With thinly disguised understatement, Alexei Malashenko, an analyst at the
Moscow branch of the Carnegie think tank, summed up the security situation in Chechnya and the North Caucasus.

"It's clear that the picture is less than rosy," he wrote in an opinion piece for the
Moscow Times.

Malashenko knows his subject matter well. He has just published a book on Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov. In his Moscow Times article he highlighted the growing tension between the Kremlin and Kadyrov.

"Kremlin officials have no idea what to do next," he wrote.

The murder this month of Russian human rights activist Natalia Estemirova
catapulted the North Caucasus back into the pages of newspaper around the world.

Kidnappers grabbed her as she left her home in Chechnya for work one morning. Her body was found hours later in a wood in neighbouring Ingushetia.

Unusually, four of Britain's main daily newspapers --
The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent -- all carried editorials on Estemirova's murder. They challenged Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to catch the killers, and they also warned of the lack of free speech in Russiaand of the dangers of an increasingly powerful Kadyrov.

Worsening violence has been a trend across the region -- mainly in Chechnya's neighbours Dagestan and Ingushetia -- over the last couple of years. Bomb attacks, kidnapping and assassinations have become a part of everyday life. Ingushetia's new leader lies in hospital seriously injured after a suicide attack on his convoy earlier this year. A few days before a sniper killed Dagestan's Interior Minister outside a wedding party.

And this accelerating cycle of violence and Kadyrov's power and independence is beginning to worry people in Moscow who fear both that the federal government could lose control of the region and that bomb attacks by militant Islamists may reappear in major Russian cities.

In a story on the Washington Post Web site, a former leader of a Russian commando unit that operated inthe North Caucasus during the 1990s said the violence could destabilise the whole country. "Believe me, that hotbed will bring us a lot of trouble," he is quoted as saying.

Roland Oliphant, on the Web site Russia Profile, linked the recent rise in violence to murky power games within Chechnya. "In June Kavkaz Center (a Web site with links to militant Islamists) claimed that a squad of 20 suicide bombers had been formed in Chechnya. Since then there seem to have been two suicide attacks," he wrote.
"If the rebel Web site is telling the truth, that means there are 18 attacks still to come."

Much of the media attention has focused on Kadyrov, credited by the Kremlin for battling rebels in Chechnya but despised by human rights workers. They blame him for abuses and creating an aura of impunity in the region. He denies their charges.

In an analysis piece earlier this month for the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a think tank based in Washington and Stockholm, Kevin Leahy raised important points on the growing power of Kadyrov after the assassination attempt on Ingushetia's president. His security forces have driven into Ingushetia to hunt for the assassins, creating regional tension.

"Ingushetia’s political elite is nervous. Virtually no one in this constituency wants to see Ramzan Kadyrov increase his influence in Ingushetia. This may be unavoidable, however," he wrote.

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International's UK branch, wrote in London's Daily Telegraph that Estemirova's murder was a warning to other outspoken voices in the North Caucasus.

"Our Russia research team say there used to be three key people when it came to uncovering human rights abuses in Chechnya," she wrote. "In the space of less
than three years, they’ve all now been murdered."

And Sunday Times correspondent Mark Franchetti revealed an interesting sub-story to Estemirova's murder. He said that she had fled to Britain from Russia last year after a row with Kadyrov.

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