Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 19 – Even before the
dust settles in Boston, a Moscow commentator who has frequently anticipated and
then echoed the views of the Kremlin is seeking to make political capital out
of this horrific event by insisting that it shows that “Putin has been
absolutely right” in his criticism of the West’s positions on the North
Caucasus and the Middle East.
In a post picked
up by the Ekho Moskvy site, Sergey Markov, a member of Russia’s Social Chamber,
said that if current reports about Boston are correct then they are “clear
evidence” Vladimir Putin has been “absolutely right about the impermissibility
of supporting terrorist groupings when it suits Washington” (echo.msk.ru/blog/sergei_markov/1057010-echo/).
According
to Markov, such terrorist groups, having learned from their American supporters
then turn their fire on the United States.
“The US actively supported Al-Qaeda in the struggle against the USSR,
and then Ben Ladin began to kill Americans; it supported terrorists in Libya,
and then they killed the American ambassador [there. And] it supported Chechen
separatism, and now these terrorists are beginning to blow up Americans.”
“I
will not be surprised,” Markov continued, “if these terrorists arrived in the US
on the basis of some program of assistance to Chechen political refugees ‘from
Russian repression.’” And if the Chechen “traces” in Boston prove true, he
said, “then Russophobic politicians in Europe will need to draw their own
conclusions.”
That is because
the Europeans have “spent an enormous amount of money belong to their tax
payers on idiotic programs of assistance to Chechen refugees, and many of the latter
have formed terrorist groups in Germany, Sweden, Finland and France where they
are already robbing the citizens of these countries and soon will begin to blow
them up.”
“The catastrophic mistakes of the US and
the EU testify,” Markov argues, “abouttheir deep internal crisis and growing inability
for political leadership in the world. But despite their stupidity and harm,
[Russian] special services should provide assistance to their special services
in warding off the terrorist acts which are certainly being prepared and
provide assistance in the search for those who by their own stupidity they have
invited” into their countries.”
“But of course,” he continued, “one must
demand from the special services of the US and the European Union that they
hand over those terrorists which they are sheltering on the assumption that
they can be recruited and turned” into agents of American and European
interests.
Three things are striking about Markov’s
argument. First, Markov completely ignores the possibility that the young men
who carried out the terrorist actions in Boston did so not as Chechen
nationalists but as Islamist activists. Given
their biographies and past statements, the latter is far more likely and a far
different thing than ethno-national ones.
Over the last few years, Moscow has
stressed the increasingly Islamist nature of the militant underground in the
North Caucasus. But the very first time
it has had the occasion to make that distinction beyond the borders of that
region, it has gone back to blaming the Chechens as an ethnic group rather than
recognizing that those invovled may have been motivated by Islamist ideas.
Given that Chechen nationalists know
that launching a terrorist attack in a Western country would cost their cause
dearly, a point Chechen émigré leader Akhmed Zakayev made today (chechenpress.org/news/3587-zayavlenie-a-zakaeva-v-svyazi-s-teraktom-v-bostone.html), is it not
more plausible to assume in contrast to Markov that Islamist rather than ethnic
reasons were behind the Boston attack?
Moreover, exploiting the
oft-expressed notion that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, Markov and
undoubtedly the Kremlin behind him is seeking to exploit the horror in Boston
for a broad set of political goals, including a change in US and EU policy about
refugees and in the Middle East where Russia has been the chief supporter of
thuggish incumbent regimes.
Why should Chechens in Europe or the
US be victimized as a class because of the actions of a few individuals who
share only a common ethnic background?
Most Chechen refugees are committed to making a new life in the
countries that have given them refuge because they know what would happen to
them were they to be returned to their homeland now run by Putin’s friend, the
often brutal Ramzan Kadyrov.
Markov’s feelings notwithstanding,
how is Western support for those who overthrew the dictatorship of Libya’s
Muammar Qaddafi or are trying to remove Syria’s Bashir Asad related to the
horror that happened in Boston? Treating
the two together as one may make for good sloganeering, but it is far from
clear how these are really links in the same chain.
And finally, at a time when everyone
of good will should be praying for the victims and expressing hopes that those
responsible will be brought to justice, such a heartless discussion of the
tragedy that has played out in Boston raises almost as many questions about the
values of those who offer it as the tragedy does about the motivations of those
behind it.
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