Moscow attack: Why has ISIS struck Russia? How country’s role in fighting Islamic State made it a target for jihadists – and influx of Asian recruits made it easier to strike the capital

Terror group ISIS has twice claimed responsibility for the deadly concert attack in Moscow that killed nearly 140 people on Friday evening.

The attack, in which four heavily armed terrorists walked into Crocus City Hall on the western outskirts of Moscow around 8pm local time on Friday evening and massacred dozens of festival goers, was the deadliest carried out by ISIS against Russia in years.

The terror group said in a statement on Saturday that the concert attack was part of the “raging war between Islamic State and countries fighting against Islam.”

Russia has been in the crosshairs of ISIS for several years and has not forgiven Putin for more than a decade for supporting Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad, who made a concerted effort to drive the terror group out of the region.

The terror group’s propagandists have claimed for years that Moscow is part of a broad Christian coalition engaged in a millennia-long battle against Islam.

In the 1970s and 1980s, mujahideen fighters fought in Afghanistan who would later form Al-Quaeda, which in itself would lead to the creation of ISIS, a bloody war against Soviet forces in control of the country.

Russia has also developed its relationship with the Taliban, who currently hold power in Afghanistan. The Taliban have long been in open conflict with ISIS in Afghanistan, with both sides receiving support from smaller regional powers.

As a result, the ultra-violent sect of ISIS believed to have carried out the attack, namely Islamic State in Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, has focused on recruiting Central Asian militants, most of whom are Russian to speak, to make attacks.

ISIS-K, known for its extreme brutality, has been engaged in a major recruitment campaign over the past 18 months targeting experienced members of existing terror cells, according to a report. report submitted to the UN Security Council in January.

Many recruits also have Russian nationality, meaning they can easily go to cities across Russia, opening up new opportunities to attack the nation.

ISIS-K has targeted Russia in the past after claiming responsibility for the deadly 2022 suicide bombing of the Russian embassy in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, that killed two embassy staff and four others.

Earlier this month, Russia’s FSB said it had thwarted an ISIS-K attack on a synagogue in Moscow, Russia’s Tass news agency reported.

Although Friday night’s attack was a dramatic escalation, experts say the group has opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent years.

“ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years and has regularly criticized Putin in its propaganda,” Colin Clarke of the Soufan Center, a New York-based research group, told Reuters.

Michael Kugelman of the Washington-based Wilson Center said ISIS-K “views Russia as complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims.”

He added that the group also counts among its members a number of Central Asian militants with their own grievances against Moscow.

ISIS-K also has a history of carrying out attacks around the world.

Earlier this year, US intelligence intercepted communications showing the group had carried out the twin bombings in Iran that killed nearly 100 people at a memorial for dead military commander Qassem Soleimani.

And last year, a top U.S. commander told Congress that ISIS-K was rapidly building its capacity to conduct “external operations” in Europe and Asia.

Michael Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said at the time that he believed Western interests could fall victim to an ISIS-K attack “within as little as six months and with little to no warning,” but quickly said that An attack in the US itself was unlikely.

The UN report submitted in January cited several foiled ISIS-K plots to carry out terror attacks in Europe, including one in which seven Tajik, Turkmen and Kyrgyz individuals linked to the terror cell were arrested in Germany while planning “terrorist to carry out attacks with a major impact’. with which they obtained weapons and possible targets.

The name ISIS-K refers to an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.

The group has been led by Shahab al-Muhajir, an engineer by training and education, since 2020.

His name means ‘Shahab the Migrant’, referring to the fact that he is the first non-Afghan and non-Pakistani person to lead ISIS-K.

He reportedly spent time as a subcontractor for a security company in Afghanistan, and was known to have spent some time at the US Bagram Airfield, previously the largest US military base in Afghanistan.

al-Muhajir is one of three ISIS-K members on the list of people sanctioned under an anti-terrorism directive first issued by George Bush in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001, and since then it has been renewed every year by successive presidents.

The others are Sultan Aziz Azam, a spokesman for the group, and Maulawi Rajab, a senior leader who “plans ISIS-K’s attacks and operations and commands ISIS-K groups carrying out attacks in Kabul,” it said. US State Department, which only imposed sanctions. the terrorists in November 2021.

Meanwhile, Britain has not sanctioned the three men until 2023. OFSI, the British sanctions body, cited Al-Muhajir’s responsibility “for multiple terrorist attacks that resulted in hundreds of deaths in 2021” as the reason for his sentence.