Has Russia finally defeated Chechnya's separatist insurgents at the same time as another major conflict is brewing in the volatile north Caucasus region? Press coverage of Chechnya, and its neighbours Ingushetia and Dagestan, raises questions about balance between peace and conflict in the whole area.

"Like it or not, Russia has won this war," says Jonathan Steele of the 17-year-old conflict between Moscow and Chechnya, in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Russian troops are no longer seen on the region's streets, the Chechen police force is itself capable of dealing with security, and the previously war-torn capital Grozny has been transformed by considerable investment since President Ramzan Kadyrov's came to power in April 2007, Steele writes.

The dreams of Chechen independence, if not completely dead and buried, are for now at least, on ice, he writes.

With normal life resumed in Chechnya, Grozny is now almost unrecognisable, Britain's Independent newspaper says, pointing to the scale of recovery in the region. "Peace and economic recovery seem to be keeping separatist yearnings at bay," the paper writes.

The New York Times, however, draws a different conclusion about the status of the Chechen insurgency.

Increasing attacks on the families of suspected insurgents indicate that there is still a "small but smouldering insurgency fighting for Chechnya's independence from Russia", according to the paper.

Over a dozen homes of the families of those suspected of joining the insurgency have been burnt to the ground over the summer as part of a targeted arson campaign, the paper reports. The level of information shaping the attacks suggests that the arsonists are members of the Chechen police forces, according to the paper, though the government denies involvement.

The New York Times says the insurgency has weakened since 2005, but that it's clear "the rebels have proven resilient and remain able to recruit new members".

Elsewhere in the north Caucasus the warnings are more alarming.

"The talk of peace and reconciliation (in Chechnya) is in stark contrast to the rest of the region. In neighbouring Ingushetia violence is on the rise," says Britain's Times newspaper.

Other commentators go further.

"Now Russia's war in Georgia may have triggered a new cycle of repression and resistance," the Economist magazine says. And it's Chechnya's immediate neighbours that are the cause for real concern.

"Dagestan is increasingly ungovernable and violent," the magazine says. "Ingushetia itself is close to boiling point."

Islamist militants have moved to Ingushetia from Chechnya and civilians are increasingly caught in the cross-fire between separatists and the area's authorities, according to the magazine.

Reuters, meanwhile, reports that increasing violence and clashes in Ingushetia threaten to destabilise the whole of the north Caucasus.

Gunshots, bomb attacks, murders and kidnappings are a daily part of life in Ingushetia's biggest town Nazran, according to the news agency. Heavy-handed tactics and widespread unemployment and poverty are said to be fuelling a popular uprising.

These clashes aren't just a local problem, Reuters says. They could spread to other parts of the north Caucasus, and threaten to re-ignite an ethnic conflict with neighbouring North Ossetia.

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