Experts have been delving into the backgrounds and specifics of the attack on a music hall in Moscow, carried out by four men armed with guns, pistols, knives, and incendiary bombs. They fled the scene and have all been apprehended.
There’s hardly any doubt left that the terrorist group ISIS was behind it, as they have issued multiple statements. However, the attack differs in many ways from what we have come to expect from ISIS during the time of their caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Then, the perpetrators were selected and trained for their missions, which generally ended in their death. By killing unbelievers, they believed they would enter paradise.
However, for me the date is decisive: five years after the fall of ISIS in the Syrian village of Baghouz (on March 23, 2019). For groups like ISIS and its parent, Al-Qaeda, place great importance on the symbolism of dates and numbers. Since its fall, ISIS has been working on its comeback.
Differences
The absence of bomb vests in Moscow was the first notable difference, for example with the attack in the Iranian Kerman of January (with 95 dead). Then there’s the statement from one of the perpetrators that he would have received $5400 for his participation (take with a grain of salt, as he was tortured) – ISIS perpetrators do it for the promise of paradise. And also, the fact that the attack was claimed within hours is a break with practice. In Iran, it took days, so the government initially pointed to Israel and the US as responsible.
With that attack in January, ISIS announced that a new campaign had started, called ‘Fight the unbelievers and apostates everywhere’. Since the disappearance of the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and the imprisonment of many thousands of its members as well as some of its leaders, administrators, fundraisers, and media personnel, there is hardly any central leadership left.
Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the handful of successors have been killed in American operations. Suicide bombers are no longer trained, plans for attacks are no longer devised and prepared by a special department. Thus, ISIS members and sympathizers are called upon to just do it all by themselves now, and to use all available opportunities and chances.
This is not entirely new, as we already know the attacks with trucks and cars where ISIS perpetrators drive into their victims. And those with knives. Moreover, the perpetrators in Moscow had an example: the attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris where guns and knives were also used. Only then did the perpetrators come to die. The perpetrators in Moscow seem to have escaped in the same car they arrived in and did not get far.
ISIS has since confirmed the four were apprehended, and has stated this was because their guns jammed which forced them to flee.
Martyrs
The difference is based on the fact that ISIS does not expect everyone to want to die as martyrs. But it doesn’t want them in prison either, if only because then they would have to try to free them (which has happened several times in Iraq).
From the attack, one could deduce that the danger of international, large-scale attacks now comes from Afghanistan and Pakistan, from ISIS-K (or ISKP, ISIS in the province of Khorasan), rather than from Iraq and Syria. There, only small cells are still active, which are regularly rolled up, and if something bigger is organized, it’s mainly about freeing comrades from the overcrowded prisons in Syrian Kurdistan.
During the caliphate and its heyday, ISIS established departments all over the world, of which ISIS-K currently seems to be the most active. It was formed in 2015 by fighters leaving other terrorist groups (including the Taliban) to join ISIS (perhaps because of the salary they received there). They were behind a suicide bombing at Kabul airport in August 2021, killing 170 civilians and 13 American soldiers.
Since the Americans withdrew from Afghanistan, the group’s focus has shifted more towards foreign countries, as the Taliban gives them little chance domestically. And in doing so, they seem especially fixated on Russia, which they accuse of having Muslim blood on its hands because of the Russian actions in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Syria among others.
Tajiks
The quartet that the Russians have arrested after Moscow appears to be Tajik, as are a number of detainees in Europe planning attacks for ISIS. The Tajiks are known to be a small but important part of ISIS-K. They were also behind the attack in Iran in January and are trained in Afghanistan. ISIS-K has actively recruited among Tajiks in recent months.
The American warning to Moscow about an attack was also based on ISIS-K. However, it is noteworthy that in the statements with which the group claimed the attack of March 23, only Russia is mentioned, with no reference to ISIS-K. The reason for this omission is unclear. Was it an action in which multiple ISIS departments cooperated? Did the initiative perhaps come from Syria after all? Does ISIS-K want to stay out of the wind for fear of retaliatory actions on its people in Afghanistan?
The Americans have indeed threatened with this when they withdrew from that country. If the Taliban as new rulers did not ensure that the terrorist threat remained limited, then the Americans would intervene. And the terrorist threat has certainly increased, especially abroad. Moscow was the fifth major attack by ISIS-K in a few months.
The severity of it has been fully understood. Turkey immediately arrested forty people with ties to ISIS (as two of the perpetrators had been in Turkey). But most of them have already been released. And France has raised the terror threat level to the highest level.
Back
Some experts believe that the attack in Moscow indicates that ISIS is back. That may be going a bit far, given the somewhat amateurish nature of it (poor planning, recognizable perpetrators on video footage, no plan for a safe escape). But it is a fact that ISIS-K poses a significant terror threat to both the West and Russia. And that the group has certainly already recruited new members with the attack to make that ‘promise’ come true.
