IS-K – An Overlooked Threat?
When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by the US Delta Force in Syria in October 2019, the fall of the Islamic State seemed imminent. Without a leader figure, the organization’s hold on territory in Syria slowly decayed. The existence of the second most recognizable Islamic terror organization after Al-Qaeda was almost sealed. However, ISIS has spread too far to be reliant on a single province and a single leader. Recent events in Moscow point to IS-K being an organisation which has greater resilience than some may have imagined.
Growing in the Shadows
The Islamic State spread into the World and secured its long-term existence. In Africa and Asia, ISIS cells are operating with some capacity, gathering financial and human resources to undertake future operations with the hope of achieving a final goal – creating a pan-Islamic caliphate uniting all Muslims. Yet space and freedom of operations are required to grow and plan. This opportunity was awarded to the group, Islamic State – Khorasan (IS-K), in the so-called Khorasan Province, a historical region that covers the areas of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iran, and Uzbekistan.
Since the late 2010s, the ISIS cell in Afghanistan has grown in power. The slow decay of the Afghani government and constant pressure from the Taliban enabled the group to recruit in deep provinces but also the populations of more secular post-Soviet states. Establishing its headquarters in the Achin District bordering Pakistan, the IS-K began its operations with the first strike aimed at the Save the Children Office in Jalalabad in January 2018. Since then the organization entered into a spree of fighting against other militant groups such as the Taliban.
More dismay and chaos followed with the US retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021. It was then that one of the deadliest attacks on US troops in the country was conducted. In total over 170 people including 13 US military personnel during the bombing at a terminal gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Since then the organization only surged in numbers. In November 2021, U.N. Special Representative Deborah Lyons told the U.N. Security Council that “once limited to a few provinces and the capital, ISKP now seems to be present in nearly all provinces, and increasingly active.” Lyons warned at the time that the region “is an area deserving more attention from the international community.”
The US retreat from Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover led to a lack of effective efforts to suppress IS-K, giving them a free hand in all aspects, especially spreading into Turkmenistan and Tajikistan where it began to recruit fighters and radicalize elements of society with the ultimate goal of expanding the caliphate and threatening the West. But the organization reaches further to the West, with a wide net of operatives in Turkey. This is the result of two factors overlapping. Firstly, the population of Afghanistan sided with the ascendent Taliban, cutting IS-K from domestic recruits. Secondly, IS as a whole organization always consisted of international fighters who migrated to its theater of operations or acted as lone wolves.
The position of IS-K in the region in geographical terms favors the organization in many ways. Firstly, the US services lost the possibility of hitting the organization’s logistics due to a lack of presence and unfavorable relations with the Taliban. Secondly, the Taliban government, as it sees to consolidate, is too weak to provide security and fend off the organization. It is unlikely that the government in Kabul will enter an open war with ISIS and hunt down its cells in the Achin District. Lastly, the insurgents gained the possibility to recruit fighters from secular and authoritarian ex-Soviet states. The organization, however, was in turmoil during the Taliban offensive in 2020-2021. The local population decided to favor the winning side, cutting ISIS from potential volunteers and fighters. Yet, for an international organization, this turn of events was rather an episodic obstacle rather than a serious threat.
Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Turkmen are ethnically Sunni Muslims with a difficult past with Moscow, as said nations were victims of the communist terror back in the 1920s and the 1930s. Nowadays large groups of people of those ethnicities migrate to Russia looking for a better life and improvement of their economic situation. Among them, there are those who due to personal reasons can quickly radicalize on their religious backgrounds. In other words – while ISIS in Syria and Iraq was importing its fighters, IS-K is in a position to export them into various regions.
Importance of Turkey
The activity of the Turkish cell of IS is a real threat enabling IS operations in the Middle East, Europe, and other regions. Ankara and Stambul became crossroads between Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, Caucasus states and Europe. The influx of IS fighters from Iraq and Syria among migrants from war-torn states was inevitable.
In the last decade, the IS managed to conduct several attacks in Istanbul employing lone-wolves strikes. But the power of the cell lies in the logistical abilities and running up transfers of fighters and resources. Turkish fighters are not only able to extract radicals from Syria and Iraq, but also procure weapons and move personnel around the region through well-known migration trails. Turkey will likely become a hot spot for terrorist migration and the backbone for future operations in the region.
Further from Russia’s Reach
During the open conflict between ISIS and its opponents in Syria, radicalized Chechen and Dagestani fighters took the opportunity into their own hands. The Caucasus, despite the second Chechen War ending in 2008, remained a dangerous place with occasional acts of terror continuing. Islamic State has also spread its cells there, forcing the Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) to send its counter-terror units to the mountains. Units of the Red Guard and Bureau of Special Operations organized a continuous cycle of raids and strikes on hideouts, weapon caches, and facilities, often losing operators in action. But the state border in the south was the furthest they could go. State borders became an obstacle and Russian ability for targeted killing was not the same as the US one.
Although Russia is an authoritarian state and its police forces can be permanently vigilant they remain highly ineffective in controlling and tracking radical terrorists in the vast areas of the country. Thus, foreign support is a must and despite the ongoing War in Ukraine, the US agencies aid the FSB with information. Yet, this isn’t always enough, as Russia has been unable to cut the arms supply, which is almost impossible in the region, and identify threats in time. The multitude of areas and directions is just too much for the internal services, as they have to maintain armed control in the Caucasus and provide security in the largest cities. This leaves many holes in the system for penetration by IS-K.
Culmination
The IS-K has almost every factor in its hands to grow freely and conduct attacks on a small scale in an unlimited manner with its facilities unhindered. The latest attack on the Crocus Hall in Krasnogorsk, Moscow is the result of IS-K being unbothered at its roots and remaining outside of the American and Russian reach in favorable conditions to spread chaos and disarray.
With undisrupted access to the arms market, and many ways to infiltrate into Russia and back into the Middle East the IS-K has something that ISIL did not – the aforementioned time and space for planning and organizing operations. The recent attack in the Russian capital could be perceived as the beginning of a bloody campaign of terror, but it poses a question for the future of Eastern and possibly Central Europe. Is the battlefield in the Global War on Terror shifting from Western states to those in the East?
Countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Hungary, and Poland have not faced Islamic terrorism in its full picture and their security mechanisms were never prepared for terror attacks of the magnitude of those in France, Spain, or Great Britain. Yet, on the other hand, some of those states were historically safe havens for various organizations that decided to keep a low profile and procure funds and resources for their operations. Yet, the unpredictable character of IS operations does not allow the exclusion of any scenario.
Conclusions
The announcement of the end of IS in 2019, was detached from reality. The organization reached the level of self-sustainability on local and regional levels, including the possibility to secure funds, weapons, and fighters. In this instance, IS-K is the most dangerous formation, as it can deploy its fighters in the overlooked regions of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
The support from other regional IS cells may play a pivotal role in future strikes, with the possibility of smuggling personnel and weapons to and from Europe through Turkey, currently struggling with the crackdown on ISIS conspirators, as it did during the insurgency period in Syria and Iraq, which seems to be a bridge between various IS groups.
IS-K may now become the single most significant threat for the Central Asia and Eastern Europe regions in which it operates, being the emanation of radical Islamic terrorism and its ability to plan operations under the radar of security services of regional states.