RUSSIA: A devout Muslim, Uzlipat Khanmagomedova had just awakened for dawn prayers when she heard a commotion outside her modest, two-storey house on the outskirts of this provincial capital.
Three men in dark clothes stood at the door, holding Kalashnikov rifles. Two more came running. "Just stay quiet, Grandma," one ordered.
The most terrifying day in the 66-year-old woman's life had just begun. The five gunmen were part of a growing Islamic insurgency here in Dagestan, a multi-ethnic region on Russia's mountainous southern border next to Chechnya.
No one knows how long they had been in Makhachkala, but that January morning, their cover had been blown and police were in pursuit.
Two factors drew them to Khanmagomedova's house: it looked like it might have a cellar from which to stage their last stand; also, the edge of the city lay 100 yards away, offering the faint chance of escape.
For 17 hours, the rebels battled authorities, killing one of Russia's elite Alpha commandos and wounding another. Then, armoured vehicles and a helicopter blew up most of Khanmagomedova's house. Khanmagomedova survived but the rebels were killed.
The incident appeared to demonstrate Russia's resolve, but seven months later, the rebels, who want to drive out the Russians and create an Islamic state, are only gaining in strength.
A new study shows the number of terrorist attacks in Dagestan in the first half of this year has already doubled the 2004 total. Just in the past weeks, insurgents have derailed two trains, sabotaged gas supplies and shot dead a high-ranking intelligence officer from Moscow, as well as a local police chief.
Ordinary police are killed or wounded by roadside bombs every few days. In the bloodiest recent attack, an underground organization called Shariah Jamaat killed 11 off-duty Russian special forces soldiers with a bomb outside a public bathhouse on July 1st.
For the Kremlin, bogged down in a decade-old conflict against independence fighters and Islamic guerrillas in Chechnya, this is a potential nightmare. Dagestan is the biggest and most strategic of seven semi-autonomous republics of the North Caucasus, an impoverished mountain region populated mostly by Muslim, non-Russian peoples.
The security forces do hit back. Soon after the bathhouse bombing, the reputed leader of Shariah Jamaat was killed in a shoot-out. Last week, three alleged militants were cornered and killed in Makhachkala.
But after each loss, the insurgents, who seem to have enough support to mingle with the population rather than having to hide in remote camps, invariably reply with yet another bombing.
Abdulmanap Musayev, Dagestan's Interior Ministry spokesman, said the insurgents are mostly local people with foreign Islamist backing.
"They are serious opponents," he said. "The foreign agents are very deep under cover and well-organized."
Musayev also claimed the situation was under control. Indeed, with its bustling markets, cafés and the shimmering Caspian Sea to the east, Makhachkala seems oddly laid back for a place dubbed "explosion city" by Russian media. And although nearly everyone in Dagestan is Muslim, many - probably most - have good reason to want to remain part of Russia.
Unlike in Chechnya, where ethnic Chechen nationalism is the main factor in anti-Russian resistance, Dagestan's 2.5 million people comprise no less than 34 ethnic groups, often speaking mutually incomprehensible languages. Russia, the Russian language and Russian money are what hold the entire jigsaw together. Almost 90 per cent of Dagestan's local budget is funded directly by Moscow.
The rebels have made inroads by tapping into hatred of the autonomous republic's corrupt and arrogant authorities, who have held power for almost two decades - in large part, analysts say, by rigging elections and proving loyalty to the Kremlin.
This is a problem endemic across the North Caucasus, where "clan-corporate groups" often rule without "any public support", the Kremlin's regional troubleshooter, Dmitry Kozak, said in a report leaked in June.
Unusual for the region, the rebels in Dagestan appear to have no single ethnic or clan affiliation, uniting instead under principles of Islamic equality, a potentially powerful vision in an area with Islamic roots stretching back to the eighth century.
Musayev, the Interior Ministry spokesman, acknowledged the insurgents' skills in working public sentiment.
When a law banning fundamentalist Islamic groups was forced through local parliament despite concerns by civil rights activists about its constitutionality, the rebels claimed a propaganda victory.
"They are making it look as if we are fighting against an ideology rather than against criminals," said Musayev. "If we crack down, they say there's an inquisition."
The militants also appear deliberately to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, while concentrating fire on the widely detested police.
"Sad as it might seem, many ordinary people are really not that upset about attacks against the police," said Isalmagomed Khabiyev, head of an independent small-business union. "Their reasoning is solid: the police . . . are not enforcing the law. They are serving certain clans."
That same corruption cripples the security forces in the field. Ordinary police earn the equivalent of $120 a month and, "for a bribe of $1,000, anyone can go anywhere, even abroad," an intelligence officer said.
Today, goats graze in the ruins of Uzlipat Khanmagomedova's house. The only room left is her tiny kitchen, and that is where she lives, a forgotten victim of the growing conflict.
"Forty-five years of work gone, just like that," she said. "Why did the bandits have to come here? They thought there was a cellar, that's why, but there wasn't even a cellar."
- (LA Times-Washington Post News service)