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Marathon bombings: A week of mayhem Marathon bombings: A week of mayhem
(5 months later)
The nightmare that Boston experienced yesterday is one that could be repeated in almost any city around the world. No counter-terrorism plan could have prepared the city for the wild scenes that followed the publication of identifiable pictures of the two marathon bombers. No theory yet stacks up about their behaviour. They hung around in the city they had bombed. They had no getaway plan.The nightmare that Boston experienced yesterday is one that could be repeated in almost any city around the world. No counter-terrorism plan could have prepared the city for the wild scenes that followed the publication of identifiable pictures of the two marathon bombers. No theory yet stacks up about their behaviour. They hung around in the city they had bombed. They had no getaway plan.
They instigated the shootout, ambushing a university police officer, killing one and gravely injuring another. They even told the driver of the car they then hijacked that they were the marathon bombers everyone was looking for. They threw explosives out of the car as they were chased by police. One brother ran over the other, who wore explosives on himself. Other than to end what they started in a trail of home-made death, there appears to be no logic to their actions.They instigated the shootout, ambushing a university police officer, killing one and gravely injuring another. They even told the driver of the car they then hijacked that they were the marathon bombers everyone was looking for. They threw explosives out of the car as they were chased by police. One brother ran over the other, who wore explosives on himself. Other than to end what they started in a trail of home-made death, there appears to be no logic to their actions.
America has experience with self-motivated bombers and shooters – in Times Square and Fort Hood. But nothing could have prepared the law enforcement agencies for the sort of scenes they had to cope with yesterday: the greater urban area of Boston in virtual lockdown, all public transport shut down, thousands of residents forced to flee their homes and busloads of heavily armed police moved into an ever more tightly drawn siege. Their only concern was to stop more people dying. It is difficult to see what else they could have done.America has experience with self-motivated bombers and shooters – in Times Square and Fort Hood. But nothing could have prepared the law enforcement agencies for the sort of scenes they had to cope with yesterday: the greater urban area of Boston in virtual lockdown, all public transport shut down, thousands of residents forced to flee their homes and busloads of heavily armed police moved into an ever more tightly drawn siege. Their only concern was to stop more people dying. It is difficult to see what else they could have done.
Everyone should pause before wrapping some larger political narrative around the brothers' actions. Their father and uncle are stunned, disowning the bombing and shooting, and calling it a dishonour on their ethnic Chechen family. Nothing new there. But coming from a diaspora created by two brutal wars that Russia launched to crush separatism, it is not easy to place what the brothers did in Boston this week in any intelligible campaign. Chechen jihadis have been surfacing in a variety of battlegrounds outside Chechnya, against western-backed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but alongside radical Sunni opposition forces in Aleppo in Syria.Everyone should pause before wrapping some larger political narrative around the brothers' actions. Their father and uncle are stunned, disowning the bombing and shooting, and calling it a dishonour on their ethnic Chechen family. Nothing new there. But coming from a diaspora created by two brutal wars that Russia launched to crush separatism, it is not easy to place what the brothers did in Boston this week in any intelligible campaign. Chechen jihadis have been surfacing in a variety of battlegrounds outside Chechnya, against western-backed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but alongside radical Sunni opposition forces in Aleppo in Syria.
While radical Muslim Chechen militants have staged brutal terrorist attacks against theatres, trains, aeroplanes and the Moscow Metro, if it turns out the pair were radicalised by trips back to the North Caucasus, this would be the first time such tactics were used outside Russia. If this transpires to be the case, the marathon bombings should be anathema to all diaspora Chechens. They seek asylum from a barbaric regime in Grozny, whose leader has no qualms in ordering assassinations of his opponents abroad. They have no interest in bombing those who provide them with a new home.While radical Muslim Chechen militants have staged brutal terrorist attacks against theatres, trains, aeroplanes and the Moscow Metro, if it turns out the pair were radicalised by trips back to the North Caucasus, this would be the first time such tactics were used outside Russia. If this transpires to be the case, the marathon bombings should be anathema to all diaspora Chechens. They seek asylum from a barbaric regime in Grozny, whose leader has no qualms in ordering assassinations of his opponents abroad. They have no interest in bombing those who provide them with a new home.
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