Terror On The Move

For the past nine months, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been claiming that the combat stage of his "counterterrorist operation" in Chechnya was over. Those claims were further demolished last week when four suicide bombers destroyed a commuter train close to the spa town of Yessentuki in Russia's Stavropol region, some 1,600 km south of Moscow.

The attack killed 41 and injured more than 170. Now, the Chechen insurgency is spreading to neighboring regions. Ten hours after the train bombing, rebels fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the FSB security service headquarters in Magas, Ingushetia.

The...