Attack in Russia: ISIS-K, the Afghan ultra-Islamic organization that seeks to lead terrorism

The United States has collected intelligence information shared with Russia on a active threat of a terrorist group, which uses the same initials as the defunct ISIS organization, but with the addition of Khorasan, ISIS-K.

It is very active in Afghanistan where it is based and constitutes a tough enemy of the Taliban and Iranian dictatorship. On January 3 he demonstrated how dangerous he was when massacred 84 people in an attack in the Iranian city of Kerman.

According to US intelligence, this organization, which seeks to emulate the previous one which created a caliphate between Iraq and Syria, is very active in Russia and there is data on probable attack against civilians like what happened this Friday.

“ISIS-K has been obsessed with Russia for the last two years,” often criticizing Vladimir Putin in its propaganda,” said Colin Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy. “ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands, in reference to Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”

When Russia entered the war in Syria in 2015, turning it in favor of the regime of Bashar al Assad, Iran’s close ally, it used all its attack capacity against ISIS. This gang was born after the US invasion of Iraq, but gained particular strength in 2011 with enormous financial help from the Arab potentates and with a specific program of exclusive attacks. against Iranian targets.

It collapsed when that sponsorship disappeared right after the Russian war coup. In 2017 it lost its main capital, in Mosul Iraq, and Tikrit had fallen before, its second metropolis is in Syria. In October 2019, American commandos killed the gang’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The group was dismantled, but organizations using the same name later appeared take advantage of the prestige and knowledge that ISIS had acquired. One of the most powerful of these organizations is the one that attacked Moscow.

The K in its acronym refers to a region comprising ancestral territories in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan that the organization aims to conquer. Friday’s attack on Moscow, like the assault on Iran in January, may cause it to reconsider its ability to strike outside its territory.