Some veteran anti-Communists in America actually support this Russian jihad; they're still fighting the last war. Meanwhile, even the Russians themselves, with their support for Iran, don't seem to recognize the implications of what is going on. From the [1] Times Online, with thanks to all who sent this in:

THE diehard gang of Muslim extremists responsible for last week’s attack on the southern Russian city of Nalchik consisted mainly of local militants intent on creating a strict Islamic state independent of Moscow, according to security sources in the region.

The disclosure that the gunmen were not sent from the war-torn republic of Chechnya but belonged to a group from Kabardino-Balkaria, the Russian republic of which Nalchik is the capital, will be of great concern to the Kremlin.

It provides alarming evidence that far from dying down — as claimed by President Vladimir Putin — the bloody Chechen conflict is spreading.

“Most of the militants who were killed and those caught alive are local,” said an officer with the Nalchik anti-terrorism police unit. “ The ferocity of the attacks has shocked the city.”

The onslaught, which turned the town of 280,000 into a war zone, was the most daring raid by pro-Chechen Islamic militants since last year’s Beslan school siege in which 330 hostages were killed. It came less than a month before parliamentary elections in Chechnya, hailed by Putin as evidence that the region is becoming stable.