As responsibility for the terrorist outrage which has seen hundreds of Russian schoolchildren taken hostage is placed at the door of Chechen separatists, Nick Morrison ooks at how a 200-year-old conflict has taken on a very modern guise.

As the Second World War drew to a close, Josef Stalin was in the mood for vengeance. Even as the Nazi war machine was being hurled back whence it came, the Soviet dictator went in search of new enemies, and as he pored over the map of his ruined land, his gaze fell upon Chechnya.

The Chechens' crime was collaborating with the Nazis; their punishment was deportation. In 1944 the entire population was removed and dumped in Siberia and Central Asia. Around a quarter did not survive the trip.

Sixty years on, there has been another mass exodus from Chechnya, and this time it is scarcely less voluntary. In the last ten years, around a quarter of the population of one million have left, fleeing the bitter conflict which has torn their homeland apart.

Russia's involvement with Chechnya has a long and bloody history, stretching back 200 years and more, but it is a history which is taking on a new and disturbing twist, brought to a new height three times in little over a week.

It is Chechen separatists who are believed to be responsible for the destruction of two passenger planes over southern Russia last week, killing 89 people. It is Chechen separatists who are suspected of being behind the bombing of a Moscow metro station on Tuesday which left ten people dead. And it is Chechen separatists who are thought to be those who took hundreds of children hostage at a school in Beslan, in southern Russia, as they arrived for their first day of term.

By last night, 32 women and children had been freed, but more than 300 were still being held after masked men and women, wearing bombs strapped to their bodies, burst into the school on Wednesday morning. Trip wires are believed to have laid around the school and the terrorists have threatened to kill 50 children for every one gunman killed by Russian security forces.

Although their demands are unclear, they are thought to include the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and the release of Chechen rebels captured by the Russians in their long campaign to subdue the errant republic.

Surrounded on nearly all sides by Russian territory, the Republic of Chechnya has been the scene of vicious confrontation between Russian and Chechen forces for almost three centuries. Roughly midway between the Caspian and Black seas, predominantly Muslim Chechnya has long been a thorn in the side of Russian leaders.

After decades of conflict, it was in 1848 that the Russians finally overcome the resistance of Imam Shamil to add the Caucasus republic to their empire, establishing rule from Moscow broken only by a short period of independence after the chaos following the 1917 revolutions.

Khruschev allowed the displaced Chechens to return to their homeland in 1957, but it was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 which provided the opportunity to finally break free.

Dzokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet air force officer, declared Chechnya's independence from Russia. As then Russian President Boris Yeltsin dithered, Dudayev became increasingly more defiant, until, in 1994, Yeltsin decided to bring the rogue state to heel.

In December of 1994, Russian troops entered Chechnya with promises of a quick victory, but the operation was poorly planned and soon ran into difficulties. Although Dudayev was killed in a Russian missile attack, the Chechens put up fierce resistance and in August of 1996 the rebels retook the capital, Groznyy, hastening a ceasefire followed by an agreement to give Chechnya substantial autonomy, although not full independence.

The 20 month war saw an estimated 100,000 people killed, many of them civilians, and ended with Russia humiliated as its troops pulled out.

The Chechen chief of staff Aslan Maskhadov was elected president, but the fighting had left the republic's infrastructure in ruins and its people at the mercy of rival clans, each interested only in advancing their own fortunes.

As the clan warlords grew stronger, Maskhadov began to lose control. Organised crime flourished, and the province descended into lawlessness, with kidnappings a regular occurrence, including Moscow's most senior envoy to Chechnya, General Gennadiy Shpigun, whose body was found a year after his disappearance.

In August 1999, Chechen fighters crossed into neighbouring Dagestan to support the proclamation of an Islamic republic. Although this rebellion was quickly crushed, it coincided with a series of apartment block bombings throughout Russia, which left more than 300 people dead.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, later to be elected president, did not hesitate to blame the Chechens for the bombings, and in September 1999 Russian troops again moved into Chechnya, with the stated aim of crushing terrorism.

Chechnya's strategic and economic significance was not lost on the former KGB man. Rich in oil, Chechnya also has the main highway and only railway link and oil pipeline through Russian territory between the Caspian and Black seas.

This time the campaign was more successful, and in February 2000, Russian troops captured Groznyy, razing much of the city to the ground. Former cleric Akhmad Kadyrov was installed as the head of the administration and a referendum approved a new constitution which gave the republic more autonomy, although ruling out independence.

But, the Russian occupation has been marked by allegations of a series of atrocities, including mass murder, rape and torture, against civilians and rebel fighters alike. The discovery of mass graves drew outrage from human rights organisations, but George Bush's war on terror declared after the September 11 attacks has provided sufficient cover for President Putin to prosecute his war - or what he calls "normalisation" - unchecked and without international condemnation.

Russian brutality has also seen the moderate, pro-independence Chechen fighters of the 1990s replaced by a new breed of militant Islamists, resorting to ever more extreme measures in their cause.

In October 2002, Chechen rebels seized a Moscow theatre and held more than 800 people hostage. Russian security forces subsequently released gas into the theatre to knock out the terrorists before moving in. Most of the rebels and 129 of the theatregoers were killed, many of them from the effects of the gas.

Chechnya was plunged further into chaos with Kadyrov's assassination at a Victory Day parade in Groznyy in May this year, and the latest spate of terrorist activity has coincided with the election of his successor, Alu Alkhanov, at the weekend, in a contest in which more popular candidates were barred from standing.

But, despite the setbacks, and the more than 200 years of history which suggest otherwise, this is a war President Putin believes he can win.

Emboldened by the green light from Washington which allows him to devastate a country under the guise of a war on terrorism, he has remained steadfast in his determination to prevent Chechnya leaving the Russian embrace, and to restore Russian pride dented by the humiliating defeat in 1996.

But Maskhadov, now leading the rebel administration, has warned that President Alkhanov faces the same fate as his predecessor, and that there are the men and resources to keep fighting the Russians for years to come. President Putin may see Chechnya as the Russian front of the war on terror, but there are no signs it will be over any quicker than President Bush's version.