The caves, cellars and other remote places in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Turkey where members of the Islamic State are hiding will have registered with satisfaction the shock caused by last Friday’s attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall. At least 140 people were killed and the attack revived fears of new IS violence worldwide. France and Italy promptly raised the threat level for terrorist attacks.
“The attack in Moscow was the first in a long time to attract so much media attention,” notes Antonio Giustozzi, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a leading London think tank on security issues. And publicity is also of vital importance for such fundamentalist Islamic groups. “Radical donors want to see results. Why would I give my money to such a group if they never make themselves heard, they reason.”
Giustozzi, who has published extensively about the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K), the Afghan branch of IS, does not see the attack as proof of the increasing strength of IS-K and IS, because according to him both groups were in the last position. in decline for years.
What do you base that impression on?
“IS has been in a deep crisis since the caliphate in Syria was destroyed. That was a traumatic experience for the IS members. They have also lost many leaders. Every six months another caliph was killed. They have become much more careful now. Now we don’t even know what the real name of their caliph is. At the moment they no longer control a single village and they have become much less active than before.”
But the attack in Moscow also seemed not to be the work of IS but of IS-K. Does that go better?
“There is some confusion about the perpetrators of the attack. IS-K itself has not announced this, that claim came from the central leadership of IS. The Americans do say that they have information that the attack was the work of IS-K. Maybe they learned something about this through their intelligence services or their drones that fly permanently over Afghanistan.”
However, IS-K, which until now has mainly operated within Afghanistan, has also suffered serious blows in recent years. In an article from February this year, Giustozzi explained that since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, IS-K has been largely driven out of its old strongholds in eastern Afghanistan through brutal attacks. There has traditionally been more sympathy for the strict, Salafist movement within Islam, which IS advocates.
IS has been in a deep crisis since the caliphate was destroyed in Syria
But IS-K has not been defeated. The organization managed to transfer some of its still well-motivated young fighters to the northeast and north of Afghanistan and also across the border to Pakistan. They also regularly continued to carry out attacks, especially in the cities, last week in Kandahar, the southern city where the Taliban started their movement. But just like the central IS organization, IS-K, which has about seven thousand people according to Giustozzi, is having increasing problems to sustain itself financially.
Giustozzi: “For a long time, the central organization provided IS-K with financial resources, but according to sources within IS itself, they almost ran out of funds last spring. IS used Turkey as a kind of bank for a long time. They had made investments there that generated money. Many IS members, especially from Central Asia, had emigrated to Turkey after the fall of the caliphate. But two years ago, Turkey started cracking down on them and the Turks are also confiscating IS assets. In this way, the entire structure that IS had built up in Turkey is in danger of being dismantled. That would be a blow to the group, because Turkey also provides convenient access to Europe and Russia. There is also no other place where they can easily move.”
Who are actually the IS donors?
“These are people with Salafist sympathies who usually prefer not to reveal their identity. There used to be many donors from Saudi Arabia, sometimes also intelligence services, but that has become much less. The geopolitical climate for IS has become less favorable than a few years ago. Saudi Arabia is now flirting with Russia. There are now mainly smaller donors left.”
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How important are the financial concerns of IS and IS-K?
“They can’t do much without money. Such organizations need an infrastructure that includes safe houses, a recruitment apparatus for new people and the purchase of explosives and training in their use. That’s all expensive. And if you stop carrying out attacks, you will quickly lose donors. That’s why they realized: we have to do something to relaunch our brand. That is why they are now spending their last resources on attacks. Not so much in Afghanistan, because an attack there has little impact. Several IS members were recently arrested in Europe. In that respect, January’s IS-K bomb attack in Iran (at a commemoration of General Qasem Soleimani, who was liquidated by the US, killed 84 people, ed.) was more successful. That made an impression and they were able to raise some funds again. We should do this more often, they apparently thought.”
Is IS-K actually taking over the leading role from IS?
“The central leadership of IS, which is mainly in Syria, is still determining the main lines. But the bureaucratic apparatus that they used to have with a separate unit for attacks in Europe, for example, is no longer there. Now they hide in caves and cellars, from where it is often difficult to communicate. That is why they send someone with a specific assignment to IS-K in Afghanistan, where more is possible. It then handles matters as a kind of administration office and contacts the cells. They prepare actions, often from Turkey. After the hard blows from the Taliban, IS-K seems to have recovered somewhat. But it is too early to say whether that recovery is sustainable. And I think the central IS organization still has a much longer way to go before they can reverse the downward trend.”
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