Throughout the past year, the North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia have experienced increasing terrorist violence (.pdf). In Chechnya, for example, the number of violent deaths nearly doubled in 2009 compared with the figure for the previous year. The killings of political leaders, police officers, human rights activists, and journalists throughout the North Caucasus have confirmed the rising tide of Muslim militancy. In claiming credit for the Moscow Metro bombing, Islamist leader Doku Umarov vowed that his forces would continue the attacks until Russia withdrew from what he called his "Caucasus Emirate," under which he also included the North Caucasus republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia.

The surge of Islamist-linked violence in the republics of the North Caucasus can be traced back to the end of the Soviet era, when Moscow temporarily lost control of Chechnya and other Muslim-majority regions, but the recent resurgence is due to later developments. The 1994-96 Russian war with Chechnya established conditions favorable for radical Islam to take root in that republic, while also creating the foundation for broader problems. Even if the war was primarily couched in nationalistic terms, Islamic extremists were able to exploit Russian military attacks to propagate their vision of an Islamic state under Shariah rule, which would encompass the entire North Caucasus.

After 1996, the Russian federal government under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin tried to isolate and contain Islamist radicalism within Chechnya. This strategy proved difficult for several reasons. The initial Russian invasion had aroused the ire of the Muslim world and attracted many foreign fighters to Chechnya seeking to avenge the Russian atrocities committed there (as well as those committed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan). Second, partly due to the radical Islamists' willingness to employ comparably brutal tactics against their fellow nationals, Russia soon lost control of Chechnya. With the help of foreign militants motivated by the transnational ideology of jihad, Muslim fighters from Chechnya used the republic as a safe haven to attack neighboring Muslim-majority regions in an effort to end Moscow's control of those republics as well. Yeltsin's corrupt and weak security forces found it difficult to resist these raids.

When Vladimir Putin took office in 1999, he strengthened the power of the security forces in the Russian state and attacked the problem of Muslim militancy more directly and aggressively. Following a wave of still unexplained bombings of apartments in Moscow and other Russian cities, which Russian officials blamed on Muslim terrorists based in Chechnya, Putin ordered another Russian military invasion of that republic. 

Having learned from its defeat in the first Chechen war, the Russian military adopted more sophisticated counterinsurgency tactics in the second. After several years, the Russian military succeeded in occupying most of Chechnya and preventing the guerrillas from operating in large-scale formations. The insurgents instead resorted to terrorist strikes against soft civilian targets, through which they managed to inflict damage in the first few years of the war, such as by seizing hostages in a downtown Moscow theater in 2002 andat a school in Beslan in 2004. After 2004, though, the terrorists no longer succeeded in conducting mass-casualty attacks in Moscow or central Russia.

On April 16, 2009, the Russian government declared that it had won the war in Chechnya. President Dmitry Medvedev announced the end of counterterrorist operations as well as the martial law regime there. He also authorized the withdrawal of most Russian troops from Chechnya, further divesting responsibility for maintaining security to the local authorities. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov vigorously expounded the view that the security situation had fundamentally improved. In the near term, the withdrawal benefited both parties. The federal government was spared some security costs in a time of economic crisis, while Kadyrov could control Chechnya with less interference from Moscow. But the premature transition underestimated the guerillas' resurgence in neighboring regions.

For the past few months, Russian policymakers have been in the process of altering their policies somewhat, developing plans to promote the economic reconstruction of the North Caucasus under a new entrepreneurial viceroy, as well as by further integrating the region economically with European Russia. In January 2010, Medvedev appointed Alexander Khloponin, a former businessman and governor of a Siberian region, to head the newly formed North Caucasus Federal District as a means of reinforcing Moscow's control. Soon after taking office, Khloponin announced that his primary goal as presidential envoy in the region would be to attract new investors to the North Caucasus. 

The more-comprehensive approach aims to offer positive inducements as well as negative incentives to Muslim radicals, by combining economic tools with police powers to curtail local violence. But the widespread anger and revulsion from the latest Moscow Metro bombings could prompt the Kremlin to abandon it before it has been fully tried. A more muscular approach could achieve short-term security gains by suppressing some overt violence, but it would deepen the alienation of the North Caucasus from Moscow.

For now, Russia has responded with resolve balanced by restraint. Whether it maintains that balance could determine how long the North Caucasus remains a security challenge for Moscow and the people of Russia.