IS-Khorasan’s attacks in Russia, Iran point to an Islamic State resurgence | Analysis Premium

The IS-K wants to be the centre of global jihadism, and with back-to-back attacks in Russia and Iran in recent months, it is putting the Islamic State on a path to revival, six years after the fall of the physical Caliphate

In June 2015, a few months after the Islamic State (IS) announced the establishment of its Wilayat Khorasan (Khorasan Province), the Taliban wrote a letter to the then IS chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, asking him to stop recruiting jihadists in Afghanistan. The letter, signed by the then political committee chief of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour (who would take over the insurgency in a month and be killed by a U.S. air strike in May 2016), said there was room for “only one flag and one leadership” in the fight to re-establish Islamic rule in Afghanistan. But the IS faction, which came to be known as the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), did not stop recruiting disgruntled Taliban fighters. In the subsequent years, the IS-K attacked the Taliban for holding talks with the “crusaders” (read the U.S.) and abandoning jihad. It launched a series of attacks, mainly targeting Afghanistan’s Shia-Hazara minority.       

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Today, the IS-K has emerged as the most powerful and most ambitious branch of the Islamic State networks. It has training centres in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. It has recruited thousands of disgruntled Central Asians. It has stepped up attacks in recent months across the Eurasian landmass, including the January twin bombings of Kerman, Iran, a strike on a church in Istanbul in the same month and a massive attack on a concert hall in the outskirts of Moscow on March 22. Armed gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Concert Hall and threw explosives, killing at least 137 people and wounding nearly 200 others, in one of the worst terrorist attacks in Russia in years. Russian authorities have arrested and charged four Tajik nationals for the attack.  

When the Islamic State announced the formation of the Khorasan Province, referring to an area encompassing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, in January 2015, the group’s immediate strategy was to exploit the divisions within the main jihadist groups operating in the region. It appointed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander Hafiz Saeed Khan as its leader and former Afghan Taliban commander Abdul Rauf Aliza as his deputy (both were killed in U.S. strikes). It attracted members from different militant organisations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Haqqani Network and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan into its fold, according to the U.S.-based Combating Terrorism Centre.

The IS-K declared its allegiance to Baghdadi. In operational tactics and ideology, it followed its parental organisation. The key goal is to establish “Islamic rule” in the “province” and for that they are ready to wage “jihad”. “There is no doubt that Allah the Almighty has blessed us with jihad in the land of Khorasan since a long time ago, and it is from the grace of Allah that we fought any disbeliever who entered the land of Khorasan. All of this is for the sake of establishing the Shariah,” the IS-K said in a video message in 2015.

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When the IS in Iraq and Syria came under pressure in 2015 and 2016, the core organisation shifted its focus to Afghanistan. The IS was losing territories to Kurdish militias in Syria and government forces and Shia militias in Iraq. In Afghanistan, a divided country with the government’s writ hardly reaching its hinterlands, the IS saw an opportunity to rebuild its organisation. Having built its base in eastern Afghanistan, the IS-K issued propaganda messages, calling on Muslim youth across Asia to join the group. Many radicalised youth, including dozens from India, travelled to Afghanistan to either join the IS or live an “Islamic life” under the Caliphate’s rule.