ISIS-K: – Attack Russia – feared in the world

IS has recently received a lot of attention after claiming responsibility for the mass shooting in a concert hall just outside Moscow, where over 140 people were killed.

According to American intelligence, it is more specifically the Afghan branch of the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISIS-K), which carried out the deadly attack.

The group has previously been behind high-profile attacks in various parts of the Middle East. Since the collapse of the overall IS movement in 2017, it has evolved into one of the most feared and well-known terrorist groups in the world under the leadership of Sanaullah Ghafari, also known by the cover name Shahab al-Muhajir.

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High-profile suicide attacks

Ghafari was reported killed in Afghanistan in June last year, but is said to have fled with injuries across the border into Pakistan. Today, he is believed to be in the southwestern province of Balochistan in Pakistan, which borders both Iran and Afghanistan.

In 2020, he was named the emir of ISIS-K, and has since strengthened the group’s reputation for its hard-line ideology and high-profile attacks.

The group first gained global attention with a suicide attack at Kabul’s international airport in 2021 during the withdrawal of the US military. 13 American soldiers and over 100 civilians were killed.

In September 2022, they also claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide attack on the Russian embassy in Kabul that killed six people, including two Russian embassy staff.

In January this year, ISIS-K was behind the suicide bombings in Iran, which killed almost 100 people at a memorial for Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani.

The attack, which is the deadliest on Iranian soil since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, was ISIS-K’s largest attack to date.

Tried to hit Russia

Before the shooting in the concert hall near Moscow, Khafari has in recent years repeatedly tried to target Russia as revenge for the country’s intervention in the civil war in Syria which helped to combat IS’s regional operations.

Among other things, the group has criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the bloody war against IS.

– ISIS-K has been planning attacks in Russia for quite some time, says senior researcher Aaron Zelin at the American think tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Special forces took over an hour

Russia’s FSB security service stated on March 7 that it had foiled an armed attack by ISIS-K against a synagogue near Moscow. At the scene, they found, among other things, firearms, ammunition and components for the production of an explosive charge.

Several people were killed in the action, but the FSB has not come out with an exact figure.

4,000 to 6,000 members in Afghanistan

Little was known about Ghafari before the 2021 Kabul airport attack, but US authorities offered a $10 million bounty on him as a result of the attack.

According to Taliban sources, Ghafari is an Afghan Tajik who served as a soldier in the Afghan army, and later joined ISIS-K, which was formed in late 2014.

Under him, the group has used high-profile attacks as a recruitment tool to create an ever-growing following.

– ISIS-K is trying to outcompete rival jihadists by carrying out more daring attacks to profile itself, take members from rival groups and acquire resources from potential supporters, says senior expert on security in South Asia Asfandyar Mir at the US Institute of Peace (USIP).

In a report to the UN Security Council from July 2023, it was claimed that ISIS-K had between 4,000 and 6,000 people on the ground in Afghanistan. The report has no estimates for how many members are in other countries.

Experts trace the group’s expansion to the collapse of the overall IS movement during the war in Iraq in 2017. Many foreign fighters then fled Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan to join ISIS-K.

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Recruiting from Central Asia

Ghafari has particularly attempted to recruit ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks in Central Asia.

The discovery of Tajik passports on the accused men after the attack in Russia therefore suggests a possible connection to Ghafari’s group.

Tajikistan, a Persian-speaking and predominantly Sunni Muslim country, is home to 10 million people. The country is considered one of the poorest former Soviet republics, and the country’s economy depends heavily on remittances from over a million migrant workers in Russia.

Tajik authorities have said that many Tajiks living in Russia complain of poor treatment, making them easier targets for extremist recruitment.

The name ISIS-K is taken from an old Persian term for the region of Khorasan, which included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, as well as areas in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In the group’s propaganda materials, which have been translated into several regional languages ​​and English, the group promises to establish a caliphate spanning the entire former Khorasan region.

Expert: Will attack abroad

Frank McKenzie, former head of US Central Command (Centcom), which covers Central Asia and the Middle East as well as parts of South Asia, says the attack in Moscow was in line with ISIS-K’s long-term goal of stepping up attacks abroad.

“They were so looking forward to the trip”

– They are determined to attack us and our homeland. I think the probability of that happening is greater now than a couple of years ago, says McKenzie, who was commander of the US forces in the region during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

McKenzie’s prediction is supported by the current head of Centcom, Gen. Michael Kurilla, who said in a Senate committee hearing this month that ISIS-K wants to attack the United States within the next six months.

– ISIS-K still has the ability and the will to attack American and Western interests abroad during the next six months, with little or no warning, he says.

The group apparently also has a presence in Europe.

In July and December last year, authorities in several European countries made a series of arrests of alleged ISIS-K members suspected of planning terrorist attacks.

Earlier in March, just days before the attack near Moscow, two Afghan nationals were arrested in Germany. According to German prosecutors, the two Afghans, who are linked to ISIS-K, are said to have planned a terrorist attack in Sweden.

Christine Abizaid, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, says the group has so far used “inexperienced agents” to plan attacks in Europe.

France, which will host the Olympics this summer, said on Sunday that it is raising its preparedness to the highest level after the shooting in Moscow.