The group that claimed credit for Friday’s deadly terror attack in Moscow is the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan called Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K.
ISIS-K was founded in 2015 by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban, who then converted to a more violent version of Islam. The group saw its ranks roughly halved, to around 1,500 to 2,000 fighters, by 2021 by a combination of US airstrikes and raids by Afghan commandos that killed many of its leaders.
The group received a dramatic second wind soon after the Taliban overthrew the Afghan government that year. During the withdrawal of the US military from the country, ISIS-K carried out a suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport in August 2021 that killed 13 US soldiers and up to 170 civilians.
The attack raised ISIS-K’s international profile, positioning it as a major threat to the Taliban’s ability to govern.
Since then, the Taliban have been fighting against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. So far, Taliban security services have prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting large numbers of bored former Taliban fighters in peacetime – among the worst-case scenarios that have emerged since the collapse of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government.
President Biden and his top commanders have said the United States will launch “over the horizon” strikes from a base in the Persian Gulf against ISIS and Qaeda insurgents who threaten the United States and its interests abroad.
Indeed, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, head of the military’s Central Command, told a House committee Thursday that ISIS-K “retains the ability and will to attack American and Western interests abroad in just six months with minimal no warning.”
ISIS clearly seeks to project its external operations far beyond its internal ones. Counter-terrorism officials in Europe say that in recent months they have thwarted several emerging ISIS-K plans to attack targets there.
In a post on its official Telegram account in January, ISIS-K said it was behind a bombing that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran, during a memorial procession for Lt. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a respected Iranian commander who killed in US drone strike in 2020.
ISIS-K, which has repeatedly threatened Iran for its polytheism and apostasy, has claimed responsibility for several previous attacks there.
And now the group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Moscow.
“ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years” and frequently criticizes President Vladimir V. Putin in its propaganda, said Colin P. Clark, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy. “ISIS-K accuses Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands, citing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria”.
