Today's New York Times has an interesting piece about Islamic influences on the Chechen rebellion. Like all Times articles, it requires registration in order to be read online, so I believe a.net rules prohibit posting a link. In any event, the main points of the article are that the rebellion is motivated by nationalism much more than by radical Islam; the influence of fundamentalist Islam has declined since peaking in the late 1990's; and there may be as few as 20 foreign Islamic radicals assisting the Chechens.