March 29, 2024

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IntelBrief: Islamic State Khorasan Province and Terrorist Networks Throughout Central Asia

Basmanny District Court press service via AP

Last week’s terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall music venue on the outskirts of Moscow, which killed over 130 people and injured over 140, is the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia since the Beslan school siege of 2004 and eerily reminiscent of the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis at the Dubrovka Theater, both perpetrated by Chechen militants. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the recent Moscow attack through its Amaq News Agency, including posting photos and videos of the alleged perpetrators. U.S. officials have pointed to IS Khorasan Province (IS-K) as the IS affiliate responsible for the attack, although extremists from its broader network may have also played a role. The Russian security services announced the apprehension of the four gunmen, whom they say are all migrant workers from Tajikistan. If these details prove to be accurate, the Moscow attack not only illustrates IS-K’s capability and determination to conduct external operations but also demonstrates threats posed by jihadi networks in Central Asia — something that analysts and experts have been warning of as a growing threat since the 2021 chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

IS-K has been successful in radicalizing and recruiting fighters of Central Asian background, including Uzbeks and Tajiks, to its ranks. IS-K’s current leader, Sanaullah Ghafari (aka Shahab al-Muhajir) is an Afghan national who is believed to be an ethnic Tajik. Ghafari is believed to be responsible for the planning and execution of the IS-K attack on the Kabul airport in August 2021, which killed 13 U.S. service members. IS-K targets foreign fighters and disillusioned members of the Taliban for recruitment. It remains unclear exactly how large IS-K is, though the group is suspected to have several thousand members. The group’s focus on attracting fighters across Central Asia is apparent in its propaganda materials, which are often released in local languages, including Uzbek and Tajik, via social media channels such as Telegram. One of IS-K’s chief propagandists and recruiters is reportedly a Tajik citizen known as Abu Miskin. The material often celebrates high-profile attacks or peddles anti-Russian propaganda that also targets the Central Asian regimes, such as Tajikistan’s ruler, for corruption, being too close to Putin, and not being religious enough. According to the UN Security Council’s most recent monitoring report, the Uzbek and Tajik factions of IS-K possess some of the most advanced operational and financial capabilities of the group, which continue to expand. IS-K’s Central Asian jihadi networks also manifest in attacks targeting Central Asian countries. In the past years, IS-K has launched several rocket attacks targeting Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2019, IS fighters crossed the border from Afghanistan into Tajikistan and attacked a border post on the Tajik-Uzbek border. IS-K has also been accused of being behind several prison riots in Tajikistan.

IS-K’s burgeoning Central Asian network of jihadis is, however, nothing new in the history of Salafi-jihadist organizations. In the 1980s, many Central Asian jihadis flocked to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union, including to join al-Qaeda. The Taliban hosted or cooperated with several Central Asian jihadi factions, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), which launched many high-profile attacks against Central Asian countries. When IS established its so-called caliphate, thousands of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) that traveled to Syria and Iraq came from Central Asia — including approximately 1,300 FTFs from Tajikistan and another 1,500 from Uzbekistan. These numbers do not include many of the Central Asian jihadi factions aligned with al-Qaeda that migrated from Afghanistan to the Levant around the same time. As Islamic State in Iraq and Syria began to collapse, many foreign fighters left Iraq and Syria and fled to Afghanistan. Experts and analysts have warned that these fighters are battle-hardened and bring with them operational expertise that can be utilized to launch terrorist attacks not only in the region but also targeting Russia and the West. IS-K is a clear materialization of this.

Driving forces for radicalization among Central Asian jihadis include socio-economic factors (Tajikistan ranks 182^nd globally in gross domestic product per capita), corruption and authoritarianism — including the politicization of Islam — in many Central Asian countries, as well as the mistreatment of Central Asian migrant workers in Russia. The situation for migrant workers in Russia has reportedly further deteriorated since the 2022 war on Ukraine, with Russian nationalist narratives increasing xenophobia and minorities being sent to the frontline, likely increasing the ease with which radicalizing narratives take root. Since last week’s terrorist attack, the situation for migrant workers in the country has reportedly only gotten worse, with reports of harassment and assault targeting minorities.

The Central Asian jihadi networks in Afghanistan pose a regional and global security threat. IS-K has, in the last year, attempted to carry out several attacks in Europe, and in 2024, targeted Iran, Türkiye, and Russia with deadly terrorist attacks. The head of U.S. Central Command, General Michel E. Kurilla, provided testimony before Congress earlier this month, saying that IS-K “[r]etains the capability and the will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.” Apart from IS-K, the al-Qaeda-aligned TIP has both increasingly targeted China in its propaganda materials and Chinese nationals for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Earlier this week, a suicide bombing killed five Chinese nationals in northwestern Pakistan. While the geopolitics of Central Asia dictate a delicate balancing act between Russia, China, Iran, and the West, jihadi factions operating in the region have displayed their willingness to target anyone who opposes them.