What we know about ISIS-K, the group that claimed responsibility for the Moscow attack
The group that took credit for Friday’s deadly terrorist attack in Moscow is the Islamic State in Afghanistan, called Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K.
ISIS-K was founded in 2015 by disgruntled members of the Pakistani Taliban, who subsequently embraced a more violent version of Islam. The group saw its ranks roughly halved to around 1,500 to 2,000 fighters in 2021 due to a combination of US airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that killed many of its leaders.
The group got a dramatic second wind shortly after the Taliban overthrew the Afghan government that year. During the US military withdrawal from the country, ISIS-K carried out a suicide bombing at Kabul International Airport in August 2021, killing 13 US troops and as many as 170 civilians.
The attack raised ISIS-K’s international profile and positioned it as a major threat to the Taliban’s ability to rule.
Since then, the Taliban have been waging battles against ISIS-K in Afghanistan. So far, Taliban security forces have prevented the group from seizing territory or recruiting large numbers of former Taliban fighters who were bored in peacetime – one of the worst-case scenarios laid out after Afghanistan’s Western-backed government collapsed .
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.
Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of the Army’s Central Command, told a House committee on Thursday that ISIS-K “retains the ability and will to destroy American and Western interests abroad in just six months.” to fall with little to do.” no warning.”
Earlier this month, the US government had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow – possibly targeting large gatherings, including concerts – prompting the State Department to issue a public advisory to Americans in Russia. The US government also shared this information with Russian authorities, in accordance with its long-standing ‘duty to warn’ policy.
ISIS is clearly trying to project its external operations far beyond its home territory. Counterterrorism officials in Europe say they have foiled several nascent ISIS-K plots to attack targets there in recent months.
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 parade for Major General Qassim Suleimani, a respected Iranian commander who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020.
ISIS-K, which has repeatedly threatened Iran over what it says is 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 regularly criticizes President Vladimir V. Putin in its propaganda, said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consultancy based in New York. “ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of running Muslim blood, citing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”