OFF DUTY and two weeks into a deployment to the badlands of Dagestan on the border of Chechnya, the Russian Special Forces men thought that they were going to a relaxing bath.

Three lorries carrying the 50 troops had just pulled up at the Ariel public bath-house in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, when a homemade bomb detonated. Shrapnel killed ten soldiers and wounded more than twenty other servicemen and civilian bystanders.

The bombing was the latest indication that Dagestan, an ancient Muslim region between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, is spinning out of control — and threatening to pull down the rest of Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus.

Dagestan is not only the biggest and most populous of the seven semi-autonomous republics of the North Caucasus — a region dominated by impoverished, non-Russian Muslim peoples — it is also the most strategic: a large chunk of the Russian Caspian coast lies here, making Dagestan a key transport route for trade and oil.

A collapse of security would stretch Russia’s Armed Forces, already bogged down in Chechnya, to the limit and galvanise the underground Islamic movements now stirring further west across the region.

There were 70 terrorist attacks in Dagestan in the first half of this year, compared with just 30 in 2004, according to a study by an expert from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

President Putin betrayed the Kremlin’s growing alarm when he made a surprise visit to the region last Friday, telling his military chief of staff, Defence Minister and FSB security service director to accelerate planned troop build-ups.

The Special Forces unit decimated this month had itself been sent as reinforcement, only to fall victim to an increasingly brazen Islamic insurgency.

In the past few weeks secret organisations such as Sharia Jamaat, which claimed the bath-house bombing, have been blamed for killing or wounding more than a dozen policemen, shooting dead a police chief, blowing up a high-ranking politician and derailing a train.

When the leader of Sharia Jamaat was killed on July 6 in a shoot-out, the militants threatened to extend attacks to police officers’ families. At least 32 policemen have been killed and more than 40 wounded this year, officials say. The rebels do not strike blindly: one captured this spring carried a list of more than 100 officials’ addresses and telephone numbers.

Abdulmanap Musayev, a spokesman at the Interior Ministry, said that the militants are Wahhabites — local Islamic fundamentalists with foreign backers who want to end Russian rule far beyond Dagestan and neighbouring Chechnya.

“For them Dagestan is the tactical key to the strategic goal of destabilising the whole North Caucasus,” he said. While acknowledging that these are serious opponents, Mr Musayev said that the situation was under control and pointed to the surprisingly laid-back atmosphere on Makhachkala’s streets as proof.

True, the Dagestani capital hardly feels under siege. Cows wander along main roads, drivers cheerfully disregard traffic rules and the oil-rich Caspian Sea twinkles at the city edge.

But people are cynical, not confident. The police, seen as answering to the corrupt political and business elite, are widely detested. In some quarters, the bombings are almost welcomed.

Few of Dagestan’s 2.5 million people want independence from Russia. Amid mass unemployment, Moscow provides nearly all the local budget revenue. The Russian language is often the only way in which even neighbours in this ethnic jigsaw can communicate.

And although Islam’s roots here stretch to the 8th century, there is little appetite for the rebels’ dream of an Islamic caliphate. Yet hatred for the Kremlin-backed politicians and businessmen running Dagestan can translate into sympathy for the rebels.

Isalmagomed Khabiyev, the leader of an independent small business union, said: “The Wahhabis and bombers are not really all about caliphates, but about unhappiness with the local authorities, with this criminal regime.”

The decade-old conflict in Chechnya, bringing radicalisation, lawlessness and a flood of black market weapons, fuels the discontent.

At a mosque in Makhachkala, the elderly imam, surrounded by young followers, clenched his fists in anger.

“The rich couldn’t care because they have all the power and money,” he said. “The poor couldn’t care because they have lost trust in everything. It’s a terrible situation. It’s a volcano.”

DAGESTAN: LAND OF MOUNTAINS

Recent violent incidents include: 17 killed in attack on soldiers in January 2001; seven soldiers killed by bomb in January 2002; 43 people, including children, killed by bomb on parade in May 2002

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