed by the Russian government, a green card holder in the US whose path to citizenship seemed at least temporarily blocked.”

In their search for some sort of identity and sense of belonging, the bothers turned to religion, which too failed them except in a creepy sort of way of lunging out at their adopted country at the Boston Marathon. This was a heinous crime visited on their adopted homeland that had given them refuge from turbulent times in the Caucuses. With Tamerlane killed in a police shootout and Dzhokhar awaiting justice, people of Boston have suffered grievously. And worse in some ways, it has reignited the trauma of terrorist violence, even though this act, on the evidence so far, had no link with al Qaeda or any other Islamic terrorist outfit.
As the University of Michigan anthropologist Scott Atron has written, “What we already know about the April 15 bombing does not justify the disproportionate and over-wrought response, including the ‘global security alert’ US authorities issued through Interpol for 190 countries.” He added, “By amplifying and connecting relatively sporadic acts into a generalised ‘war’ or ‘assault on freedom’, the somewhat marginal phenomenon of terrorism has become a primary preoccupation of the US government and American people.”

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.co.au