GUBDEN, Russia — As you drive in to this village in a fold of dry hills in central Dagestan, you pass two ruined buildings, one on either side of the road.
The collapsed buildings are all that remains after a suicide bomber in a Lada Priora sedan packed with explosives detonated himself outside a security checkpoint here at 10:35 p.m. on Feb. 14.
The bomber was Vitaly Razdobudko, a notorious figure in the ranks of Islamist extremists fighting the Kremlin's rule in Russia's North Caucasus, a sweep of mountains and steppe between the Black Sea and the Caspian.
Three hours earlier, just a little further down the road, Razdobudko's wife blew herself up outside Gubden police station. Between them, the couple killed three people and wounded 26 in what rebel websites called a "twin martyrdom operation."
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Russia has seen far more deadly strikes by the Caucasus militants in recent months. Most infamous was the suicide bombing by a 20-year-old Ingush man at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, which killed 37 people in January. But the real front line in Russia's war on terrorism lies 900 miles south of the capital in places like Gubden, a small sun-splashed white-stone village, my final stop on a monthlong trip.
This is a war not just of guns and bullets and bombs, but a war of ideas; and it's a war the Kremlin appears to be losing.
With more than 30 mosques for a population of no more than 8,000 people, Gubden is probably the most religious place in Russia. It is also one of the most violent. An estimated 70 percent of the population here practice Salafism, the brand of conservative Islam that is associated with the insurgents. And a steady flow of these orthodox believers have joined the fight to carve out an Islamic caliphate through bloodshed -- bloodshed reciprocated by security forces attempting to stamp them out.
The current head of the Gubden jamaat, Ibragimkhalil Daudov, is one of the leaders of all boyeviki (rebel fighters) in Dagestan. His predecessor in Gubden, Magomedali Vagabov, who was killed in a special operation in August last year, was also a key figure in the Caucasus Emirate, the regionwide Islamist coalition. (Vagabov's wife Mariam was one of the two women who detonated bombs on the Moscow metro a year ago this week; Daudov's wife accidentally killed herself as she prepared a suicide belt in a hotel room in the Russian capital on New Year's Eve.)
These men bear little resemblance to their forebears in the separatist movement of rebel Chechnya in the 1990s. Then, the Chechens' leader was Dzhokhar Dudayev, a dandyish former air force general with a clipped mustache who dreamed of an independent Ichkeria under the flag of the Chechen wolf. Today's boyeviki are jihadis from across the North Caucasus and beyond who idolize international terrorists like Osama bin Laden and thirst to become martyrs.
Shortly before blowing himself up at the checkpoint on the edge of Gubden in February, Razdobudko -- a 32-year-old ethnic Russian convert to Islam -- recorded a video, which appeared on the Internet after he died.
"This jihad in the Caucasus is the true jihad," he said, looking pale and grim-faced as he sat in darkness at the wheel of his car, holding a copy of the Quran. "Here the best Muslims have gathered, because they sell their bodies, their possessions, and souls to Allah in exchange for paradise. They are not afraid of death; the mujahideen, the warriors of Allah, aspire to death even more than the apostates and polytheists aspire to life."
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Traveling through five republics of the North Caucasus over the last few weeks, I've explored some of the main causes for the ongoing war on Russia's southern perimeter: the brutality of state security forces, choking corruption, unchecked inequality, and neglect of festering ethnic disputes.
I started my journey about 300 miles to the west on the plain in Kabardino-Balkaria, a new hot spot in the insurgency, where civilians are increasingly sucked into the violence. From there I passed through the relative calm of North Ossetia to the tortured sliver of Ingushetia, where kidnappings and bombings are routine. Then came Chechnya: subdued, rebuilt at last, but stricken by a capricious new khan. And finally, to Dagestan: the great mountain republic, and the bloodiest of the lot.
One thing keeps on echoing back: the divisive force of religion. All along my route, I've witnessed a gulf of understanding between state-sponsored "traditional" Islam and followers of the more conservative Salafi strain.
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