Moscow attack: Has the Islamic State really made a comeback?

The Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow claimed by the Islamic State (IS) was the deadliest in Russia in two decades, leaving at least 143 dead and almost 200 injured. In its immediate aftermath, several analysts and commentators questioned if the Islamic State had made a bloody comeback.

At the peak of the group’s power, the Islamic State held large swathes of captured territory in Syria and Iraq equal in size to the United Kingdom under its control. It declared its self-styled caliphate in June 2014 and held territory until March 2019.

It empowered and energised Islamic State militants and sympathisers and even helped them plan and execute several terrorist attacks in Europe, including the infamous November 2015 Paris attack.

Foreign attacks markedly decreased after the caliphate’s destruction. But since the group never entirely went away, was its comeback, and terrorist attacks like the one in Moscow, all but inevitable?

"The build-up of plots and attacks across the world beginning around May 2023, culminating this year in the attacks in Iran, Turkey, and Russia, signals that the Islamic State feels itself recovered enough to weather any retaliation"

“The Islamic State never quite stopped ‘external’ attacks, but there is no doubt the destruction of the caliphate induced a slow-down,” Kyle Orton, an independent Middle East analyst, told The New Arab.

“This was a strategic decision as much as a matter of necessity: resources were being redirected to recovery, and to avoid provoking a response that would impede recovery, the Islamic State-held back on external operations,” the analyst added.

“The build-up of plots and attacks across the world beginning around May 2023, culminating this year in the attacks in Iran, Turkey, and Russia, signals that the Islamic State feels itself recovered enough to weather any retaliation from putting the foreign attacks apparatus back online in a serious way.”

Islamic State Khorasan Province

The Islamic State began the year with a deadly terrorist attack against Iran’s southeastern Kerman province, which killed almost 100 and injured nearly 300. That attack was also interpreted as an attempt by the group to make a comeback.

The faction responsible for both attacks, the bloodiest since the demise of the caliphate, was the Islamic State Khorasan Province (IS-K), formed by Taliban defectors and militants from Pakistan and Central Asia in 2015. The group’s name derives from a historical region that once included parts of Afghanistan, Iran, and countries in Central Asia.

Membership in IS-K peaked in 2018. The group became empowered by the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Its militants were behind the infamous 26 August Kabul airport suicide bombing that year which killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US troops.

IS-K loathes the Taliban and has challenged its rule. The Taliban has struggled to contain them. In its 30-page statement glorifying the Moscow attacks, IS-K relentlessly criticised the Taliban for expressing sympathy to Russia after the attack, pointing out that Russia has destroyed “mosques, seminaries, homes and towns with blind bombardment” in Syria.

IS-K also hates Iran for its regional policies but first and foremost because it is a predominantly Shia Muslim country. These jihadists view Shiism as unforgivably heretical.

Consequently, IS-K hopes to distinguish itself from groups like the Taliban - as well as Al Qaeda and groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria - through such bloody attacks against Russia and Iran. As with the Islamic State at the height of its power and influence in 2014-19, IS-K doubtlessly hopes this will enable it to recruit more members and organise and inspire more global attacks against its innumerable enemies.

“ISIS Khorasan Province has adopted a strategy for expansion that relies on establishing a trans-national network among the Turkic-speaking diaspora from Former Soviet States throughout Eurasia,” Nicholas Heras, the senior director of strategy and innovation at the New Lines Institute, told TNA.

“The ISIS Khorasan Province strategy relies on the reduced US presence in Central Asia and the ineffective counterterrorism coordination between China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan to identify gaps in the Eurasian regional security architecture in which to recruit, organise, and conduct attacks,” he added.

"The Islamic State never quite stopped 'external' attacks, but there is no doubt the destruction of the caliphate induced a slow-down"

“ISIS in Khorasan Province is also clearly seeking to undermine the image of the Taliban as the Eurasian powers’ counterterrorism partner de jure and to roll back recent diplomatic advances made by the Taliban-led government with China and Russia.”

Orton believes the IS-K dimension is “somewhat misinterpreted” or at least “over-interpreted”.

“For the Islamic State, ISKP is merely a ‘province’ in a single organisation, and this is not an abstract conceptualisation: ISKP in Afghanistan is simply one node in a global Islamic State network that is commanded and materially supplied from the centre,” he said.

Nevertheless, Orton finds it interesting that the “ISKP node” has become so involved in the group’s international terrorism.

“It will surely have local implications for the Islamic State’s contest with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and it casts an even more negative light on the needless withdrawal of NATO troops from the country,” he said.

Furthermore, in Orton’s view, Islamic State attacks originating from Afghanistan have put to rest the “foolish premise” promoted during the US withdrawal that enemies of IS-K, like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, could contain the group.

“In any broad sense, the ISKP dimension is a detail: operationally intriguing and strategically meaningless,” he said.

“As the Islamic State is a unitary entity, with a single leadership that cycles resources from front to front as needed, the strengthening of the Islamic State - its evident recovery, and any influx of recruits on the back of these attacks - is general, as applicable in Africa as it is in Afghanistan.”

US military presence

The United States is highly unlikely to return in force to Afghanistan to confront IS-K anytime soon. Washington might send drones to assassinate high-ranking members of the group if it sees an opportunity. That would not be all that unprecedented, considering Washington assassinated Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike on Kabul on 31 July 31 2022, almost a year after its withdrawal.

An increase in Islamic State attacks against the West in the coming months could influence the US decision to retain troops in Iraq and Syria - which were deployed in 2014-15 to help local forces roll back and destroy the caliphate.

In Iraq, powerful Iran-backed elements in Baghdad are pushing to have them expelled, arguing they are no longer needed to combat the group. Many analysts have also questioned the necessity of retaining the much smaller troop deployment in Syria in recent months.

"There have already been Islamic State attacks in Europe over the last year, and there is every reason to think this will get worse"

There are tens of thousands of IS detainees in camps and prisons in northeast Syria. The notorious Al-Hol camp has often been described as a ticking time bomb. The massive, well-coordinated prison break attempt in Syria’s Hasaka in January 2022 also underscored the lingering danger that IS could regroup in that country and threaten the broader region and possibly beyond.

Today, Islamic State remnants are still capable of mounting attacks against Syrian forces and civilians. For example, Islamic State militants killed 11 truffle hunters in the desert near Raqqa a mere two days after the Moscow attack. More generally, the group is growing stronger in Syria, carrying out at least 35 attacks in the country so far this year.

In the wake of the Moscow attack, the US Ambassador to Iraq, Alina Romanowski, underlined that the Islamic State still represents a threat to Iraq, necessitating a continued US-led coalition presence.

“As this event reminds us, ISIS is a common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere,” she told Reuters.

“There have already been Islamic State attacks in Europe over the last year, and there is every reason to think this will get worse,” Orton said.

Nevertheless, the analyst is unsure if this will convince the United States to retain an open-ended military presence in Iraq and Syria.

“Logically, this would fortify Western resolve to remain in Iraq and Syria, able to gather intelligence and strike at the leadership issuing the orders for these attacks, either to prevent or to punish,” he added.

“But logic plays such a small part in Western policy at the present time, and ‘ending forever wars’ seems to be such an ideological fixation of the present American administration that it is anyone’s guess what happens next.”

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, who writes about Middle East affairs.

Follow him on Twitter: @pauliddon