The militant group responsible for the Chechen insurgency cast doubt Friday on allegations that the two known suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing – who are of Chechen origin – carried out the attacks.
 
The official media arm of the Chechen mujahedeen, the Kavkaz Center, published a blog post that suggested the investigation into Monday’s deadly attack is part of an anti-Chechnya “PR campaign.”  

The Kavkaz Center mocked the "lightning speed" at which the two known suspects in the attack on the Boston Marathon – Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was at large on Friday,  and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a firefight with law enforcement – were identified. The group called the investigation "completely muddled.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Chechen fighters have waged a violent struggle against the Kremlin, leading to two bloody wars and the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.

In a translation of the blog provided by Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News security analyst, the Chechens questioned the logic that the Tsarnaev brothers could be terrorists because their actions seemed so ham-handed. 

“The news that the brothers attacked police officers, carjacked a man and did an array of other things, instead of going into hiding, looks strange at the very least,” the article said.

The blog also argued that the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was “very far from your typical ‘Islamic terrorist.’ He named career and money as his main credo. What's more, he just logged onto his Russian social networking site a few hours ago.”

Chechen insurgents have claimed responsibility for a series of dramatic kidnappings and attacks, including on a hospital in southern Russia, a Moscow theater in 2002 (where all 40 insurgents and 130 out of some 800 hostages were killed by noxious gas pumped into the theater by Russian commandos), and a school in Beslan, Russia (where over 380 people, including several hundred children died in what critics called a heavy-handed “rescue attempt” by Russian police). 

If a connection between the marathon bombing suspects and Chechen separatists was established, it would mark the first time militants from the former Soviet republic have launched a deadly attack outside Russia.

The insurgency’s blog concluded that the campaign to implicate a Chechen connection was likely orchestrated by Russia’s President Vladamir Putin ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a Russian Black Sea resort which is located only a few hundred miles from the border with Chechnya.

Putin has long justified repression in the region as attacks on so-called “separatists” and “terrorists.”

The blog also noted that the spokesperson for Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and a former rebel, wasn’t even taking phone calls because he didn’t want to talk about the events in Boston.

In a passionate interview with reporters Friday, the brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, also vehemently denied that there was any connection to the Chechen insurgency.

“This has nothing to do with Chechnya. Chechens are peaceful people,” he said.  

Tsarni insisted that the young men’s actions were apolitical and offered his own explanation for them. “Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves, these are the only reasons I can imagine of. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam – it’s a fraud, it’s a fake.” 

NBC News’ Jim Maceda and Petra Cahill contributed to this article.

Related links:

Suspects to carjack victim: We are the bombersWho are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing? 

What motivated bombing suspects? ‘Being losers,’ uncle says

An empty metropolis: Photos show deserted streets of Boston  

What we know: Timeline of terror hunt

‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT

Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon

Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening 

Photos from Bostonians locked down amid terror hunt 

Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- In Pakistan's complicated and multiple insurgencies, killing is cyclical.

The onset of winter traditionally marks the end of the militants' "fighting season" and heralds a lull in attacks.

But this year is different. Pakistan is facing an extraordinary surge in terrorist activity.

The country is reeling from an intense spate of organized militancy that has crossed international borders and morphed from an anti-Western jihad in Afghanistan to an anti-state and sectarian movement deep inside Pakistan. 

The increasingly sophisticated and high-profile attacks have killed scores. They include at least 114 people who were slain in a series of attacks on Jan. 10, a day which was later dubbed "Black Thursday."

This uptick in violence in Pakistan comes as Islamabad is trying to improve its relationship with Kabul and Washington. It is seen as a message from insurgents: They are not going anywhere.

"With the end in sight, and the ground for final talks being laid across the border in Afghanistan, and by default in our badlands, too, everyone wants a piece," said Gibran Peshimam, political editor at the Express Tribune newspaper and a fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University. "And those who were bound by circumstance are now at each others' throats for a piece of the pie."

One human rights group has warned that sectarian violence targeting Pakistan's Shiite Muslims was rising.

Speaking to Reuters in the aftermath of "Black Thursday,"  Ali Dayan Hasan of Pakistan Human Rights Watch said:

"Last year was the bloodiest year for Shias in living memory. More than 400 were killed and if [the Jan. 10] attack is any indication, its just going to get worse."  ...

The roughly 500,000-strong Shia Hazara community in Quetta are routinely hunted by extremist groups because their ethnically distinct features make them an easy target, Dayan said. 

"They live in a state of siege. Stepping out of the ghetto means risking death."

The impact of the "Black Thursday" attacks was felt nationally, with relatives of the victims refusing to bury their dead for four days and staging a downtown sit-in, forcing an executive decision by the prime minister and president to sack the province's elected government for ineptness.

Although 14-year-old education activist Malala Yousafzai survived a point-blank shooting which provoked international attention and outrage, there has been no shortage of deadly incidents since the Taliban targeted her in October.

By mid-December, Pakistan's gradient of terror became remarkably steep, and continues to rise.

Women and children now fair game
On December 15, a sophisticated, multi-stage suicide-bomber and sniper attack on Peshawar airport and an air force base triggered concerns about the ability of the country's nuclear-armed military to protect itself.

Two days later, the Taliban would claim responsibility for the deadliest car bombing of 2012. Women and children were among 21 killed in Jamrud.

On December 18 and 19, drive-by shootings targeting health workers -- who were part of a national immunization drive to treat children with much-needed polio vaccines -- would claim the lives of eight people, most of them young women.

The following weekend, one the Taliban's most vocal critics would be silenced. Veteran politician Bashir Bilour, a senior government minister, was among nine victims of a suicide bombing in Peshawar. The Taliban would claim responsibility, pledging to continue targeting secular politicians like Bilour.

And just before New Year's Eve, 22 of the 23 paramilitary soldiers kidnapped during a daring militant attack on their posts near Khyber turned up dead. They were executed without any ransom demand being received.

Militants would continue to target women, killing seven health workers on New Year's Day -- newfound misogyny in a region that, though historically volatile, has long respected women's safety as non-combatants. Seven more army soldiers, who were abducted while returning from vacation to join their unit, would be killed on January 2 in Attock.

As Afghanistan's endgame evolves, the matrix of hostilities changes in Pakistan as well -- where women and children are now considered fair game by insurgents. The plot thickens and the terrible surprises continue.

"There are a large number of players and an increasing number of attacks in a lot of different areas, with a lot of different agendas with no real common element," the journalist Peshimam added. "It would be safe to say there are a lot of different quarters that need to be satiated. And fast. If they can't be appeased, then the armed forces will need to lock and load."

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