Moscow attacks linked to Pak jihad epicentre

As Moscow began to pick up the pieces from back-to-back bombings on Monday at two metro stations within a couple of kilometres from the Kremlin, the head of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov suggested the suicide bombers were female and hailed from the North Caucasus region of Russia.

India quickly condemned the attacks, emphasising that only "collective action by the international community can combat the scourge of terrorism", a reference to the North Waziristan epicentre from where Chechen separatists fighting Russian domination, Afghan Taliban seeking to push out US and NATO-led foreign troops in Afghanistan, as well as the Sirajuddin Haqqani group targeting India in Kabul receive their training.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described it as an act of "terrorism" and vowed all those responsible would be "destroyed". The Russian media speculated that the attacks, in which at least 40 people have died, were in retaliation against the killing of two aides of the main Chechen rebel leader, Doku Umarov, as well as a raid by Russian forces in Ingushetia, a neighbouring province of Chechnya, in which 20 Islamic insurgents were killed, including the leader of a gang which had targeted a Moscow-St Petersburg train in November 2009.

Russia has simply been unable to secure its underbelly since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in end-1991, with separatist movements in the volatile Caucasus refusing to die down, despite recent Russian-mandated elections in Chechnya.

The reference to the "North Caucasus", a catch-all phrase which refers to Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan as well as South and North Ossetia, has been commonly used when terror attacks have targeted mainland Russians.

However, it is not clear whether the Moscow bombings have been carried out by anti-Russian Chechen rebels or by Chechen separatists linked to the Al Qaeda who receive their training in the borderlands of Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Indian intelligence officials believe these groups are increasingly linked, pointing out that the suicide attacks could also be in retaliation against the Russian decision to allow US and NATO forces to send non-lethal equipment through Russia to Afghanistan.

Terrorist attacks in Moscow have not been that uncommon over the last decade, and Russian officials have pointed out that women have been as much part of Chechen suicide bombing squads. In 2002, when a Moscow theatre was stormed by Chechen rebels, women in veils and bandanas were part of the group. Russian security forces had to subsequently introduce sleeping gas through ducts to disarm the terrorists, but hundreds died as they inhaled too much of the gas.

In 2003, Chechen rebels struck twice in Moscow, killing 15 people in July during an open-air rock festival. Then in 2004, they took over a school in Beslan in North Ossetia -- also the scene of anti-Russian struggle -- an incident which culminated in 334 deaths, including 186 children.

In February 2004, one month before the Madrid blasts carried out by the Al Qaeda, pro-Al Qaeda Chechens planted an explosive device, also in a Moscow metro station, killing 39 people, following it up with an explosion in a Moscow-St Petersburg train in November 2004, in which 29 people were killed.