After carrying out several spectacular attacks and establishing a caliphate over part of Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2019, the armed group Islamic State (IS) had disappeared from many radar screens. The carnage perpetrated in a Moscow theater last Friday, however, brought the jihadist group back to the forefront. The latest report from the attack shows 139 dead and 182 injured.
To better understand the dynamics that drive the Islamic State armed group, The duty spoke with Riccardo Valle, research director for the platform The Khorasan Diarybased in Islamabad and specializing in monitoring jihadist and militant organizations in the Khorasan region (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia), and Jabeur Fathally, professor of international law at the University of Ottawa.
How has the Islamic State armed group evolved since the proclamation of a caliphate 10 years ago?
“Daesh experienced both a meteoric rise, the peak of which was the proclamation of the caliphate in 2014 over a vast Iraqi and Syrian territory, and a brutal fall from 2015,” analyzes Jabeur Fathally. In the space of a few months, the group lost most of its territorial strongholds in Iraq and Syria due, in particular, to strikes carried out by the international coalition led by the United States. Other factors also contributed to its rout, including “internal ruptures and rivalries between terrorist groups”, underlines the professor.
Since then, the activities of the EI group have been relocated to peripheral areas, also called “provinces”, underlines Riccardo Valle. In West Africa, the Islamic State group in the Great Sahara has extended its hold over part of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. As for the Islamic State group in Khorasan, active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it has transformed “from a traditional guerrilla insurgency into an underground network of small cells capable of carrying out less deadly but more spectacular attacks”, indicates -he.
Does the Islamic State group still mobilize many fighters and represent a significant threat?
According to Jabeur Fathally, “the loss of conquered territories and the wars of enemy brothers have reduced the recruitment pool [du groupe EI]and the foreign support which was vital to it no longer exists”, which has reduced its strike force.
In West Africa, the group nevertheless represents a significant threat to territorial control, mentions Riccardo Valle. In the Khorasan region, the Islamic State group is active, carrying out attacks targeting civilians.
Outside the Muslim world, attacks are extremely unpredictable, the researcher emphasizes. “Most often, it is local cells that carry out the attacks and then communicate, once the attack is carried out or even the next day, with the center of power of the Islamic State group. This is why there is often a delay before an attack is claimed,” he explains.
Is the Moscow attack part of the fight that the Islamic State group in Khorasan is waging against the Afghan government controlled by the Taliban?
Russia has recently moved closer to the Taliban government, which won power in Afghanistan in 2021. A relationship which is viewed unfavorably by the jihadists of the EI group not only because the Taliban are waging a fierce fight against them, but also because this reconciliation is perceived as “a betrayal of the anti-Soviet jihad carried out there is around forty years old,” notes Riccardo Valle.
Contrary to certain reports, the Moscow attack was not officially claimed by the branch of the Islamic State group located in Khorasan, notes Mr. Valle. “The claim mentions that soldiers in Russia from the Islamic State caliphate carried out the attack,” the expert said, while adding that the Islamic State group in Khorasan could nevertheless have been involved.
The organization might have provided financial or logistical support. Its involvement could also be more indirect, “in the sense that the Islamic State in Khorasan has produced, over the last three years, a huge amount of propaganda against Russia in the Tajik and Russian languages,” continues Mr. Valle. In its magazine published in English, the organization notably encouraged, last year, Muslims in Russia and Ukraine to take advantage of the war to carry out attacks in the two countries, he reports.
Why else did the Islamic State group attack Russia?
For Jabeur Fathally, it is clear that “Russia has always been in the crosshairs of terrorist groups [sunnites] in the Middle East because of Russian support for the Syrian government and the Syrian army, and because of economic and geostrategic ties between Russia and Iran.”
“They therefore consider Russia to be one of those responsible for the collapse of the Islamic State in Syria and the death of thousands of militants affiliated with the Islamic State and their families,” adds Riccardo Valle.
The two researchers also highlight the presence of a jihadist movement in Russia since the Chechen wars. Not to mention that the Russian paramilitary group Wagner is active in West Africa fighting jihadists, which fuels anti-Russian sentiment.
By committing this attack, did the Islamic State group also want to send a signal that it is back and that it can still strike outside the Arab-Muslim world?
“Absolutely,” said Riccardo Valle. The Islamic State has often argued that its war is not geographically limited to Muslim-majority regions. » For Jabeur Fathally, it is also clear that this attack was “a publicity stunt”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin paid lip service to the fact that the attack was committed by radical Islamists. Is it really the Islamic State group that is behind the carnage?
“There is an abundance of evidence that confirms with certainty that this attack was carried out by the Islamic State,” argues Riccardo Valle. The four individuals — some of whom are from Tajikistan — who were arrested and possibly tortured by Russian security forces are the perpetrators of the attack, he confirms, “since their clothes and faces match the video that the ‘Islamic State’ posted a photo of these four militants inside the building while they were killing and praising the Islamic State.
The Putin government, however, seeks to use the attack to link it to Ukraine and thus galvanize its war effort, notes the researcher. Jabeur Fathally also recalls that in times of war, “the first victim is the truth”. Although it is also clear to him that Daesh carried out the attack, we still know little about the accomplices and sponsors who helped the four terrorists sow terror, he notes.