In "Chechen Jihad", Bodansky draws on mountains of previously unseen intelligence from Islamist movements and other military and intelligence sources from throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, offering an intimate and startling portrait of the jihadist movement that is astonishing in its detail and chilling in its implications. As he reveals, the final years of U.S.-Soviet relations left Chechnya a fertile breeding ground for Islamic terrorism, and in the past decade an uneasy alliance of native Chechen separatists and militant jihadists have joined forces to help al Qaeda pursue its war against the west.