Links

Luke Harding, on the collapse of the Litvinenko inquest (The Interpreter)

Masha Gessen, on why she is leaving Russia (The Lumière Reader)

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, on late capitalism, in correspondence with Slavoj Žižek  (The New Times - Russian)

Dexter Filkins, on the internal White House debate over Syria (The New Yorker)

David Satter, on what the Russians really knew about the Tsarnaev brothers (National Review Online)

Inside Out

In EDM, Mairbek Vatchagaev writes that "locating Tamerlan’s ideological trajectory in the North Caucasus may prove to be little more than a distraction." He points out that, with impaired links to Chechen culture, Tsarnaev appears to have been relatively isolated from the Chechen world, and probably picked up his Islamist views in Boston, from local Salafists. This would account for his hostility to U.S. Middle East policy, and his choice of the U.S., rather than Russia, as the target for a terrorist attack.

The article also draws attention to the fact that it was only some time after the Boston attack that the potential North Caucasus link began to be mentioned, giving the Moscow authorities an opportunity to become involved in the investigation:

In all this tragedy, Moscow seems to consider itself a winner. President Vladimir Putin said at a press conference that Russia had long sought cooperation from the US in the field of international terrorism (www.golos-ameriki.ru/content/putins-live-show/1648501.html). There was more of a reprimand of the US in Putin’s words than an admission of Russia’s own guilt for the attack in Boston. Moscow interprets terrorism in quite broad terms and includes everyone who is dissatisfied with the Russian political system and seeks to secede from Russia.

It has been observed that one point not addressed in the piece - though raised obliquely in one passage - is the question of whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev might have been a Russian agent.

Meanwhile, an RFE/RL report considers the role social media may have played in interactions between Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his Kazakh college friends Dias Kadyrbaev and Azamat Tazhayakov:

The vKontakte post by Kadyrbaev is striking mostly because of its timing. When it was posted there had already been reports of a shoot-out that had left one suspect dead and another on the run, but at the time, most of the world -- perhaps including police -- would still not have been able to connect a name to the grainy image of suspect no. 2 being shown on television screens. Kadyrbaev though, had allegedly already known for up to nine hours.

Boston: Leaks and Unanswered Questions

For reasons best known to themselves, the Russian security services are currently leaking a fairly large amount of information about the dead Boston marathon bomber suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. A Novaya Gazeta report published on April 27 gives data provided by Dagestan's Center for Combating Extremism which flatly contradicts an earlier interior ministry statement that Tsarnaev only spent 3 or 4 days in the republic in 2012. The new information says that in April 2012

 aгенты силовиков неоднократно «фиксировали» его вместе с неким Махмудом Мансуром Нидалем

 an 18-year old youth of Palestinian-Kumyk ethnicity whom they suspected of links with the Dagestani Islamic insurgency and of taking part in a terrorist attack on a police checkpoint in May 2012 (Nidal was killed during a special operation in Makhachkala on May 19 last year.)

Writing in EDM, Valery Dzutsev notes the NG report's description of the treatment given to the 21 year-old Russian-Canadian Muslim convert William Plotnikov, who was detained and tortured by Russian/Dagestani security services in the town of Izerbash south of Makhachkala in 2010, provided them with a list of contacts, including Tsarnaev, and was killed by Dagestani police in July 2012:

The Russian security services admitted they extensively interrogated Plotnikov, a suspected radical who was a citizen of Canada and possibly of Russia. The authorities interrogated Plotnikov in 2010 despite the fact that they had practically no incriminatory information on him and thus eventually released him. At the same time, they followed up on Tsarnaev, who allegedly met and had meetings with Mahmud Mansur Nidal, a known radical, but did not even bother to question Tsarnaev, who was even more susceptible to being interrogated by the Russians since he apparently was applying for a Russian passport and did not have US citizenship.

Dzutsev continues:

The Russian media displayed an uncharacteristic attitude toward the suspected terrorists. On April 28, one of the country’s major TV channels, NTV, featured an interview with the mother of suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, in which she again insisted that her sons had been “framed.” The substantive part of the interview revealed little that was new, but what was interesting was the very fact that she was featured on a major Russian TV channel (http://www.ntv.ru/peredacha/CT/m23400/o163397/).

This is not normally the way relatives of suspected terrorists are treated in Russia. On the one hand, Russian media are threatened by the law against “propagating terrorism,” and featuring a suspected terrorist’s mother would count as such an act. In addition, the relatives of suspected terrorists are often treated with suspicion, based on an implicit expectation that they could carry out an attack to avenge the killing of their relative. Zubeidat and Anzor Tsarnaev do not seem to have experienced any of these usual attitudes in Russia. If the Russian security services had prior information about Tamerlan’s attempt to join the North Caucasian insurgency, then they surely cannot trust his parents. Yet the Russian security services appear to be courting the parents instead of persecuting them. Zubeidat and Anzor Tsarnaev reportedly left Dagestan for Moscow. While in Dagestan, the police protected Anzor Tsarnaev from excessive contacts with journalists. This level of protection for someone whose sons are accused of terrorist activities, not only abroad, but also domestically, is highly unusual in Russia.

Update: Minding Russia has a complete translation of Irina Gordienko's Novaya Gazeta article, with more background and discussion.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and North Caucasus radicalism

Valery Dzutsev, writing in Eurasia Daily Monitor: 

Whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had some dealings with the Russian security services or with the North Caucasian insurgency—or with both—during his visit in 2012, the fact remains that less than a year after his lengthy trip he appears to have committed a terrorist attack on US soil. This invites a double-pronged response to the external side of the terrorist threat, contingent upon final results of the investigation.

First, the United States may have to start paying greater attention to resolving the conflict in the North Caucasus. The Russian authorities have emphasized that the situation in the region is an internal Russian affair, but in light of the latest events, the situation in the North Caucasus in all likelihood has started to have an adverse effect on other countries and ceased being simply Russia’s domestic matter. Second, the US should decide whether Russia has joined the cohort of states, such as Pakistan, where radicals are trained or inspired to carry out attacks against Western countries. If so, travel and extensive contacts with Russia by certain individuals will likely become more intensely monitored.