Today, global geopolitical challenges are giving more space for terror and extremist groups. Thus adequate counterterrorism measures need to be adopted.
Source Image: Reuters
The terrorist attack in Moscow claimed by the Islamic State (also known as IS, ISIS, or Daesh in Arabic) has added a new conflict hotspot to an already overflowing list of global challenges. Over 135 people were killed when terrorists, allegedly of Tajik origin, attacked a concert hall in the Russian capital. This target is not new to Russia, the 2002 siege of the Dubrovka Theatre by Chechen terrorists which lasted four days and saw over 130 people killed presents a strikingly similar case.
Moscow has been often targeted by Islamist militants, both from its own restive regions such as Dagestan, Tatarstan, and Chechnya, and its extended neighbourhoods in Central Asia. Its interventionist past in Afghanistan in the 1970s and more recently in Syria has also led to it. In fact, earlier this month, the United States (US) had shared intel (as it has with its other foe Iran) on an imminent threat to Russia from IS. The Islamist threat towards Russia has been well documented in the recent past. The war against IS in the Middle East (West Asia), specifically since 2014, has been led by a US-led coalition and its regional partners including the Yezidis, Kurds, and other rebel factions. In its initial stages, Moscow had also launched strikes against IS in Syria after embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had requested assistance in September 2015. Today, even as the broader threat is tempered, open-air prisons in Syria continue to exist housing thousands of pro-IS radicals, specifically women, with little international collaboration on what to do with these inmates being held on shoe-string budgets and capacity provided by foreign powers but manned by the Syrian Democratic Forces and their military wing, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The war against IS in the Middle East (West Asia), specifically since 2014, has been led by a US-led coalition and its regional partners including the Yezidis, Kurds, and other rebel factions.
Scholars Lucas Webber, Riccardo Valle, and Colin P Clarke writing in May last year highlighted an increase in pro-IS propaganda via the group’s wilayat (province) in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISK or ISKP). Webber, et.al. argued that the Russian war in Ukraine had allowed the likes of ISKP to recruit and fundraise, mobilising anti-Moscow grievances over its positions on Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Syria, amongst others. Since the era of the first caliph of this so-called Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader had mentioned Russia as an ‘anti-Muslim’ and ‘crusader’ state, putting crosshairs on it as far as IS was concerned. The 2022 attack against the Russian embassy in Kabul, which killed two mission staffers, stands tall as an example. Scholar Aaron Y Zelin has highlighted that overall, since 2016, IS has claimed 9 attacks that have targeted Russia.
The shock, surprise, and in public discourse some confusion, over terror in Moscow highlights that short public memories do not mean that fundamental threats in the terrorism sphere disappear. In 2019, under the tutelage of then-President Donald Trump, the US declared that IS had been defeated. However, no one took the time to define what the ‘defeat’ of a terror group means. During this period, tactically, largely due to successes of the US-led Operational Inherent Resolve, IS’s geographic ‘caliphate’ was indeed ‘defeated’. Baghdadi was killed in 2019, and his subsequent replacements also lost their lives over the years, pushing the allure of IS caliph’s previously vocal and personality-driven position into the backseat. Since then, the US has also often captured high-ranking IS operatives in high-risk raids, gaining significant intel for future counter-terror action.
However, the above-mentioned is easier said than done. IS has claimed the terror attack in an on-brand but opaque manner, not highlighting which branch conducted the strike. It would be wise to go back to the April 2019 Easter terror bombings in Sri Lanka, also claimed by IS, where over 260 people died. The attack, almost half a decade later, remains shrouded in a sense of mystery where large chunks of the ‘who, why, what and how?’ of the story remain either contested or simply unknown.
The shock, surprise, and in public discourse some confusion, over terror in Moscow highlights that short public memories do not mean that fundamental threats in the terrorism sphere disappear.
The second major factor of the ‘shock’ value, other than the brutal nature of the attack itself, is the fact that IS has continued to thrive in other parts of the world, regions that perhaps most people don’t care about too much. This ‘tyranny’ of geography and interests made the threat seem less, lax, or impotent. IS-aligned groups in Afghanistan, the African Sahel, Mozambique, and even continuing in Syria, have been slowly gnawing their way into prominence in these parts of the world. In the Sahel, the prominent power, France, exited the counter-terror theatre in 2023. This was in part due to domestic compulsions, and in other, due to geostrategic competition as local African leaders hedged their bets between the European power and Russia, the latter guaranteeing protection of regimes first, state later, including military help against local pro-IS groups. In the aftermath of Moscow, France, which saw a similar kind of IS-claimed terror strike in Paris in 2015, has raised its terror alert warning to the maximum.
For groups like IS, global geopolitical crevasses are environments in which they can best thrive. IS, however, is a unique ideological group in a sense, with not just almost all states as its enemy, but also al Qaeda, Hamas, and other extremist factions. Al-Qaeda (unsuccessfully) pushed back against IS in Iraq and Syria, considering the group formed out of the remains of what used to be al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Hamas leaders, ironically, offered condolences to Moscow in the aftermath over the last two days, and both the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda fought against ISKP in Afghanistan.
IS-aligned groups in Afghanistan, the African Sahel, Mozambique, and even continuing in Syria, have been slowly gnawing their way into prominence in these parts of the world.
Countering terrorism as a fundamental fight cannot afford to take a back seat. At multilateral forums such as the United Nations, pressure needs to be put on countering terrorism in a splitting global order. Today, global geopolitical challenges are giving more space for terror and extremist groups, specifically Islamist ones in nature, strategic, tactical, and more startlingly, political space for compromise. This was seen in full play as the US signed an exit deal with the Afghan Taliban in 2020. How to arrest this backslide will be a big challenge in the coming time.
Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation
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Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with Strategic Studies programme. His research focuses on Indias relations with West Asia specifically looking at the domestic political dynamics ...
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