Chechnya: How a remote Russian republic became linked with terrorism

The main suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing are two brothers from Chechnya, a Russian republic that has been the scene of cyclical revolts and brutal crackdowns for the past 200 years.

What is Chechnya like today?

Rasul Yarichev/Reuters/File
Actor Gerard Depardieu (r.) poses for a picture with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov during a meeting at the presidential residence in Grozny in February 2013.

In 2009 the Kremlin declared victory in Chechnya, pulled its army out, and left the republic under control of a pro-Moscow strongman named Ramzan Kadyrov. Under Mr. Kadyrov, Chechnya has enjoyed a stunning economic rebirth, financed mainly by subsidies from Moscow.

But Russian human rights monitors allege the republic has become a legal black hole, where opponents of Kadyrov are rounded up by official death squads, and critical journalists sometimes turn up bullet-ridden and dead on the side of the road. In defiance of the Russian constitution, critics say, Kadyrov is also imposing sharia law in the republic, and meting out punishment to those who disobey.

Still, Kadyrov can rightly claim – as he routinely does to visiting celebrities – that Chechnya is practically the safest place in the turbulent northern Caucasus these days.

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