Two wars have been waged alongside one another for almost a decade, intertwining and feeding off each other, though different in tactics, objectives and, in many cases, combatants.
This helps explain a wide range of seeming contradictions, not least the role of Islamist militant groups. Such groups, perhaps sympathetic to Al Qaeda, are closely involved with an increasingly powerful and active minority within the anti-Russian forces, a faction almost as bitterly opposed to the mainstream rebels and Chechen former president-in- rebellion Aslan Maskhadov as they are to the Russians. Furthermore, the contradictions between the two wars, their ideologies and those waging them are becoming increasingly stark.
