Chechnya
Shortly after Barack Obama finished his press conference after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dramatic apprehension last night, a Russian newspaper reported that the president did not mention the “Russian footprint” in his address. READ MORE >>
Friday morning, America woke up to Chechnya. Two Chechen brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had become suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings, gunned down an MIT cop, and, in the ensuing chase, turned Boston into an eerily quiet war zone. Suddenly, everyone needed a primer on Chechnya, on the wars there, on its connections to Al Qaeda and the Free Syrian Army—despite the fact that we don't know whether their alleged acts were motivated by ideology. READ MORE >>
The U.S. hasn’t paid much attention to Chechnya since the early 2000s, when the Bush Administration largely declined to intervene as rebels fought a bloody war against Russia. But with the news that the suspected Boston bombers were ethnic Chechens who moved to the United States from Dagestan in 2002, it’s time to get caught up on the separatist, predominantly Muslim Caucasian province. We’ll have more soon, but here’s what to read now: READ MORE >>
Europe’s Other Crisis
Europe’s Angry Muslims: The Revolt of the Second Generation By Robert S. Leiken (Oxford University Press, 354 pp., $27.95) After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent By Walter Laqueur (Thomas Dunne Books, 322 pp., $26.99) READ MORE >>
Minsk Rumors
Russia’s Deep Despair
Do Republicans Love Killing Muslims?
M.J. Rosenberg, speaking at the New America Foundation, says that conservatives only like Israel because the Israeli Army kills Muslims: They are anti-Muslim. They do not like Muslims. They are on the side of Israel because Israel is — they don’t like Jews that much to start out with, either — but compared to Muslims, they like Jews fine. They’re infatuated with the Israeli army. Why? Because the Israeli army kills Muslims. I mean, this is what it’s all about... READ MORE >>
Nightmare in Chechnya
When it comes to war, it is a natural human tendency to identify good guys and bad guys—and sometimes, it is a sensible one. Around the world, there are, and always have been, conflicts in which the preponderance of evil clearly lies on one side: World War II, for example, or the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. READ MORE >>
The Party Line
Russia and the Arabs: Behind the Scenes in the Middle East from the Cold War to the Present By Yevgeny Primakov Translated by Paul Gould (Basic Books, 418 pp., $29.95) READ MORE >>
