Violence in the Caucasus: Can a new round be avoided?

The Moscow metro blasts of March 29, 2010, have raised new questions about the effectiveness of the ten-year-old Russian operation in the North Caucasus that has alarmed human rights activists and now seemingly failed to prevent new attacks reaching metropolitan Russia. The female bombers, identified by Russia’s Federal Security Service as Mariam Sharipova and Dzhennet Abdullaeva, were both from the republic of Dagestan, a region on the Caspian Sea in the Russian Caucasus. The majority Islamic Caucasian republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia have been the source of numerous attacks in Russia since 1999, when bombs destroyed three Moscow apartment blocks.