Islamic State Khorasan Province brings the war home to Moscow in retaliation for Russian acts of war in Syria and throughout the contested region of Africa which includes Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria.
ISKP is also the group who committed similar bomb attacks against Iran and Pakistan, a group whose existence is a consequence of the partnership of Russia and her primary ally the Dominion of Iran in the Assad regime of Syria.
Sadly this does not make America natural allies with Russia and Iran or her proxy states in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, which complicates our response to Islamic State theocracy and terror.
In this tragic and spectacular attack on Moscow, Russia’s pigeons have come home to roost.
As I wrote in my post of May 27 2022, Theatres of World War Three: West Africa, the Sahel, and Lake Chad Regions; Here I offer insight and policy guidance into what I hope will be the last of the many Theatres of World War Three; West Africa, the Sahel, and Lake Chad regions. Mali is the primary conflict now, but a general conflict rages throughout the whole region as Islamic State insurgencies contest with nations under the hammer of famine and drought, and Russia’s mercenaries exploit opportunities to seize dominion in defense of elite wealth and power.
Sudan is a pivot point and interface between bounded realms of sub-Saharan Africa as discussed here, and Libya with whose fate it is closely aligned. To disambiguate the Sudan and Libyan Civil Wars from the general regional conflict, Libya being a unique war of colonial European interests as a wishbone pulled between Russia and Turkey for dominion of the Mediterranean, where sub-Saharan Africa, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria, is not a Great Powers proxy war and civil war but a struggle for power between variants of Islamic State Jihadist groups and the nations which control the resources they covet, with Russia leveraging this into regional dominion through the use of Wagner Group mercenaries as deniable assets.
It is now the presence of the Wagner Group defending elite interests in fighting Islamic State insurgencies and operating the mines for the governments which have become their proxies and front organizations which defines this theatre of war.
And it is the Wagner Group we must interrogate for insight into Russia’s plans and methods of world conquest and dominion when as in Syria there are willing surrogates to open the door of empire.
All of this is possible because France has abandoned her former colonies to their fate, because of the brilliant and visionary Islamic State strategy of delegitimation through provocation and implication in war crimes, some real and some false flag operations by elite IS units in French uniforms in coordination with infiltration agents inside actual French entities, and skillful propaganda. In parallel with blackening the reputation of France, ISGS has been successfully building a viable trans-national state in the region.
This means that the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, an independent operational arm of Islamic State West Africa Province created in 2015 with al-Sahrawi’s oath of allegiance to IS and split from al-Qaeda, and despite continued factional fighting between the two organizations, is now providing central Command, Intelligence, and Communications to jihadist insurgencies generally in its sphere of influence, as an emergent dominion to which Russia is the only balance. I describe this historical movement as the Syrianization of the conflict.
There are other possibilities for future Africas without foreign empires and their proxy regimes of brutal and kleptocratic tyrants and endless violence for control of resources, and in the long game this requires the free and open sharing of resources among her peoples and states which are guarantors of our universal human rights and secular democracy as a counterforce to fascisms of blood, faith, and soil.
To win the liberty of the peoples of Africa one must begin with food, water, medical aid, and safety; the first requirements of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The political follows the humanitarian. Freedom from hunger, disease, violence, and labor exploitation; liberate a people from these, and tyranny will find no point of leverage.
Beyond this prescription I must give warning here; let us send no armies to enforce virtue, for the most likely result of challenging Russian influence in the region is another Great Powers war of imperial dominion between Russia and France which replicates that of Russia and Turkey in Libya. This will fail, because it plays directly into the hands of ISGS.
If you fight an insurgency with conventional forces, you will lose. ISGS has demonstrated a genius for this kind of war, and in large part it is not the kind of war our armies are designed to fight. In this arena, victory on the battlefield is irrelevant, because the victory you must win is within the human soul. And here we win love and loyalty by standing with, not against, our fellow human beings. We must offer the better alternative in meeting the needs of the people, both material and otherwise.
And in this arena we have clear advantage, for democracy is better than tyranny, equality as diversity and inclusion is better than tribalism, racism, and hierarchies of elite belonging and exclusionary otherness, truth is better than the lies and illusions of propaganda, justice is better than rule by the wealthiest robber baron or the most brutal and amoral bandit king, and a secular state is better than tyrannies of the authorized interpreters and enforcers of divine will, for who so ever stands between each of us and the Infinite serves neither.
A common enemy of humankind is the weaponization of fear by authority in service to power, especially as identity politics and divisions of faith. Gott Mit Uns; it is our most ancient and terrible battle cry, for it permits anything.
As Voltaire teaches us in his 1765 essay Questions sur les miracles; “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
As written by Pjotr Sauer in The Guardian, in an article entitled Moscow terror attack: Putin says all four gunmen held as death toll reaches 133; “Vladimir Putin said Russia had arrested all four gunmen responsible for the shooting that killed 133 people at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, claiming that the perpetrators of one of the worst terror attacks in the country’s history planned to flee to Ukraine.
In his first public comments on the terrorist attacks that shocked the nation, the Russian president made no mention of Islamic State’s claim to have carried out the attack.
Instead, Putin suggested without evidence that Ukraine may have been involved in Friday’s attack at the Crocus City Hall just outside Moscow, saying that “the Ukrainian side” had “prepared a window” for the terrorists to cross the border from Russia into Ukraine before they were apprehended.
“They tried to hide and move towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them from the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” Putin said in a televised address.
His comments came short of directly blaming Ukraine for the attack, saying that those responsible would be punished, “whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them”. The four suspected gunmen were all foreign citizens, Russia’s interior ministry later said.
Islamic State, through an affiliated news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack late on Friday in a post on Telegram, in which they claimed the gunmen had managed to escape afterwards. On Saturday, IS released a photo of what it said were the four attackers behind the shooting rampage.
In a statement, the group said the shooting came within the context of the “raging war” between Islamic State and countries fighting Islam.
A US official said Washington had intelligence confirming Islamic State’s claim.
Russian officials and state news channels have been quiet about Islamic State’s claim to have carried out the attack, but a US official said Washington had intelligence confirming it.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Russian officials were engaged in accusations against Kyiv “with the goals of stirring up anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society and creating conditions to boost mobilisation of Russian citizens into the criminal aggression against our state”.
Some Russian officials also speculated that Ukraine, the country against which Russia launched a full-scale invasion two years ago, was responsible.
Alexey Chepa, the first deputy chair of the state duma committee on international affairs, said the “events were connected to Ukraine”.
The death toll from the attack had risen to 133 by Saturday afternoon, according to a statement from Russia’s investigative committee. Putin declared a day of mourning for Sunday and passed his condolences on to the families of those killed in the attack.
Russian authorities said at least 145 people had been injured, with 16 people in a “critical state”.
“The number of victims of the terrorist attack will grow significantly,” said Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow region.
Photos on Friday evening showed Crocus City Hall engulfed in flames as graphic videos appeared to show several people being killed by the unidentified gunmen. In one clip, three men in fatigues carrying rifles fired at point-blank range into bodies strewn about the lobby of the concert hall. Other video footage showed people screaming, crawling on their hands and knees out of the music venue or fleeing down stairwells.
The attack came minutes before a veteran Russian rock band was to start playing in front of a sold-out audience.
Witness accounts describe scenes of chaos and confusion, with many concertgoers initially assuming the sound of gunshots was part of the show.
“We entered the hall and took our seats right in the centre. At some moment we heard a large bang coming from outside the room, we thought it was part of the concert,” Arina, a clinical psychologist from Moscow told the Guardian.
“But at some point, we understood something was seriously wrong, we realised there were shootings. Then we saw a man in camouflage holding an automatic gun … We all lay on the ground. I looked beside me and I saw many injured people covered in blood,” she said.
The Russian investigative committee said those killed in the concert hall died of gunshot wounds and “poisoning” related to the fire.
The committee added that the attackers had used “a flammable liquid to set fire to the premises of the concert hall”.
Baza, a telegram channel close to Russia’s security services, said more than 10 bodies of the victims had been found in one of the toilets of the Crocus City Hall.
According to the channel, the victims were hiding from the shooting but later died because of the smoke.
The international community condemned the incident, with the UN security council calling it a “heinous and cowardly terrorist attack”.
The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, said the UK “condemns the deadly attack in the strongest possible terms”.
The Crocus City Hall shooting was the deadliest attack in Russia since the 2004 Beslan school siege, in which 334 people, including 186 children, were killed after being held captive by militants for two days.
Questions will be raised as to why Putin appeared to have rejected a terror warning weeks before the attack.
The attack on Friday came two weeks after western countries led by the US had issued terror warnings and told their citizens not to join public gatherings in Russia.
The group that claimed credit for the deadly terrorist attack was an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan called Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP.
According to US officials, Washington had collected intelligence in March that ISKP had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials.
Putin had called the March warnings from western embassies a “provocation”.
But citing a source in Russia’s security services, the state agency Tass on Saturday admitted that Russian security services did indeed receive information from the US over a potential terrorist attack.
The FSB previously said it had foiled an attack on a Moscow synagogue by ISKP, a group that seeks to create a caliphate across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran.
On Saturday, Russian state news aired footage of interrogations of three alleged attackers, including one where the suspect is speaking in Tajik through an interpreter.
ISKP has previously been reported to have recruited radicalised nationals from central Asia, including Tajikistan.
In one of the clips, circulated by Russian bloggers, members of the security forces are seen cutting off the ear of a man who is later interrogated over the attack.
Russian authorities had also recently carried out a series of raids against armed Islamist militants in the region of Ingushetia, leading to firefights between police and the fighters.
Paweł Wójcik, a specialist in Islamic State messaging and propaganda, said IS messaging after the Moscow attack was similar to previous attacks that the group claimed in Tehran and Kabul.
“The messaging we saw from IS following the attack was standard,” Wójcik told the Guardian.
Wójcik said IS would have “many motives” to launch a terrorist attack in Russia, including Moscow’s involvement in the campaign against IS in Syria, Mali and Burkina Faso.
Putin changed the course of the Syrian civil war by intervening in 2015, supporting the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, against the opposition and IS.
Wójcik added that ISKP had recently “strongly embraced anti-Russia narrative in its propaganda output”.
As written by Jason Burke in The Guardian, in an article entitled Who is thought to be behind the Moscow attack? Islamic State has claimed responsibility and experts say an IS branch – Islamic State Khorasan Province – is prime suspect; “More than 100 people have been killed and scores wounded in Russia’s worst terror attack in years.
Who is responsible for the attack?
Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attack, praising the “Islamic fighters” who carried it out. Many commentators and US officials have pointed to the IS affiliate called Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) as prime suspect – though so far there is no evidence that this is the case.
ISKP is a branch of Islamic State in Afghanistan. The name comes from that given to a region by some local Islamic rulers and so explicitly rejects modern national frontiers while evoking what its members consider the lost glory and power of Muslim empires.
It was formed at the peak of the expansion of IS in 2015 when the Iraq- and Syria-based group was trying to expand by building a network of affiliates through the Middle East, the Maghreb, west Asia and other parts of Africa. These efforts brought mixed results. However, hundreds of disillusioned Taliban fighters and some from factions in Pakistan were attracted by the extremism and resources of IS. These formed the nucleus of ISKP – and the group remains linked to IS to this day.
Has ISKP always attacked this kind of international target?
No, which is why it is important that ISKP have not themselves claimed responsibility for the attack in Moscow. This has come from IS central communications channels, not their own.
Also, ISKP has been mainly focused on a local campaign until relatively recently. It has launched hundreds of attacks on both civilian targets and security forces, including western forces, in Afghanistan. Two attacks in 2020 targeted a Kabul maternity ward and Kabul University. Others have hit mosques and ethnic or religious minorities in Afghanistan.
The group was also responsible for a hugely destructive attack on Kabul’s international airport in 2021 that killed 13 US troops and more than 150 civilians during the chaotic US evacuation from the country. This was an international target but still in Afghanistan.
But is ISKP striking international targets now?
To an extent. The group has hit targets in Tajikistan and Pakistan, neighbours of Afghanistan, and a hotel in Afghanistan favoured by Chinese nationals. Earlier this year, the US intercepted communications confirming the group had carried out twin bombings in Iran that killed nearly 100 people – though ISKP did not claim responsibility.
Earlier this month, the most senior US general in the Middle East said ISKP could attack US and western interests outside Afghanistan “in as little as six months and with little to no warning”.
Why might ISKP launch this kind of attack?
Over recent decades, lots of extremist Islamist factions have moved their focus from purely local targets to international ones. Reasons can vary from group to group. Sometimes a new leader brings a personal agenda, other times launching long-range international attacks is seen as a way to attract new recruits, win new resources from sponsors or mobilise followers otherwise disillusioned by local failures. They are also often a way to distinguish one group from competitors – in the case of ISKP, the Taliban, who have always eschewed such a strategy – and al-Qaida, which pioneered the strategy but has had a local focus since 2011.
It is entirely possible too that ISKP is acting on direct orders from IS leaders. Despite the collapse of the IS caliphate in Syria and Iraq, there are still ties between ISKP and senior figures there. In 2022, a UN report drawing on intelligence from member states said ISKP was a recipient of funds from the leadership “through trusted cash couriers” and there is no reason why orders should not be sent too.
IS is still apparently seeking opportunities for such strikes. A network planning to attack a concert hall in Brussels that was recently broken up by French and Belgian police were reportedly at least inspired by IS. But this also raises the possibility that a different IS affiliate or faction was responsible or even a semi-autonomous group inspired by IS.
Why would ISKP or IS leaders target Russia at all?
IS leaders, like many Islamic militants, are mindful of Russian support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and see Moscow as part of the broader coalition of Christian or western forces against Islam. This is a key point made by IS propaganda from Pakistan to Nigeria.
In September 2022, ISKP militants claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul and some experts say the group has opposed the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in recent years. Michael Kugelman, of the Washington-based Wilson Center, said ISKP “sees Russia as being complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims” and counts as members a number of central Asian militants with their own grievances against Moscow.
ISKP leaders may also see Russia, along with China and others, as important to the continued rule of the Taliban and are seeking to undermine them. An attack in Moscow would thus combine local and more global agendas.”
As written by Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian, in an article entitled Moscow attack is grim reminder that large-scale acts of terror have not gone away; “It was a warning that proved grimly prophetic. Just over two weeks ago, as Russia’s presidential election was reaching its final stages, the US embassy in Moscow said it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts” over the ensuing 48 hours.
The unusually clear public alert was repeated by the UK, which reiterated its longstanding advice, warning British citizens against going to Russia. As a close ally in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, Britain will have seen whatever raw intelligence the US warning was based on, most likely intercepted communications.
No attack came within that timeframe, but it is now tragically clear the respite was only temporary. A terrorist attack on Friday night by a group of gunmen on crowds attending a pop concert on the outskirts of Moscow has left at least 133 dead and 140 wounded, responsibility for which was claimed by Islamic State.
Whether more details underpinning the warning were passed from the US to their Russian counterparts is unclear, given the two countries are engaged in a proxy war in Ukraine, nor is it certain the alert would have been well received. But it is an uncomfortable reminder that large-scale terror attacks have not gone away.
Moscow, meanwhile, is trying to promote an alternative theory. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, sought to accuse Ukraine of involvement, saying that the four suspects now apprehended had “tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border”.
Given Russia’s war in Ukraine, the claim is unsurprising. But on any initial assessment it lacks credibility. While Ukraine has been seeking to strike military and industrial targets hundreds of miles inside Russia, its leaders well understand they would rapidly forfeit international support if they carried out a massacre of civilians.
Ukraine has targeted airbases and seaports inside Russia, and it may even have flown two drones over the Kremlin. This year Kyiv almost certainly attacked a gas terminal in St Petersburg and refineries in Yaroslavl and Volgograd, escalation enough to prompt anxiety in the US, worried about the impact on global oil prices. But none of these are mass casualty attacks aimed at peacefully congregating civilians.
Even if those apprehended by Moscow prove to be the gunmen and were heading south, it would not be obvious their best strategy would be to cross the frontlines of an active war. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Friday night, adding: “Terrorist attacks do not solve any problems …”
Moscow may appear far away from the west, but it is also far from Kerman, Iran, the site of a terror attack in January claimed by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) that killed 84. If it is confirmed that the Moscow attack was carried out by the same group, it is uncomfortable reminder that it is on the rise.
ISKP was also behind another suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport, Afghanistan, in August 2021, killing 170 Afghans and 13 US troops, in the process of carrying out the retreat from the country ordered by the US president, Joe Biden, a few months earlier. Its focus may have been Russia on Friday, but it was US forces less than three years ago.
The mass killing at a concert venue also carries with it obvious chilling echoes of the murderous attack, also by IS gunmen, at the Bataclan in Paris in November 2015, which killed 89, and the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena in 2017 after an Ariana Grande concert, which killed 22.
Last year, leaks from US intelligence showed that ISKP, based in Afghanistan, was conducting “aspirational plotting” in the US, Europe and Asia, with targets such as the last World Cup in Qatar in mind. Whatever the west’s wider relationship with Moscow is, counter-terror investigators know it is time to be particularly vigilant.”
Moscow terror attack: Putin says all four gunmen held as death toll reaches 133
Who is thought to be behind the Moscow attack?
Moscow attack is grim reminder that large-scale acts of terror have not gone away
Why Is Islamic State Attacking Russia?
The Wagner Group in Africa
https://morningexpress.in/russian-group-wagner-expands-area-of-%e2%80%8b%e2%80%8binfluence-in-africa
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/23/russia-putin-wagner-group-mercenaries-africa
Sahel region and sub-Saharan West Africa
Mali
Burkina Faso
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/11/thomas-sankara-trial-burkina-faso?CMP=share_btn_link
Nigeria
Niger
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/30/african-apocalypse-review?CMP=share_btn_link
Chad
North Africa, a reading list
North Africa: A History from the Mediterranean Shore to the Sahara, Barnaby Rogerson
In Search of Ancient North Africa: A History in Six Lives, by Barnaby Rogerson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36341137-in-search-of-ancient-north-africa
The Sahara: A Cultural History, by Eamonn Gearon
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12254466-the-sahara
Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara, by Alisa LaGamma
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50130929-sahel
The Nomad’s Path: Travels in the Sahel, by Alistair Carr
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18464938-the-nomad-s-path
Horn, Sahel, and Rift: Fault-lines of the African Jihad, by Stig Jarle Hansen
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51062928-horn-sahel-and-rift
Torch of Liberty 
Leave a comment