A Surplus of Anger and Grief in the Caucasus

The hearts-and-minds approach really hasn’t caught on yet with the Kremlin’s handling of the North Caucasus.  The New York Times takes a look:

That does not mean that citizens in the Caucasus generally embrace radical Islam, nor that they approve of terrorist tactics. Mr. Arutyunov, who has studied the response to the insurgency in Dagestan, said no more than 10 percent of people there supported insurgent groups like the one led by Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for last week’s bombing of the Moscow subway. But if militants are seeking to replenish the ranks of suicide bombers, he said, they will find a vast pool of young men and women who have lost siblings or friends in counterterrorist operations.

“To find candidates is very easy,” he said. “There are 100,000 people here who are furious with the authorities.”