Five years ago this month, a U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab militia drove Islamic State fighters out of a village in eastern Syria, the group’s last strip of territory.
Since then, the organization that once established a self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria has evolved into a more traditional terrorist group – a secret network of cells from West Africa to Southeast Asia that carries out guerrilla attacks, bombings and targeted killings.
None of the group’s affiliates has been as relentless as the Islamic State of Khorasan, which operates in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran and aims to attack Europe and beyond. U.S. officials say the group carried out Friday’s attack near Moscow, killing scores of people and wounding many more.
In January, the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISIS-K) carried out two bombings in Iran, killing dozens of people and wounding hundreds more at a memorial ceremony for former Iranian top general Qassim Suleimani, the target of a US drone strike four years earlier.
“The threat posed by ISIS,” Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, told a Senate panel this month, “remains a major problem in counterterrorism.” Most of the attacks “carried out by ISIS around the world have actually been carried out by affiliates by ISIS outside Afghanistan,” she said.
Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of the military’s Central Command, told a House committee on Thursday that ISIS-K “retains the ability and willingness to destroy U.S. and Western interests abroad in just six months with little or no warning.” to attack.” .”
American counterterrorism specialists on Sunday rejected the Kremlin’s suggestion that Ukraine was behind Friday’s attack near Moscow. “The modus operandi was classic ISIS,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The attack was the third concert venue in the Northern Hemisphere that ISIS has attacked in the last decade, Hoffman said, following an attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris in November 2015 (as part of a broader operation that also included other targets in the area). Northern Hemisphere were attacked). City) and a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena, England, in May 2017.
The Islamic State of Khorasan, founded in 2015 by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban, entered the international jihadist scene after the Taliban overthrew the Afghan government in 2021. During the US military withdrawal from the country, ISIS-K carried out a suicide attack on the Afghan government at the international airport in Kabul in August 2021, killing 13 US soldiers and up to 170 civilians.
Since then, the Taliban have been fighting ISIS-K in Afghanistan. So far, Taliban security services have prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting large numbers of former Taliban fighters, U.S. counterterrorism officials say.
But ISIS-K’s upward trajectory and scale of attacks have increased in recent years, with cross-border attacks in Pakistan and a growing number of attacks in Europe. Most of these European plots were foiled, leading Western intelligence agencies to assess that the group may have reached the deadly limits of its capabilities.
Last July, Germany and the Netherlands coordinated arrests against seven Tajik, Turkmen and Kyrgyz individuals linked to an ISIS-K network and suspected of plotting attacks in Germany.
In the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, three men were arrested over alleged plans to attack Cologne Cathedral on New Year’s Eve 2023. The raids were linked to three other arrests in Austria and one in Germany on December 24. The four people were allegedly acting in support of ISIS-K.
American and other Western counterterrorism officials say these attacks were organized by low-level agents who were discovered and foiled relatively quickly.
“So far, ISIS-Khorasan has relied primarily on inexperienced operatives in Europe to carry out attacks on its behalf,” Christine S. Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a House committee in November.
However, there are worrying signs that ISIS-K is learning from its mistakes. In January, masked attackers attacked a Roman Catholic church in Istanbul, killing one person. Shortly thereafter, the Islamic State claimed responsibility through its official Amaq news agency. Turkish law enforcement authorities arrested 47 people, most of them Central Asian nationals.
Since then, Turkish security forces have launched massive counter-operations against ISIS suspects in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Several European investigations shed light on the global and interconnected nature of ISIS finances, according to a January United Nations report that identified Turkey as a logistical hub for ISIS-K operations in Europe.
The attacks in Moscow and Iran showed greater sophistication, counterterrorism officials said, indicating a higher level of planning and the ability to tap local extremist networks.
“ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York, who frequently criticized President Vladimir V. Putin in his propaganda . “ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands, citing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”
A significant proportion of ISIS-K members are of Central Asian origin, and a large proportion of Central Asians live and work in Russia. Some of these individuals may have become radicalized and have been able to take on a logistical role and stockpile weapons, Mr Clarke said.
Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism specialist at Georgetown University, said: “ISIS-K has gathered fighters from Central Asia and the Caucasus under its wing and they could be responsible for the Moscow attack either directly or through their own networks.”
Apparently, the Russian and Iranian authorities did not take seriously enough the public and more detailed private American warnings about impending ISIS-K attack plans or were distracted by other security challenges.
“In early March, the U.S. government shared information with Russia about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said Saturday. “We also issued a public warning to Americans in Russia on March 7. ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. “There was no Ukrainian involvement.”
Russian authorities announced Saturday the arrest of several suspects in Friday’s attack. But senior American officials said Sunday that they are still investigating the attackers’ backgrounds and trying to determine whether they were used for this specific attack from South or Central Asia or whether they were already in the country as part of the network of supporters that ISIS- K then got involved and encouraged.
Counterterrorism experts expressed concern Sunday that the attacks in Moscow and Iran could embolden ISIS-K to redouble its attack efforts in Europe, particularly in France, Belgium, Britain and other countries that have been repeatedly attacked over the past decade .
The UN report, which uses a different name for the Islamic State of Khorasan, said: “Some individuals of North Caucasian and Central Asian origin traveling to Europe from Afghanistan or Ukraine represent an opportunity for ISIL-K, which seeks to to plan violent attacks in the West.” The report concluded that there was evidence of “current and unfinished operational plans on European soil by ISIL-K.”
A senior Western intelligence official identified three main reasons that could inspire ISIS-K operatives to carry out attacks: the existence of dormant cells in Europe, images of the war in Gaza and support from Russian-speaking people living in Europe.
A major event this summer is embarrassing many counterterrorism officials.
“I’m worried about the Paris Olympics,” said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former top U.N. counterterrorism official who is now a senior adviser to the Counter Extremism Project. “You would be a prime terrorist target.”
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2024-03-25 05:27:05
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