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On Aug. 17, Aleksandr Tikhomirov sat in a truck filled with explosives in Nazran, in Russia's North Caucasus.

Tikhomirov -- by then going by the name Sheikh Said Abu Saad al-Buryati -- looked into the camera and explained the "gift" he planned for the infidels of the province of Ingushetia, Chechnya's neighbor. The video then shows the truck drive down the street to the local headquarters of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and explode, killing 25 and wounding up to 262.

To some experts, the story of Sheikh al-Buryati, from Buddhist student to Islamist preacher and apparent "martyr" (Buryati did not, in fact, drive the truck, it was later revealed; he is alive) underscores the gap between the West's understanding of the Chechen conflict and reality -- a reality that is far less a Russian internal matter than it is a central front and breeding ground in the global jihad.

Western media, according to Gordon Hahn, a senior researcher for the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies and author of "Russia's Islamic Threat," are content to frame the issue of Chechnya in terms of Russian human rights violations and the Chechen people's autonomous yearning, instead of the active hive of Islamist jihad it has become.

"But this had been going on for five, six years, which was simply being denied," Hahn told The Jewish State, referring to the spate of suicide terrorism like that shown in the Buryati video. "And it's still being covered up by the Western media because of liberal political correctness on the left and right-wing hatred of Russia hangover from the Cold War. So no one's interested in talking about this, and it's a fact. Now it's a purely jihadist movement; there's nothing national/separatist anymore."

Buryati is the key to understanding what the conflict in the Caucasus is really about, Hahn and others believe.

Symbol or anomaly?

Buryati, as his name suggests, hailed from the Buryatia region of Siberia. According to Hahn, he studied at a Buddhist datsan (monastery), and converted to Islam at the age of 15. He moved to Moscow, then Egypt to study at Cairo's Al-Askhar University. Inspired by his time in Egypt, he eventually found his way the Caucasus to participate in the jihad.

Buryati became a spiritual leader in the Caucasus Emirate, a self-declared Islamic territory led by Dokka Umarov, who was head of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, as Chechnya is known by the breakaway Islamists.

Eventually, Russian intelligence services picked up on Buryati. On Aug. 17, the Nazran attack took place, and on Aug. 26 the Buryati video appeared on the Caucasus Emirate's Web site, confirming Buryati's "martyrdom" operation, later revealed to be carried out by a stand-in for Buryati.

It stands as a symbol of a turning point in the region's conflict, when the Islamists of the Chechen region were rejected by the mainstream population, transforming the region into one where terrorists are homegrown and everyone is a target.

"The moment the population -- not just in Chechnya, but it's also Dagestan, Ingushetia, and the rest of that [area] -- abandoned the Islamization, jihadicization and abandoned following the leadership of the jihadist leadership, the jihadists have withdrawn into small societies, conspiratorial societies that [believed] 'only we know the real truth, only we saw the light,' and they no longer seek the approval and support of the population," Yossef Bodansky, former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U.S. House of Representatives, told The Jewish State.

"On the contrary," Bodansky continued. "They seek to punish the population for not seeing the light, for abandoning them, for rejecting them. And, therefore, that justifies and legitimizes acts of terrorism against the local population -- not just of Russians or symbols of Russian control -- it justifies the various martyrdom operations."

This creates an immense security challenge, Bodansky, who is also the author of "Chechen Jihad: Al Qaeda's Training Ground and the Next Wave of Terror," said. If a terrorist group is interacting with the population, he said, it possesses self-restraint and is easier to penetrate.

Bodansky then offered the reason Chechnya has become such an advanced threat.

"There's tons of cash flowing from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states for these kinds of operations," he said, then added: "Especially since 9/11, Chechnya has become a major training area and support area for European jihad."

Svante Cornell, research director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Washington, D.C.'s John Hopkins University, warned of what he called the "Afghan-ization" of the Caucasus.

Asked by The Jewish State when the Caucasus could hit the point at which, like Afghanistan, the violence and disorder would reach a level from which it would likely never dip below, Cornell responded that it is difficult to tell, because that level is usually only recognized in hindsight.

"It may very well have happened already, since the Russian government has enjoyed a number of financially good years and has spent money to stabilize the region, but clearly is failing," Cornell said.

The Afghanistan comparison works the other way, too, according to Alexander Rahr, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin.

"The rise of Islamic terrorism is not only happening in Russia's southern regions," Rahr said at a symposium on the issue. "It is a global phenomenon. To fight this biggest challenge for European civilization, Western states and Russia must join forces on a much larger scale. If NATO loses in Afghanistan, insurgence into Russia on behalf of terrorist groups will increase."

Of land or ideology?

Others aren't so sure. Tony Wood, author of "Chechnya: The Case for Independence," told The Jewish State that the conflict is still at its core one of sovereignty and Russian heavy-handedness.

"There are undoubtedly Islamist currents in Chechnya, many of which have resorted to terroristic tactics reminiscent of groups in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and which have deployed similar rhetoric," Wood said. "But beyond these horrific forms of emulation, I have seen little evidence of any direct links between Chechnya and any wider Islamist organization such as al-Qaeda."

Wood calls it an "expedient myth" cooked up by Russian authorities to use as a pretense for aggression or a bid for sympathy from Western countries fighting the global war on terror, as well as other nations with their own Muslim minority issues, like China.

"Even if it had some basis in reality, of course, it would do nothing to alter the fundamental substance of the conflict, which is not any clash of civilizations, but the specific political question of sovereignty," Wood said.

"Clash of civilizations" -- that's the phrase most commonly associated with the war against Islamic terrorism, used most famously by Samuel P. Huntington, in his groundbreaking book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order". In it, Huntington contradicts Wood and clearly includes Chechnya in the "Clash."

"These security concerns provide a further incentive for cooperation with China in containing the 'Islamic threat' in Central Asia and they also are a major motive for the Russian rapprochement with Iran," Huntington writes in chapter 9, "The Global Politics of Civilizations".

To understand this divide, tracing Chechnya's history is essential.

The Chechen progression

Dr. Georgi Derluguian, a prolific author on the Caucasus and sociology professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, offered a brief history of Chechnya in the introduction to Anna Politkovskaya's "A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya". (Derluguian was traveling in Armenia when contacted by The Jewish State for this story; Politkovskaya, a leading journalist on the Chechen conflict and critic of Russian policy in the Caucasus, was assassinated in 2006.)

In 1818, Russian general Aleksei Yermolov built a fortress in Chechnya and called it Grozny, meaning Fort Terrifying, which became the capital of modern-day Chechnya. The fortress trapped Chechens, who then tried to burn down the fortress. Yermolov ruthlessly struck back, and the Chechens -- Muslims, while the Russians were Christian -- rallied around the concept of jihad.

"Islam provided two crucial mechanisms required by a rebellion: first, a powerfully unifying ideology for the disparate and often feuding mountain clans and, second, the flexible but robust network of Sufi preachers who inspired and coordinated the struggle," Derluguian writes.

In the 1830s, a charismatic preacher named Shamil formed a mini-state in nearby Dagestan and designated himself its imam. He was backed by Chechen fighters. A ceasefire was offered Shamil by the Russians in 1859, which he accepted.

During the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, many Chechens joined the Red Guards, and were rewarded after the war with their own autonomous region. During collectivization a decade later, the Chechens violently resisted. Chechens fought with the Red army in 1942 when Germany invaded, but in 1944 Stalin ordered wholesale deportation of the Chechens to Central Asia. As many as one-third did not survive the trip. In 1957, Khrushchev allowed their return.

The first modern Chechen revolution took place in 1991. It was an attempt to establish a fully independent Chechen nation-state. Russian general Dzhokhar Dudayev left the Russian military to become the leader of the Chechen revolution and the breakaway province's president.

A bloody war soon ensued, ending in 1996 with a tentative peace accord putting Chechnya one step closer to full independence. Dudayev was killed in battle; Aslan Maskhadov was elected Chechen president after the war.

But a rift in Chechnya's leadership soon formed. Maskhadov's second-in-command was the terrorist/warrior Shamil Basayev (who named himself after Imam Shamil), who quit the government and took many of his fighters with him. Basayev declared the conflict part of the global jihad, and there is evidence Osama bin Laden contributed funding for Basayev's mission.

By spring 1999, Chechnya was divided. Basayev invaded Dagestan, but was forced to retreat by the Russian army. Current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin came to power promising to crack down on the Chechen terrorists after a series of suspicious bombings (which, it has been suggested, may have been orchestrated by Putin, having taken place after the Chechen invasion of Dagestan), leading to round two of the Russia-Chechnya war. Better prepared this time around, Russia was able to re-establish much control over Chechnya.

Russia may have cemented its control -- for the time being -- but the wars were no picnic, as detailed by former Russian soldier Arkady Babchenko. Babchenko fought in both Chechen wars, and wrote about it in "One Soldier's War". Here's his description of the Russian soldiers his unit relieved during the first war: "For seven months they trekked around the mountains, day in, day out, clearing the Chechens from the heights, sleeping where they dropped at night, too tired to get up, and when they awoke they'd go back up again. They became like Chechens themselves, bearded, unwashed, in soiled tank corps jackets, half crazed, full of hatred for everyone and everything."

And while the Russian atrocities have been documented, the Chechens were ruthless as well. When Babchenko came upon his fellow soldier's body after that soldier's run-in with Chechen holy warriors, he discovered his friend had been killed in an obscenely grotesque manner, and the killers had left a message: "On the neatly whitewashed wall above him, written in his blood, were the words Allahu akbar -- God is great."

Jihad in full bloom

After the war came the jihadist retreat to the mountains and the development of Bodansky's aforementioned scenario. The summer of 2002, according to Hahn, brought a breakthrough meeting in the mountains.

"And they completely jihadized the political structure of the movement," Hahn explained. "They rewrite the constitution of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, and that is amended to say that all decisions made by President [Aslan] Maskhadov have to be in accordance with the Quran and the Sunna, and the head of the Shariah court will decide whether they're in accordance with the Quran and Sunna, and the head of the Shariah court is designated as Abdul Halim Sadulayev."

Sadulayev became Maskhadov's designated heir, and would become the next president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. At the same time, Basayev began establishing Islamist combat groups (jamaats) outside of Chechnya, to spread the jihad to places like Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.

The jihadist terrorist attacks increased, including the infamous 2004 attack, in which jihadists took control of a Russian school in Beslan. During the Russian counter-siege operation, more than 330 civilians were killed, nearly 200 of them children. The following year brought a stepped-up campaign in Dagestan with 100 attacks. Later in 2005, Sadulayev declared a Caucasus "front," which included Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria.

Sadulayev was killed in 2006, and Umarov took over. In 2007, Umarov declared the establishment of the Caucasus Emirate, with himself as its emir.

Nominally, the Chechen province is led by President Ramzan Kadyrov, essentially appointed by then-President Putin. But for the press to pretend that Kadyrov's activities are a fair representation of the Chechen situation is to deprive their readers of the reality on the ground, Hahn said. Yet, that is what they do.

"If you do a search on the New York Times or the Washington Post sites or the Wall Street Journal, and you do a search of 'Kadyrov,' and then do a search of 'Umarov,' you get zero for the latter and in the tens or hundreds of the former," Hahn said. "Umarov has killed many more people than Kadyrov could ever hope to."

The case against independence

Wood's scholarship does dovetail with that of Hahn and Bodansky on the subject of Kadyrov's authority and the question of independence. Those who suggest that Kadyrov and Chechnya have achieved "stealth independence" have bought into a false façade, Wood said.

"If Kadyrov has so much control, then surely the presence of 40,000 Russian troops would no longer be required," Wood suggested. "Second, Kadyrov's hold over Chechnya is, as I mentioned, conditional on Moscow's approval -- and not on any democratic mandate from the Chechens themselves; the elections held there have no credibility as a gauge of public sentiment, given the conditions of intimidation and brutality that have surrounded them. This combination of military dependence on Moscow and political tyranny over the Chechens makes Kadyrov more like the client regimes of the Cold War -- think Mobutu in Zaire -- than the head of a genuinely independent state."

Wood thinks the case for Chechen independence is stronger than that of other breakaway provinces, and isn't buying Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's excuse that granting such independence would have a domino effect.

"If Russia was so concerned about the bad example that would be set by an independent state emerging in Chechnya, Medvedev would surely not have risked further encouraging such behavior," he said. "The conclusion one is forced to draw instead is that, as far as Russia is concerned, fragmentation into statelets is fine when it comes to someone's else's territory, but punishable by all-out war when it comes to Russia itself -- a hypocritical strategy, rather than a position based on the principles of international law."

Bodansky would agree, but proposed that rather than granting independence to Chechnya (or others like it), it's time to up the standards of independence and enforce a moratorium on declarations of independence by "states" that don't meet such standards.

"Kosovo was a horrific, disastrous precedent that was completely and utterly unwarranted and provoked and ... sparked aspirations that are just completely and utterly impractical, and they're destabilizing the world," Bodansky said, referring to the acceptance by many in the West (and encouragement by the U.S.) of Kosovo's declaration of independence in February 2008. "They need to stop the destabilization of the world, not encourage it."

But even if the Islamist issue is the crux of the conflict, does it change the fiercely independent nature of the Chechen people? That issue still needs to be resolved, according to Fredo Arias-King, founder of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization.

"Eventually, Russia is likely to lose the north Caucasus in one way or another, because of the demographic issue and all kinds of pressures," Arias-King told The Jewish State. "According to Solzhenitsyn, the Chechens were the only nation whose spirit Stalin failed to crush."

Chechnya, he noted, declared independence after the fall of the USSR. That thirst for independence has never been quenched by de facto autonomy or puppet regimes that are nominally Chechen but controlled by Moscow, he said.

"Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkariya, Karachevo-Cherkessia, and other regions of the incredibly complex multi-ethnic northern Caucasus have flared up recently," Arias-King said. "Before, they were willing to accept Russian tutelage, but that is coming under strain."

That strain could be evidence of a re-energized Chechen movement, Wood offered. Change happens quickly in Chechnya, Wood said, and the end of each war usually starts the countdown to the next.

"Given the appalling social conditions in present-day Chechnya, it would be foolish to bet against further dramatic upheaval, which could take a variety of forms -- including new projects for autonomy or independence," Wood said. "Moreover, the experience of the two wars fought in Chechnya since 1994 has not endeared Russia to the Chechens; if they seem to have accepted Moscow's overlordship at present, it is out of exhaustion rather than willing submission. This stance could easily be switched to one of defiance or actual opposition, in the event of social or political turmoil in either Chechnya or Russia itself."

Accepting a Chechen victory in this regard would be a colossal mistake, according to Bodansky. Cyprus -- with its autonomy and codified protection of its Turkish minority -- is the model, not Kosovo.

For example, Bodansky referenced the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan. There is much bad blood between the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, Bodansky said, but that doesn't mean Nagorno-Karabakh could exist as an independent state.

"I think one street in Manhattan has a greater economy than the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh," Bodansky quipped.

Yet the West, led by the U.S., may be making the same mistake here, he said.

"Right now, we, the United States, are the sole power that insists that a solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem should include a referendum of the Armenian population of the enclave, in which they will be able to choose between autonomy and independence, knowing full well that of course they will choose independence -- they don't want to live with the Azeris," Bodansky said. "But that will be insanity."

The dreaded domino effect, he said, is best illustrated by the situation of the Iraqi Kurds: "If you give the Kurds in Iraq de facto independence, the Kurds in Turkey, the Kurds in Syria, the Kurds in Iran, and the Kurds in Russia will all think 'me too.' And what are you going to say about that?"

Would you like to solve the puzzle?

"It's definitely more than a Russian problem," Hahn said of the Caucasus Emirate.

Both Hahn and Bodansky said Chechen fighters have shown up in Afghanistan fighting Allied forces there, as well as in the West Bank to help the Palestinian terrorist outfits fight Israel.

Hahn agreed with Wood that Russian leaders may overstate the connection between al-Qaeda and Chechnya, but that misses the larger point.

"It's really not a question of al-Qaeda; it's a question of a broad movement, with everybody sort of helping each other when they can, depending on who they can connect with," Hahn said. "But the ideology is all the same. It's global jihad to create a caliphate."

Hahn also agrees that the Russians commit human rights violations in Chechnya, "but what they do pales in significance to what the jihadists do. That's the problem."

Cooperation between Russia and the West is essential, Bodansky said, both in terms of anti-terrorism in Chechnya and defusing the Caucasus.

"You need to solve it not just chasing the bad guys with Kalashnikovs and RPGs running up and down mountains, but you need to solve the region," Bodansky said.

Letting one conflict in the Caucasus get out of hand increases the danger of armed conflict across Russia and its near-abroad, he said, such as Ingushetia, South Ossetia, Dagestan, Ukraine, and others.

"These are frozen conflicts of unresolved quests for independence/autonomy," Bodansky said. "That region will go up in flames."

First, according to Hahn, the U.S. should put the Caucasus Emirate on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Additionally, the U.S. should participate in some brand of regional development effort for the Caucasus, partnering with Russia, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

That should be accompanied by an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to share intelligence related to Chechen jihadist movements, he said. Hahn pointed out that through the first eight months of 2009, the jihadists in and around Chechnya pulled off the same number of attacks as they did in all of 2008: 370. Those attacks killed or wounded about 1,000 victims.

Hahn said they don't have the ability to take hold of all of Central Asia, since they have probably less than 2,000 fighters.

"But they can do a lot of damage with suicide bombs; look what 19 people did to us on 9/11 -- that's the whole point," he said, adding: "Three-hundred seventy attacks is nothing to sneeze at."

Bodansky said the Caucasus Emirate is a relatively new problem for Russia, and he believes they will adjust -- provided the threat is taken seriously. The Chechens have declared war on the West, and proved it by serving as a "force multiplier" in conflicts in which Islamic terrorist groups are fighting American, British, or Israeli troops.

He said it will take some time to learn the intelligence map of the Caucasus Emirate, identify all the key players, track their activities, penetrate the networks, and apply international law appropriately to the battle.

But everyone agreed that ignoring the conflict is not an option.

"Chechnya's not going away," Bodansky said.