Vladimir Putin is reaping a Caucasus whirlwind of his own making, writes Daniel McLaughlin.
The seizure by suspected Chechen rebels of children, their parents and teachers, as schools reopened in North Ossetia yesterday, has finally exposed the hollow Moscow lie that the Caucasus region is on the road to peace. The claim - always improbable - was that of an increasingly beleaguered President Vladimir Putin, who has been forced to cut short his Black Sea break to deal with the latest challenge to his battered authority.
After an unprecedented week of terror attacks that killed more than 100 people, fundamental questions are being asked about a strategy that appears to be leading only to total impasse.
Not least of his problems is his new man in Chechnya, President Alu Alkhanov, whose triumphant talk rings hollow after the election last Sunday that no one doubted he would win.
As Moscow's chosen candidate, he saw his main rival excluded from the election on a minor technicality, and garnered an unlikely 73 per cent of ballots on an unbelievable turnout of 85 per cent.
Mr Alkhanov is a bland police chief, who brings little inspiration to perhaps the most dangerous job in Russia. He lacks the support base and feared personal army of his predecessor, Akhmad Kadyrov (not feared enough, however, to save him from assassination).
Mr Alkhanov enters this precarious office at a time of particular crisis. For the first time in a decade of almost constant war, Chechnya's rebels are accused of attacking airliners, and with devastating effect: two Chechen women are blamed for the explosions that brought down two jets over southern Russia last week, killing all 90 people on board.
A radical Islamic group, the Islambouli Brigades, said it had carried out the bombings, in a show of support for Chechnya's guerrillas. The group promised more attacks to help fellow Muslims "suffering under Russia".
Two days ago, a week after the near-simultaneous air crashes, a woman blew herself up outside a Moscow metro station, killing 10 people and injuring more than 50. The Islambouli Brigades again claimed responsibility.
Terrorism experts have cast doubts on the claims, but they were seized upon by the Kremlin as proof that the Chechen conflict is not a separatist struggle, but part of a vital front in the US-led "war on terror".
Mr Putin insists Chechen rebels are funded by al-Qaeda and bolstered by fighters from the Arab world, and he demands unquestioning support on the issue from the international community.
The US, grateful for Moscow's blessing to base its troops on the Afghan border in ex-Soviet Central Asia, only occasionally mutters about persistent kidnap, torture and murder of Chechen civilians by Russian forces. European nations are equally muted about Mr Putin's failed policies and undisciplined troops in the region.
Now, far from managing the endgame in Chechnya, as he promised his people upon re-election in March, he faces the nightmare prospect of guerrilla war bleeding into other regions of the North Caucasus.
The fighters who seized the school in North Ossetia demanded the release of allies being held in neighbouring Ingushetia, where they staged a stunning raid in June, seizing control of the capital for a few hours, killing dozens of Russian servicemen and humiliating authoritarian local leader Murat Zyazikov, an ally of Mr Putin's.
Most of the attackers then managed to melt away, either into Chechnya or back into the local civilian population, demonstrating both the ease with which heavily- armed gangs can travel around the region and the apparent support they enjoy from the public.
Both military and rebel groups use intimidation to create civilian compliance, of course, but the brutality of Russian forces combined with high unemployment and poverty have created conditions ripe for extremism in the North Caucasus.
The lack of a real political process in Chechnya and strong-arm tactics by local leaders only feed that disaffection.
Without hope of a negotiated peace and growing up knowing only war, a young generation of Chechens is an obvious target for a radical Islamic element that has boosted its presence there in recent years, and hopes to co-opt the separatist movement with promises of financial help from foreign "jihadist" groups.
But Western specialists question the strength of al-Qaeda influence, noting that Chechnya's guerrillas have never attacked a Western target, despite their proven ability to strike the cosmopolitan heart of Moscow and now, it seems, airliners. Moreover, Chechnya's traditional Sufi form of Islam is not inherently radical, and most Chechens, despite their 150-year history of resistance to Russian rule, would not object to remaining under Moscow's control if they could just have peace in their shattered land.
But Mr Putin has vowed never to talk even to the most moderate of guerrilla leaders, Aslan Maskhadov, who won an internationally-recognised presidential vote in the republic in 1997 and has repeatedly denounced attacks on Russian civilians.
Having placed Mr Maskhadov beyond the pale, there is no one for the Kremlin to negotiate with, even if it were willing to do so. And, with a political settlement out of reach, radical warlords like Shamil Basayev can claim to offer Chechens the only real route to peace - by again inflicting on Moscow's men the kind of humiliating defeat that forced them to withdraw from the province in 1996.
When Mr Putin sent them back into Chechnya in 1999, he also planned to undermine separatist resistance with a policy of divide-and-rule.
He hoped that Kadyrov, a former rebel who split with Mr Maskhadov, would have enough kudos among Chechnya's clans to avoid being branded as simply a "Kremlin puppet", and use his personal militia to help enforce security. But Kadyrov's rule, which ended when he was blown up at a televised ceremony in May, only deepened the morass of violence and corruption in Chechnya.
His private army, now run by his thuggish son, Ramzan, clashes regularly with federal troops and domestic security service units in a fight for control over lucrative oil refining and smuggling operations in Chechnya.
Corruption is rife in the military's ranks, and large rebel groups often simply bribe demoralised soldiers to get through checkpoints en route to their targets, as may have happened yesterday in North Ossetia.
Russia's army - a bloated bear that has failed to adapt to post-Cold War conflicts - lost an all-out war against the guerrillas in 1994-96.
For the last five years, Moscow has pretended to be quietly "mopping up" in Chechnya, as the human rights situation deteriorated and Kadyrov's guards became the third side of a deadly triangle - along with Russian forces and the rebels - who torture and kill to win control of the province and whatever profit is to be made there.
With negotiations also ruled out - the personal pride of the former KGB man forbids it - it is unclear what Mr Putin can now do to pacify Chechnya and stop rebellion taking hold elsewhere in the North Caucasus.
The only certainty is continued killing and the silence of Western powers, not daring to challenge Mr Putin's claim to be doing his bit to win the global "war on terror".