Since 1991, most of the Islamist violence in the North Caucasus has occurred in the three republics in the eastern part of that region, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, while the surviving bi-national republics in the middle and the national republics in the west have remained relatively quiet.
But since last spring, radicalism has been spreading into the bi-national republics, a development that could trigger a new wave of unrest in the region and lead to more questions........