I write this week from Boston, where the dramatic arrest Friday night of Dhokhar Tsarnaev, in a hail of bullets, ended a five-day tragedy that started last Monday, April 15. His brother Tamerlan had been killed Thursday night in a violent confrontation with authorities.

The two brothers are the main suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing that claimed the lives of three people and injured scores of runners and spectators. The brothers came to the United States in 2003, refugees from the Chechen conflict. Tamerlan, 26, was an amateur boxer and the younger Dhokhar, 19, a college student. They were average, well-liked and for their friends and neighbors absolutely beyond suspicion.

After ending the chase of the two suspects, officials here are puzzling over their motives and the implications of this attack on future sporting and other events.

Ordinary Americans are also agonizing over the motives and implications of this senseless act.

Tsarnaev family and community are divided between those who were apologetic and distancing themselves from the act, and others expressing disbelief or even claiming that it was a frame-up.

Last Sunday, I arrived in Boston to take part in an event organized by Harvard Law School. When the taxi driver told me about the marathon next day and complained about the traffic tie-ups that it would cause, I was on the contrary pleased to hear the news. As I former marathoner and avid runner, I looked forward to catching glimpses of the event the next day. The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon, starting in 1897. It was inspired by the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896. It is always held on the third Monday of April and ranked as one of the world’s best-known road racing events.

Next day, Monday April 15, was marathon day, but the upbeat mood of the runners and spectators was tragically shattered by two explosions that took place near the finish line. I received calls from family members and friends alerting me to the news, which we were insulated from during the grueling Harvard meetings.

It was beyond belief to think anyone would dare disrupt the marathon with such extreme violence. You would think that the celebratory nature of the sport, celebrating endurance, in a non-competitive community-like atmosphere would immunize against ill will, let alone bombing.

Three people, an 8-year old boy and two young women, were killed in the twin explosions and about 140 injured. An intensive manhunt for the suspects ensued and by Thursday night, the two Tsarnaev brothers were located. The chase and intensive gun battle on Thursday night resulted in the death of Tamerlan, the older of the two suspects.

The younger, Dhokhar, escaped. Several neighborhoods and localities were put under “lockdown,” meaning that the residents could not leave their homes and businesses could not open. Those areas comprised about half the area of the Boston Metropolitan Area.

All public transportation, including trains, buses and taxis, ceased operation. Everyone stayed home, glued to their TVs, awaiting capture of the suspect, who was subsequently cornered in a small locality of Watertown. Just as authorities lifted the lockdown, the suspect was located. He was captured shortly afterward after another fierce shootout.

Almost immediately after the bombing last Monday, some jumped to conclusions that the marathon attack was the work of Al-Qaeda, or Muslims in general. Several hate attacks against Muslims took place in the area, and some media outlets went on super hype drive. Ready-made theories were bandied about pseudo experts, often shaped by anti-Muslim or anti-Arab prejudices.

Some of ready-made experts have postulated that the attack was linked to the Chechen national struggle. But such theories make little sense, because the Chechens’ adversary is Russia, not the United States. The US has not supported Russia in this or other conflicts involving former USSR republics.

Nor does it make any sense that the two brothers would bear ill-feelings toward the United States, which has offered them safe haven and opportunity to re-start their lives after escaping the Chechen conflict. If the idea was to publicize the Chechen cause and gain sympathy for it, why attack a popular sporting event?

If as reported the two brothers came to the United States 10 years ago, then they have spent their formative years here. Tamerlan would have been only 16 years old and Dhokhar only nine. That would mean that their thinking and mind-set were shaped in the United States, as well as whatever events led them to this bizarre behavior. Although they were legally integrated into the US, the younger as naturalized citizen and the elder as permanent resident, they could not have been immune from the pressures of adjusting to a new environment, especially as their father had returned and left the rest of the family in the US.

As such, it should not be ruled out that motives could be linked to the alienation that young immigrants feel sometime. Their inability to cope could lead them to “snap.” Everyday challenges and small failures could probably be more relevant than the national struggle between Chechnya and Russia some 10,000 km away.

Of course that does not rule out that the Chechen national struggle, or some other extraneous factor, provided some twisted articulation for action, but the real motives could be just homegrown pressures of life that lead young people to lose perspective, similar to those motivating other mass killers in other parts of the country.

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