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"Russia: Suicide car bomb at city's central market kills at least 17, wounds 133 in northern Caucasus" SNIPPET: "The attacker detonated his explosives as he drove by the main entrance to the Vladikavkaz market, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry." SNIPPET: "The market and its surrounding blocks has been the target of several bomb attacks over the past dozen years, in which scores of people have died."

Aug 2010: Many women complain they have been harassed by bands of men for not wearing headscarves in Chechnya. Some of the assailants said they were working under orders from religious authorities. Aug 2010: Chechnya's mufti Sultan Mirzayev, the region's spiritual leader and a close ally of Kadyrov, makes the radical order that all eateries shut completely for the holy month of Ramadan. Though it carries no legal weight, it is followed through, residents and witnesses say. July 2010: Hardline, Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says in a state TV interview that he was grateful to assailants who targeted women...

On a Monday morning, March 29, suicide bombers attacked two metro stations in the heart of Moscow. The detonations, timed 40 minutes apart during rush hour for maximum damage, in some ways resembled the 2004 commuter-train attack in Madrid, the July 7 bombings in London a year later and numerous other public acts of terrorism around the globe. These similarities were not lost on world leaders, who were quick to express not just sympathy but also empathy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "When Moscow is attacked, we are all attacked." In June, just days before the exposure of a U.S.-based...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The price tag on a bride in Russia's Ingushetia province has been tripled by the regional government, in a sign the Muslim North Caucasus region is slipping out of Kremlin control as sharia law eclipses Russian. Against the backdrop of a bubbling Islamist insurgency, the revival of Islam in the North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago has brought sharia law to the region, revered by both rebels and ordinary citizens alike. The issue of the 'kalym', a price paid by a groom to the family of the woman he chooses...

THE Daily Mail has learnt that Israel is massing warplanes in the Caucasus for an attack on Iran. Preparations are underway to launch the military attack form Azerbaijan and Georgia, reports Akhbar Al Khaleej, quoting military sources. It has been reported that Israel was, in fact, training pilots in Turkey to launch the strike and was smuggling planes into Georgia using Turkish airspace, according to the sources.

Russia launched large-scale military exercises involving thousands of troops across parts of its southern regions on Monday which Georgia said would violate its territory. The Defence Ministry said the sweep of the week-long "Caucasus 2009" manoeuvres would include the volatile, mainly-Muslim regions of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia - continuing focus of rebel groups seeking to prize the area from Moscow's control. Moscow sees the Caucasus mountains area as a strategically vital zone, the approach to prime agricultural and industrial regions and an important energy transit route. The Kremlin views any challenge here as a threat to the overall security and...

Russian security forces dealt a double blow to the al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate during operations in the southern Russian republics late last week. Emir Magas, the military commander of the Caucasus Emirate, was captured and Yasir Amarat, a wanted terrorist commander from Jordan, was killed during raids by Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB. On June 9, the FSB captured Emir Magas, whose real name is Ali Taziyev, during a raid in the village of Malgobek in the Republic of Ingushetia. Kavkaz Center, a jihadist website that supports the Caucasus Emirate, confirmed Magas' capture and noted his importance. Magas has...

SNIPPET: "The attack took place at a hippodrome in the city of Nalchik, capital of Russia's North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria." SNIPPET: "A law enforcement source told the RIA Novosti news agency the explosive was a time bomb, equivalent to about 5 kg of TNT. The ministry officials said the attack was aimed at civilians and was designed to hit as many people as possible." Posted by Robert on May 1, 2010 5:21 PM

It started on August 7 2008 when Georgian troops attacked Russian-backed separatists in the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The Russian Army retaliated, driving deep into Georgian territory. Tens of thousands of Georgians fled their homes and some 30,000 are still displaced. Some of them now live in a colony in Akhali Tserovani. It was built by the Georgian government, which pays cash subsidies to residents every month. The people who live there say all they want is to return to their homes. But their homes are now in Russian-occupied land. Georgia's Orthodox patriarch Ilia II says he discussed the...

Azerbaijan’s long-standing alignment with the United States is rapidly unraveling in the wake of Washington’s recent policy initiatives. As perceived from Baku, those US initiatives fly in the face of Azerbaijan’s staunch support over the years to US strategic interests and policies in the South Caucasus-Caspian region. Current US policies, however, are seen to favor Armenia in the Karabakh conflict resolution negotiations, curry favor with Armenian advocacy groups in domestic US politics, split Turkey and Azerbaijan from one another over the Karabakh issue, isolate Azerbaijan in the region, and pressure Baku into silent acquiescence with these policies. Key actors in...

It's been an embarrassing week for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, prime minis ter and de facto czar. On Monday, Islamist suicide bombers struck just a rifle shot from the Kremlin. The worst of the two subway bombings rubbed ex-KGB man Putin's nose in it by slaughtering dozens in the Lyubanka station -- named for the notorious security-service headquarters upstairs. And the day after the two blasts killed 39 (with twice that many hospitalized), Islamist terrorists renewed their bombing campaign in Russia's Muslim republic of Daghestan, next to battered (Muslim) Chechnya.

Monday's attacks on Moscow's subways provide an odious reminder of the Russian empire's post-Cold War instability and the Russian government's severe internal challenges. As this column goes to press, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attacks that left 39 dead and scores wounded, though Russian commentators and international analysts suspect Islamist-inspired separatists in the northern Caucasus region planned and executed the terror strikes. Russian security forces are fighting guerrilla and terrorist cells based in troubled Caucasus political fragments like Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya. Islamist separatist groups from these areas have used "the woman-delivered weapon" in previous attacks on Russian...

At least 25 people are reported to have been killed in an explosion on the Metro system in central Moscow, with a second blast coming shortly afterwards. The first blast happened at the city's central Lubyanka station, reports quoting security sources said. A second explosion happened at the Park Kultury station, Russian news agency Tass reported. Ten people were injured in the first blast, Tass said, quoting the emergencies ministry. The number of casualties at the second blast is not yet clear.

A US warship arrived in Georgia's Black Sea waters Thursday for exercises with the country's coast guard, the US embassy said, in the latest of a series of such visits that have infuriated Russia. The USS John L. Hall guided-missile frigate arrived in the vicinity of the Georgian port of Poti, an embassy spokesman said, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the de facto border with the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia. "The aim of the visit is to conduct joint exercises with the Georgian coast guard," said the embassy spokesman, who declined to be named. He said the...

Russia secured on 17 February the right to maintain a large, long-term military presence in the Georgian rebel region of Abkhazia, signing a deal for a military base that was condemned by Tbilisi and the West. The base will accommodate at least 3,000 Russian land troops, already stationed in Abkhazia, for at least 49 years, Abkhaz officials said. "This agreement creates a foundation for the development of Abkhazia as an independent state," Medvedev said at a signing ceremony in the Great Kremlin Palace. Moscow recognised Abkhazia in August 2008 after crushing an assault by US ally Georgia on another pro-Russian...

NATO on Wednesday denounced as "invalid" a Russian pact establishing a military base in the rebel Georgian region of Abkhazia, urging Moscow to revoke it. "NATO considers invalid agreements between Russia and the (Georgian) territories," which its 28 member nations do not recognise, alliance spokeswoman Carmen Romero said. The Russian-Abkhaz deal, signed in Moscow Wednesday during an elaborate "state visit" by rebel leader Sergei Bagapsh, builds on previous agreements allowing Russia to maintain thousands of troops and border guards in Abkhazia. The base pact allows Russian forces "to defend the sovereignty and safety of the republic jointly with the armed...

Ramzan Kadyrov, a 33-year-old former rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, said that last year's attack by Georgia, which is a US ally, on the pro-Russian rebel region of South Ossetia was part of a Western plot to seize the whole Caucasus region. "If they get control of the Caucasus, you could say they'll get control of virtually all of Russia, because the Caucasus is our backbone," Kadyrov said. .... "The Russian government needs to work out a strategy, it needs to attack," the Chechen president said. "...Georgia, South Ossetia, Ukraine, all this will go on and on. It's Russia's private affliction....

Hardline Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov is vying with insurgents for authority in a land ravaged by two secessionist wars with Moscow. Each side is claiming Islam as its flag of legitimacy, each reviles the other as criminal and blasphemous. Wary of the dangers of separatism in a vast country, Moscow watches uneasily as central power yields to Islamic tenets. It must chose what it might see as the lesser of two evils. Though polygamy is illegal in Russia, the southern Muslim region of Chechnya encourages the practice, arguing it is allowed by sharia law and the Koran, Islam's holiest book....

The newly re-elected president of Abkhazia, an unrecognized breakaway region of Georgia, Sergei Bagapsh will pay a visit to Turkey soon, citing the need to reach out to members of the Abkhaz diaspora currently living in the country. At a press conference following his landslide victory in the Abkhaz presidential elections, which Georgia labeled an “immoral comedy,” Bagapsh said he plans to make an informal trip to Turkey very soon. “I will have informal meetings with Turkish officials,” Bagapsh said. Abkhazia has been a battleground for Russia since the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia over the disputed region...

YEREVAN -- Two leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party (Dashnaktsutyun) have criticized Russian policy toward Turkey and Azerbaijan, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports. Vahan Hovannisian, a senior Dashnaktsutyun lawyer, said that Russian policy toward the South Caucasus is "dangerous" for Armenia. Hovannisian did not elaborate on his statement. Another Dashnaktsutyun leader, Hrayr Karapetian, who heads the parliament's defense and security committee, said Russia's deepening military cooperation with Turkey and Azerbaijan runs counter to its military alliance with Armenia. Karapetian said a 2010 plan for joint military exercises signed by Azerbaijani and Russian defense ministers is "at the least, strange and...