Islamic State bares its teeth

The terrorist attack by gunmen at the city music hall in Moscow that killed at least 133 people and wounded 140 is a grim reminder of the threat much of the world continues to face from Islamic State. Vladimir Putin initially tried to falsely tie the carnage to Ukraine. But Islamic State’s claims of responsibility – through its Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) affiliate that operates across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan – plus US intelligence that forewarned Moscow of an attack belies Putin’s cynical effort to blame Ukraine.

Five years ago, then US president Donald Trump announced the “defeat” of ISIS and its “caliphate” across Iraq and Syria. Such optimism was naive. ISIS-K has become “increasingly fixated” with Russia, seeing it as “complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims’’, the Washington-based Wilson Centre on Global Affairs notes. That includes Putin’s 2015 intervention in Syria, in support of the Assad regime. ISIS-K equates Russian so-called “hatred” of Islam with US “hatred”.

Since the caliphate’s fall, ISIS-K has continued attacking Russian targets. That is no surprise given that more foreign fighters joined Islamic State from the former Soviet republics than any other region. In 2022 several people were killed in an ISIS-K attack on the Russian embassy in Kabul. Earlier this month an attempted ISIS-K attack on a Moscow synagogue was foiled. ISIS-K killed 224 people in a 2015 attack on a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula.

ISIS-K and other branches of Islamic State also have their sights on other targets. A twin suicide bombing in January in the city of Kerman in Iran, which killed 95 people, was the latest in a series of attacks against Iran’s Shi’ite regime, a close Moscow ally. One of ISIS-K’s biggest hits took place during the ignominious August 2021 international retreat from Afghanistan when dozens of people, including 13 US servicemen, were killed when a bomb detonated at Kabul airport. Recent estimates of Islamic State’s strength are that it has 10,000 fighters and is recruiting. It has another affiliate, ISIS-Caucasus, in Africa and Southeast Asia. For Putin, the Islamist assault on the heart of Russia at a time when most of its ground forces are committed to Ukraine is a nightmare. With 10 per cent of Russia’s population Muslim, and jihadist movements gaining ground in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, the atrocity adds to the Russian dictator’s problems. It is unlikely that Russia is alone in Islamic State’s sights. The bloodbath is a sign of what it remains capable of doing.