Russia is reeling from the worst terror strike on its soil in a generation following an attack on March 22, 2024, that killed at least 137 concertgoers in Moscow.

The attack has been claimed by the Islamic State group. And despite Russian authorities expressing doubt over the claim, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that they believed ISIL-K, a South and Central Asian affiliate of the terrorist organization, was behind the assault.

It comes amid heightened concern over the scope of ISIL-K activities following recent terrorist operations in countries including Iran and Pakistan. The Conversation turned to Clemson University’s Amira Jadoon and Sara Harmouch of American University – terrorism experts who have tracked the activities of ISIL-K – to explain what this latest deadly attack tells us about the organization’s strengths and agenda.

What is ISIL-K?

ISIL-K, short for Islamic State Khorasan Province, is a regional affiliate of the larger Islamic State group.

The affiliate group operates primarily in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, although it has presence throughout the historical “Khorasan” – a region that includes parts of the modern-day nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, along with other Central Asian countries.

Established in 2015, ISIL-K aims to establish a physical “caliphate” – a system of governing a society under strict Islamic Sharia law and under religious leadership – in the South and Central Asian region.

What to know about ISIS-K, the group that claimed the Moscow attack • FRANCE 24 English Video

ISIL-K’s beliefs follow the ideology of its parent organization, the Islamic State group, which promotes an extreme interpretation of Islam and sees secular government actors, as well as non-Muslim and Muslim minority civilian populations, as legitimate targets.

The group is known for its extreme brutality and for targeting both government institutions and civilians, including mosques, educational institutions and public spaces.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, ISIL-K’s key objectives have been to diminish the now-ruling Taliban’s legitimacy in the war-ravaged nation, assert itself as the rightful leader of the Muslim community and emerge as the principal regional adversary to regimes it deems oppressive.

Moreover, the Taliban’s transition from an insurgency group to a governing entity left numerous militant factions in Afghanistan without a unifying force – a gap that ISIL-K has aimed to fill.

Why was Russia targeted by ISIL-K?

ISIL-K has long framed Russia as one of its main adversaries. It has heavily featured anti-Russian rhetoric in its propaganda and has attacked Russia’s presence within Afghanistan. This includes a suicide attack on Russia’s embassy in Kabul in 2022 that left two Russian Embassy staff and six Afghans dead.

The broader Islamic State group has targeted Russia for several reasons.

They include long-standing grievances relating to Moscow’s historical interventions in Muslim-majority regions like Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Russia’s partnerships with regimes opposed by the Islamic State group, notably Syria and Iran, have positioned Russia as a primary adversary in the eyes of the terrorist organization and its affiliates.

In particular, Russia has been a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the beginning of Syria’s civil war in 2011, providing military support to the Assad regime against various opposition groups, including the Islamic State group.

This direct opposition to the terrorist group and its caliphate ambitions has rendered Russia as a prime target for retaliation.

Moreover, Russia’s cooperation with the Taliban – ISIL-K’s key nemesis in Afghanistan – adds another layer of animosity. The Islamic State group views countries and groups that oppose its ideology or military objectives as enemies of Islam, including actors who seek to establish relations with the Taliban.

By attacking Russian targets, ISIL-K in part seeks to deter further Russian involvement in the Middle East. But also, such attacks provide high publicity for its cause and aim to inspire its supporters worldwide.

As such, for the Islamic State brand, the Moscow attack serves as retribution for perceived grievances held against Russia, while also projecting global reach. This approach can provide significant dividends, especially for its South and Central Asian affiliate, in the form of increased recruitment, funding and influence across the jihadist spectrum.

What does the attack tell us about ISIL-K capabilities?

The mere association of ISIL-K with this attack, whether it was directly or indirectly involved, bolsters the group’s reputation.

Overall, the attack signals ISIL-K’s growing influence and its determination to make its presence felt on the global stage.

Being linked to a high-profile attack in a major city far from its base in Afghanistan indicates that ISIL-K can extend its operational reach either directly or through collaboration with like-minded militant factions.

The scale and sophistication of the attack reflect advanced planning, coordination and execution capabilities. This only reaffirms unequivocally ISIL-K’s intent, adaptability and determination to internationalize its agenda.

Similar to ISIL-K’s attack in Iran in January 2024 that left over 100 dead, this latest atrocity serves to reinforce ISIL-K’s stated commitment to the broader global jihadist agenda of the Islamic State group, and helps broaden the appeal of its ideology and recruitment campaign.

How does this fit ISIL-K’s strategy?

The attack in Moscow serves as a powerful recruitment and propaganda tool by attracting international media attention to the group. This allows it to remain politically relevant to its audiences across South and Central Asia, and beyond.

But it also helps divert attention from local setbacks for ISIL-K. Like its parent organization Islamic State group, ISIL-K has been confronted with military defeats, loss of territory and leadership and diminishing resources.

In the face of such challenges, ISIL-K’s potential links to the attack in Moscow remind observers of its persistent threat and adaptability.

By targeting a major power like Russia, ISIL-K aims to project a broader message of intimidation aimed at other states involved in anti-Islamic State group operations and undermine the public’s sense of security.

Additionally, operations such as the Moscow attack seek to solidify ISIL-K’s position within the broader Islamic State group network, potentially securing more support and resources.

More broadly, the strategy follows a process of “internationalizing” ISIL-K’s agenda – something it has pursued with renewed vigor since 2021 by targeting the countries with a presence in Afghanistan, including Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Russia, marking a deliberate expansion of its operational focus beyond local borders.

The Moscow attack, following the January assault in Iran, suggests that ISIL-K is intensifying efforts to export its ideological fight directly to the territories of sovereign nations.

It is a calculated strategy and, as the Moscow attack has exemplified, one that has the potential to strike fear in capitals far beyond ISIL-K’s traditional base.

Sara Harmouch, PhD Candidate, School of Public Affairs, American University and Amira Jadoon, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Clemson University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Terrorism is inexcusable and horrific. It does not, however, occur in a vacuum. The attack likely came in revenge for two of Vladimir Putin’s most important projects. The first was the crushing of separatist Chechens in 1999-2009 and after. In recent years Putin’s government has continued to fight a low-intensity counter-insurgency in south Caucasian territories such as Ingushetia. CNN reports that earlier this month Russian forces killed 6 ISIL guerrillas in the city of Karabulak in Ingushetia, an almost entirely Muslim republic within the Russian Federation.

Al Jazeera English: “ISIL claims responsibility for Moscow concert attack”

The second relevant Putin project is his intervention in the Syrian Civil War to flatten the opposition to the dynasty of Bashar al-Assad. Although the civil war began with demands from a range of Syrian opposition forces for more civil liberties, that initial movement was repressed by the regime using military force on civilians. Many in the opposition turned to the Gulf for funding, and the price of admission was growing beards and adopting Muslim fundamentalist rhetoric. They could not get funding from most liberal democracies. Putin was alarmed that Muslim fundamentalists might sweep into Damascus and take the capital. Syria isn’t that far from Chechnya, and some Russian Muslims from Chechnya and Ingushetia had volunteered to go off to Syria and fight the al-Assad regime.

The Syrian army was unable to defeat the rebels, having shrunk through desertion. In 2015 Putin started flying fighter jets against the rebels, giving air support to the Syrian Arab Army and to the Shiite militias from Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Iraq that were fighting the Sunni rebels. The latter were defeated in much of the country and their remnants were bottled up on the northern province of Idlib. With the effective end of the insurgency, some of the Chechens and Muslims from Ingushetia began returning home. Unless they were known to and could be proved to have committed war crimes, these returnees were allowed to reintegrate into Caucasian society according to the Central Asia- Caucasus Analyst.

The exact identity of the ISIL operatives who committed the atrocity on Friday is not clear. But it is likely that this act of terror is blowback from the Russian leveling of Grozny, Chechnya, in the early years of this century and the Russian leveling of East Aleppo. It isn’t right, and it isn’t fair to the innocent concert-goers who lost their lives or those of their friends and family. It is cowardly to attack soft targets and noncombatants. And like most ISIL operations, it is terminally stupid, since it won’t cause Russia to back off any policies in the Caucasus or Syria and has the potential to make life miserable for the 9% of the Russian population that consists of Muslims. But it did not happen with no context.

Ironically, Russian officials initially intimated that Ukraine was behind the attack. That shows a bad conscience over their indiscriminate bombing of civilians in that country, which is also terrorism.

Reuters reports, based on sources in Beirut, that Russia is increasing its involvement in Syria, backing the military of beleaguered dictator Bashar al-Assad. Russia appears to be offloading tanks at its Tartous naval base on the Syrian coast, and may also be establishing an interior air field for Russian planes. Increased numbers of Russian advisers and support troops are being embedded in Syrian army units.

Al-Assad has been on a losing streak in the past few months, having lost all of Idlib province in the north to a coalition, the Army of Conquest, one major component of which is al-Qaeda (the Support Front). He also lost the desert town of Palmyra in the east, to Daesh (ISIS, ISIL).

Russia is determined not to lose one of its few remaining Middle Eastern client states. Moreover, it doesn’t want a Daesh or al-Qaeda-ruled state only 20 hours drive from its Caucasus provinces, such as Chechnya. (Chechen volunteers are fighting in Daesh, and President Vladimir Putin fears that a Daesh victory in Syria could embolden Chechens to launch another holy war.)

The increased Russian presence has upset the United States, which is unilaterally intervening in Syria against Daesh, and which has called from al-Assad to step down. Given the lack of a UN Security Council authorization of the use of force, the American bombing of Syria might be seen as a violation of international law. But the Syrian government appears to have given its blessing to US air strikes on Daesh, so that the intervention in Raqqa is probably not illegal.

The increased Russian presence is likely intended to deter the US from striking at al-Assad forces, as Washington said it was contemplating in early August. The US can’t hit Syrian forces if it isn’t sure it won’t also be killing Russians. In early August, a Putin spokesman said that US air strikes on Baath Party targets would just help Daesh/ISIL. Vedomosti reported, according to BBC monitoring:

“Petr Kozlov and Aleksey Nikolskiy article headlined “Russia to help Syria” says that Russia has increased military supplies to Syria since early August. The USA has expressed concern about the move. Russian pundit Yevgeniy Satanovskiy believes that Washington and its allies “have launched active anti-Russian propaganda as they are preparing an attack on Syrian President Bashar al-Asad and Russia’s military supplies may wreck it”; p 2″

Genuine Russian fears that the US might target al-Assad from the sky may be behind Moscow’s attempt to bolster the Syrian military.

Russia seems mainly, however, to intend to put some steel in the spine of al-Assad’s forces. If the reports of increased Russian presence in Syria are true, these steps resemble the Obama administration’s reestablishment of an Iraq command from last year in the face of the Daesh onslaught.

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

CNN: “Russia admits to sending military aid to Syria”

Russia on Thursday pushed back against President Obama’s state plans for taking on the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) in Syria.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich remarked on television: “The US president has spoken directly about the possibility of strikes by the US armed forces against ISIL positions in Syria without the consent of the legitimate government,” “This step, in the absence of a UN Security Council decision, would be an act of aggression, a gross violation of international law.”

The Russian ambassador to the United States, Vitaly Churkin insisted that the Syrian government would have to give its consent, otherwise the operation to bomb ISIL in Syria “will complicate international operations and will pose problems for Russia as well as for many other countries respecting international law, including China. . . Respect for international law is necessary so that the international community is able to take consolidated actions on a problem as complicated as this one and if it [the US] opts for such actions, its choice will be highly regrettable and will create obstacles for further cooperation…”

Russia is divided over the new US initiative. It is desperately afraid of ISIL (in which Chechen fighters serve) and happy enough that the US had decided to intervene against it. But it doesn’t want the US overthrowing Bashar al-Assad and trying to turn Syria into a US sphere of influence.

Britain’s government is divided over the international legality of any bombing raids on Syria. Foreign Minister Philip Hammond had ruled out British air strikes on that country but Prime Minister David Cameron says that they are still on the table.

For my overview of the legal issues, see this blog entry

ISIL in Iraq is unambiguous, and there the Obama administration has Russia and Iran as behind the scenes allies in defeating the terrorist organization. ISIL in Syria is also opposed by Russia and Iran, but they want the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad to be the beneficiary of ISIL’s defeat. The Obama administration imagines that there is still a “moderate” opposition that it can back against both ISIL and al-Assad.

In essence then, in Iraq the outside great powers are on the same page. But in Syria, the Obama administration is setting up a future proxy war between itself and Russia once ISIL is defeated (if it can be), not so dissimilar from the Reagan proxy war in Afghanistan, which helped created al-Qaeda and led indirectly to the 9/11 attacks on the US. Obama had earlier argued against arming Syrian factions. My guess is that Saudi Arabia and other US allies in the region made tangible backing for the Free Syrian Army on Obama’s part a quid pro quo for joining in the fight against ISIL.

In Jedda, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that if the situation in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine were not so tragic, Russian expressions of concern over international law in Syria would be laughable. Kerry secured support for the US push against ISIL from 10 Middle Eastern countries in Jedda, though it remains to be seen whether this resolution is more than lip service.

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Related Video:

RT: “US strikes, intervention against ISIS in Syria could turn against army’

Eighteen years after the signing of the Khasavyurt Accord that ended the 1994-96 Chechen war, a veteran Chechen field commander has issued a timely reminder that there are still three sides to the ongoing struggle for the hearts and minds of the Chechen people.

In a statement dated August 28, Isa Munayev appeals to the United States and "the countries of the democratic world" to provide "comprehensive military assistance" to the Ukrainian people, whom Munayev describes as victims of Russian imperial aggression, just as the Chechens were 20 years ago.

Munayev identified himself in that statement as commander of the Dzhokhar Dudayev international volunteer peacekeeping battalion and a brigadier general of the armed forces of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria (ChRI) of which Dudayev was the first president. He spoke to RFE/RL's Radio Marsho a week ago, shortly before he travelled to Ukraine to show "international support for the Ukrainian people." The strength of his battalion, and who is bankrolling it, is not known.

Now in his late 40s, Munayev played a key role in the defense of Grozny at the start of the 1999-2000 war, and continued fighting after the resistance forces retreated south to the mountains, acquiring a reputation for his courage and tactical skills. In late 2007, however, he distanced himself from ChRI President Doku Umarov following the latter's abandonment of the cause of Chechen independence and proclamation of a Caucasus Emirate. Munayev left Chechnya soon afterward, but continued to serve until December 2008 as ChRI prosecutor-general.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount of the presence on the side of the pro-Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine of hundreds of fighters sent by Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov. Those fighters are apparently primarily volunteers from among the various police and security forces subordinate to Kadyrov, who has consistently denied that there are any "Chechen battalions" in Ukraine, even after the "Financial Times" quoted a fighter named Zelimkhan who said he and his comrades in arms had been sent to Ukraine in mid-May on Kadyrov's orders.

Kadyrov has admitted, however, that a few dozen Chechen volunteers from among the 2 million (according to his estimate) Chechens living outside Russia have travelled to Ukraine on their own initiative to fight, and that a handful of them have been killed.

Republic of Ingushetia head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov similarly said in early June that 25 residents of his republic had travelled to Ukraine to fight, of whom four had been killed. In a subsequent interview, Yevkurov, a former Russian military-intelligence officer, affirmed his readiness to head to Ukraine himself "to defend those who are being humiliated and killed."

In contrast, both the Defense Ministry and the presidential and government press service of the largely unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia in May denied media reports that the breakaway Georgian region had sent volunteers to fight in Ukraine.

How many "kadyrovtsy" either volunteered or were sent to Ukraine is unclear, but separate, unconfirmed casualty reports suggest the figure may have been as high as 1,000. Between 35-45 corpses were reportedly sent back to Chechnya  in late May, and between 120-150 in August. In addition, Ukrainian military sources claimed to have killed some 200 Chechens near Slovyansk in late June.

Other reports, also unconfirmed, suggest that Kadyrov's men did not distinguish themselves in battle. There have been several such reports over the past few weeks that Chechen units fighting under the command of Russian officers in eastern Ukraine have been disbanded and sent home for cowardice and/or desertion, surrendered to Ukrainian government forces, or asked for safe passage to retreat to the Russian border.

Kadyrov immediately rejected as untrue reports that any Chechens had surrendered: he declared that "once a Chechen takes up arms, he doesn't surrender."

This blog presents analyst Liz Fuller’s personal take on events in the region, following on from her work in the “RFE/RL Caucasus Report.” It also aims, to borrow a metaphor from Tom de Waal, to act as a smoke detector, focusing attention on potential conflict situations and crises throughout the region. The views are the author’s own and do not represent those of RFE/RL.

Mirrored from RFE/RL

Copyright (c) 2014. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

AFP: “EU warns Ukraine crisis near ‘point of no return'”