The US collected intelligence information that it shared with Russia about an
active threat
from a terrorist group, which uses the same acronym as the defunct ISIS organization, but with the Khorasan attachment, ISIS-K.
He is very active in Afghanistan where he is based and is
a tough enemy
of the Taliban dictatorship and Iran.
Last January 3 he gave proof of his dangerousness when
he massacred 84 people
in an attack in the Iranian city of Kerman.
According to North American intelligence, this organization, which seeks to emulate the previous one that created a caliphate between Iraq and Syria, is very active in Russia and there was data of a
probable attack against civilians
like the one that occurred this Friday.
“ISIS-K has been obsessed with Russia for the past two years,” frequently criticizing Vladimir Putin in its propaganda,” said Colin Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consulting firm.
“ISIS-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands,
in reference to Moscow's interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”
When Russia entered the war in Syria in 2015, turning it in favor of the regime of Bashar al Assasd, a carnal ally of Iran, it used all its attack capacity against ISIS.
This gang was born after the North American invasion of Iraq, but it gained special strength in 2011 with enormous financial help from Arab potentates and with a specific agenda of exclusive attacks
against Iranian targets.
Special security forces take control of the attacked stadium AFP
It collapsed when that sponsorship disappeared precisely after the Russian war coup.
In 2017 it lost its main capital, in Mosul Iraq,
and before that Tikrit had fallen, its second metropolis is in Syria.
In October 2019, American commandos killed the leader of the gang, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The group was dismantled, but organizations that used the same name later appeared to
take advantage of the prestige and knowledge that ISIS had gained.
One of the most powerful of these organizations is the one that attacked Moscow.
The K in its acronym refers to a region that includes ancestral territories in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan that
the organization intends to conquer
.
Friday's attack in Moscow, like the assault on Iran in January, could prompt a reassessment of its ability to strike outside its territory.