Brutality, anger fuel jihad in Russia's Caucasus

GIMRY, Russia (Reuters) - Little girls in hijabs peek out of tin-roof houses and boys play at "cops and insurgents" in the narrow dirt streets.

At one end of the village of Gimry men are building a new, red-brick madrassa, one of many religious schools springing up across Dagestan, a region in the high Caucasus mountains on Russia's southern fringe, in the throes of an Islamic revival.

More than a dozen young men from the village have "gone to the forest" - the local euphemism for joining insurgents in their hideouts, says village administrator Aliaskhab Magomedov.

"It's a full-fledged jihad," he said. "They don't recognize my authority. Islam does not separate the state from religion." [...]

In the first half of 2012 alone, the Caucasian Knot website recorded 185 insurgency-related deaths and 168 wounded, making Dagestan one of the deadliest places in Europe. The number of men seized by security forces as suspected militants so far this year, tracked by Russia's leading rights group Memorial, has already exceeded last year's total.

And the violence has begun spreading beyond the Caucasus to other parts of the country, like Tatarstan, long a peaceful area on the Volga river in Russia's European heartland. [...]

In the streets of the sun-drenched Caspian Sea city, government banners proclaim: "We are against terror". Residents say they have become desensitized to near daily sniper and bomb attack on police.

"Not a day goes by without the killing of either a terrorist or a policeman. We're so used to it, we think that's the way things ought to be," said taxi driver Nabib Abdulvagabov, 35.

More...