U.S., Russia 'reset' button must focus on counterterrorism

May 9 marks the 68th anniversary of Moscow’s Victory Day celebrating the Soviet Union’s triumph in World War II. The anniversary puts President Vladimir Putin on the world stage from Moscow.  

Arguably the benefactor from America’s “Reset Button,” Putin won an unprecedented third term largely through outmaneuvering his U.S. counterpart thereby fostering resurgent nationalism within Russia.  

Putin got the better deal in the New START agreement on nuclear arms reduction, has continued to test U.S. resolve with submarine patrols in the Gulf of Mexico and strategic bomber fly-bys off Alaska and Guam, all the while supporting anti-U.S. regimes in Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela.  

Today’s shared problems of radical-Islam inspired terrorism gives a chance to Russian intelligence services to seek cooperation with American and other Western intelligence services.

Meanwhile, America has inherited one of Russia’s principal threats: Chechen terrorists.

Some “Reset Button.”

The Boston Marathon's IED aka "improvised explosive device" attacks carried out by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, two ethnic Chechen brothers, should convince Team Obama that we must have closer cooperation on counterterrorism efforts with Russia – and finally get something in return for the “Reset” olive branch.

While Russian and U.S. authorities had the Tsarnaev family on their scopes for years, including the assailants’ mother Zubeidat, neither side acted quickly or decisively enough to prevent the massacre.  

And while Russia shared intelligence with U.S. counterparts, it seemingly scratched the surface of what they knew, and fell woefully short of the cooperation needed to stop such attacks.  

We must do better.

On April 29, 2013, President Putin and President Obama reached an agreement to strengthen contacts between Russian and American security agencies. According to Putin, if Moscow and Washington are able to join efforts, they will be able to successfully combat terrorism in the future and avoid suffering losses.

The fact that Russian authorities had informed the FBI in 2011 about connections of Boston bombers to Chechen terrorists shows that Russia wants to cooperate with America in fighting terrorism.

Though the FBI did question Tamerlan Tsarnaev, it apparently gave him only a cursory look before wrongly determining he did not post a threat.  

Perhaps the FBI didn’t pursue him further owing to a lack of trust for Russian security agencies – successors of the long-standing rival Soviet KGB? 

After all, the KGB had a history of support for terrorist organizations. Or perhaps the FBI didn’t trust Russian counterparts as they believed the fight for Chechen independence was primarily secular in nature, and not inspired by radical Islam?

While that was the case early in Chechnya’s struggle starting in 1991 just after the Soviet Union crumbled, the initially secular and ethnic fight to become its own oil-rich nation transformed itself into a jihadist war designed to establish an Islamic state, largely because of a decade of Russian overkill against Chechen civilians that caused at least 100,000 deaths.  

Such a strong response from Moscow provoked an international jihad, inadvertently turning Chechnya into a breeding ground for terrorists, as thousands of young men flocked from mostly Muslim-majority countries to earn money and taste adventure, in the name of defending fellow Muslims.  

Moscow itself suffered a series of retaliatory deadly terrorist attacks at apartment buildings, subways, a theater, a school and more.

So how can the U.S. and Russia better cooperate on counterterrorism today?

First, they must place more trust in one another on information sharing against potential terror threats.  The U.S. should more fully investigate Russian tips, and the Russians should share all their cards.

Second, they should work together to promote human rights, greater autonomy and economic freedom in places like Chechnya and Dagestan, which would help foster meaningful alternatives to the jihadist narrative of holy war in order to achieve their goals.

Third, they should collaborate more closely with Central Asia republics such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan to develop more effective networks to monitor and infiltrate radical Islamists groups. 

Long before Sept. 11, Central Asian governments recognized the danger of radical Islamists to their own existence. They undertook tough measures against radical Islamists to de-legitimize the strict ideology of Wahhabism and limit its influence on local Muslims, deterring youth from joining terror groups.

Today’s shared problems of radical-Islam inspired terrorism gives a chance to Russian intelligence services to seek cooperation with American and other Western intelligence services. Such cooperation matches national interests of both the U.S. and Russia and may help to avoid tragedies like Boston in the future.  

Dr. Evgueni Novikov is a scholar with the Center for Secure Free Society in Washington, D.C. Novikov is a former senior official in the International Department of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. Following his defection to the U.S. in 1988, he served on the faculty at the U.S. Naval War College and George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.

J.D. Gordon is a retired Navy Commander who served as a Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-09. He is a communications consultant to several Washington, D.C.-based think tanks.

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Boston bombing suspect's mother looking to send body back to Russia

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An employee at the funeral home trying to find a burial site for the body of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev tells Fox News that his mother has expressed interest in sending it back to Russia, as cemeteries are refusing to accept the remains.

Joseph Gliniecki, of Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors, said Monday that the funeral home is “exploring that as an option" and would have to file necessary paperwork with the Russian Embassy in the U.S.

He said the decision on the body will be up to the family, but added that the mother would like to send it back to Russia for burial “if at all possible.”

"Everyone wants him sent back to Russia," said Peter Stefan, the director of the home, according to NBC News.

Stefan pledged to ask the city of Cambridge to allow him to be buried in a city-owned cemetery because the brothers lived in Cambridge for the last decade.

But Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy said he is urging Tsarnaev's family not to make the request.

"The difficult and stressful efforts of the citizens of the City of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests and widespread media presence at such an interment," Healy said in a statement Sunday.

Stefan said he hasn't been able to find a cemetery in Massachusetts willing to accept the remains of Tamerlan, who was killed following a gunbattle with police four days after the bombings. He said if Cambridge turns him down, he will seek help from state officials. Stefan said Monday that he is looking outside of Massachusetts and does not think Russia will take the body.

The Tsarnaev brothers are accused of carrying out the Boston bombings using pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails, ball bearings and metal shards. The attack killed three people and injured more than 260 others near the marathon's finish line.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured and remains in a prison hospital. He has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and faces a potential death sentence if convicted.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, of Montgomery Village, Md., and three of his friends met with Stefan on Sunday to wash and shroud Tsarnaev's body according to Muslim tradition.

Tsarni told reporters that he is arranging for Tsarnaev's burial because religion and tradition call for his nephew to be buried. He would like him buried in Massachusetts because he's lived in the state for the last decade, he said.

"I'm dealing with logistics. A dead person must be buried," he said.

He said he was grateful to Stefan for agreeing to arrange the burial and to his friends for accompanying him to Massachusetts to aid with the funeral.

"These are my friends who feel for me ... as I do understand no one wants to associate their names with such evil events," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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US authorities interview Boston bombing suspects' parents in Russia

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  The parents of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Anzor Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, will be interviewed by U.A. authorities regarding the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15 that killed three people and injured nearly 200 others. (AP)

U.S. authorities were on their way to a mountainous region in southern Russia to interview the parents of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, as more details emerged about the brothers' recent activities in the U.S., including word of where the deadly explosives may have been purchased and that the family relied on welfare for at least some of their time here.

A U.S. Embassy official said the Americans traveled from Moscow to the predominantly Muslim province of Dagestan "because the investigation is ongoing, it's not over."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Wednesday that the team is working with the Russian security services, the FSB.

The mother of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being interviewed Wednesday in the FSB building in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. The official said one positive development from the Boston tragedy might be closer cooperation with the Russian government on security issues.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who was arrested in the United States in June on charges of shoplifting, has told The Associated Press that her son Tamerlan greatly enjoyed his time with her relatives during a trip to his ancestral homeland in southern Russia last year. But Tsarnaeva said he never traveled to her native village in a mountainous region of Dagestan, which is a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Wahabbism. Wahabbism was introduced to the Caucasus in the 1990s by preachers and teachers from Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, new information surfaced Wednesday about the older of the two brothers, as the manager of a New Hampshire fireworks store said 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was seen buying two mortar kits at the store in February.

April Walton, of Phantom Fireworks, says Tamerlan bought two "Lock and Load" reloadable mortar kits with 24 shells each.

Company Vice President William Weimer says FBI agents visited the Seabrook store on Friday, interviewed staff and checked its computers.

He says the amount of gunpowder that could be harvested from the kits would not have been enough to detonate the Boston bombs.

Walton says Tsarnaev paid $200 cash but scanned his driver's license into the company's computer system as required by store policy. Walton says the employee who handled the sale described it as a routine transaction.

Faisal Shahzad, who has pleaded guilty for his attempted Times Square bombing on May 1, 2010, also purchased fireworks used to build his failed car bomb from the same company. Shahzad bought consumer-grade fireworks from Phantom Fireworks' showroom in Matamoras, Pa.

"We were just shocked," Weimer told the New York Daily News from the company's store in Seabrook, N.H. "After our Times Square experience, we said, 'It can't happen twice.'"

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was also living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits while he was "delving deep" into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Boston Herald reports.

State officials confirmed to the newspaper late Tuesday that Tsarnaev, who was killed during a gun battle with police on Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. 

The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits. Russell Tsarnaev’s attorney has claimed Katherine — who had converted to Islam — was working up to 80 hours a week as a home health aide while Tsarnaev stayed at home, the newspaper reports.

“The brothers were not receiving transitional assistance benefits at the time of the incident and have not received any transitional assistance benefits this year," Massachusetts Health and Human Services communication director Alec Loftus told the newspaper in a statement. "The Tsarnaevs’ parents are former recipients of transitional assistance benefits, and both Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev received benefits through their parents when they were younger. Separately, Tamerlan and his family received benefits until 2012, when the family became ineligible based on their income.”

Meanwhile, the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev has reportedly not been claimed by either his parents or his 24-year-old widow.

ABC News reported Tuesday that medical examiners had completed their autopsy and the body is ready to be claimed for burial, but so far no one has done so.

Lawyers for Russell Tsarnaev have said she "is doing everything she can to assist with the investigation," and is mourning the victims of the bombings.

The area near the Boston Marathon finish line also reopened to the general public early Wednesday. Traffic was allowed to flow all the way down Boylston Street for the first time since two explosions on April 15 killed three spectators and hospitalized 260 others.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the Boston Herald.

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Treasure-filled warrior's grave found in Russia

Hidden in a necropolis situated high in the mountains of the Caucasus in Russia, researchers have discovered the grave of a male warrior laid to rest with gold jewelry, iron chain mail and numerous weapons, including a 36-inch iron sword set between his legs.

That is just one amazing find among a wealth of ancient treasures dating back more than 2,000 years that scientists have uncovered there.

Among their finds are two bronze helmets, discovered on the surface of the necropolis. One helmet (found in fragments and restored) has relief carvings of curled sheep horns while the other has ridges, zigzags and other odd shapes.

Although looters had been through the necropolis before, the warrior's grave appears to have been untouched. The tip of the sword he was buried with points toward his pelvis, and researchers found "a round gold plaque with a polychrome inlay" near the tip, they write in a paper published in the most recent edition of the journal Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia. [See Images of the Warrior Burial and Artifacts]

The remains of three horses, a cow and the skull of a wild boar were also found buried near the warrior.

"These animals were particularly valuable among barbarian peoples of the ancient world. It was [a] sign of [the] great importance of the buried person, which was shown by his relatives and his tribe," wrote team member Valentina Mordvintseva, a researcher at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences Institute of Archaeology, in an email to LiveScience. The animal bones and pottery remains suggest that a funeral feast was held in his honor.

Without written records it is difficult to say exactly who the warrior was, but rather than ruling a city or town, "he was rather a chief of a people," Mordvintseva said.

The necropolis is located near the town of Mezmay. Grave robbers discovered the site in 2004 and rescue excavations began in 2005.

Who used the necropolis?
Based on the artifacts, researchers believe the warrior's burial dates back around 2,200 years, to a time when Greek culture was popular in west Asia, while the necropolis itself appears to have been in use between the third century B.C. and the beginning of the second century A.D.

Researchers were careful to note that the artifacts cannot be linked to a specific archaeological culture. Mordvintseva points out that "this region is very big, and not sufficiently excavated," particularly in the area where the necropolis is located. "[I]t is situated high in mountains. Perhaps the population of this area [had] trade routes/passes with Caucasian countries — Georgia, Armenia etc.," Mordvintseva writes in the email.

While the people who used the necropolis were clearly influenced by Greek culture, they maintained their own way of life, said Mordvintseva. "Their material culture shows that they were rather very proud of themselves and kept their culture for centuries."

Gold treasures
This way of life includes a fondness for gold-working. The warrior's burial included more than a dozen artifacts made of the material. Perhaps the most spectacular find was a gold fibula-brooch with a rock crystal at its center. Although the brooch was only 2.3 by 1.9 inches, it had several layers of intricately carved decorations leading toward the mount.

"Inside the mount a rock-crystal bead has been placed with a channel drilled through it from both ends," the researchers write.

The team was surprised to find that two of the warrior's swords (including the one pointing toward his pelvis) had gold decorations meant to be attached. In one case a short 19-inch-long iron sword had a gold plate, with inlayed agate, that was meant to adorn its sheath. Until now, scholars had never seen this type of golden sword decorations in this part of the ancient world, the researchers write. The "actual fact that these articles were used to decorate weapons sets them apart in a category all of their own, which has so far not been recorded anywhere else ..."

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