By Ken Dilanian and Courtney Kube -
NBC News
When discussing the biggest threats facing the United States today, US intelligence services invariably mention China and Russia, and often include cyberattacks, pandemics and climate change.
Islamic extremist terrorism, which motivated American foreign policy and defense strategy for a decade and a half following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has fallen by the wayside as a major concern.
However, the attack that took the lives of 133 people in a Moscow concert hall last Friday is a reminder that the terrorist threat is still latent.
One of the suspects who participated in the attack on the concert hall in Moscow is taken to court, in Moscow, on March 24, 2024.Getty Images
The group that claimed responsibility, an offshoot of the Islamic State (ISIS) called the Islamic State in Khorasan, or ISIS-K, has eclipsed the once fearsome core ISIS organization in Iraq and Syria as perhaps the most dangerous terrorist organization, US officials and experts said.
“It is becoming a regional player,” said Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism specialist at Georgetown University.
“He claimed responsibility for the attack in Iran in January, and now we have this devastating attack in Moscow.”
The attack in Iran was a double suicide attack in which
almost 100 people died
in a tribute to Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani.
US authorities say ISIS-K was also responsible for the 2021 attack at the Abbey Gate, in front of Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport, in which 13 US service members and 170 Afghan civilians were killed.
Although U.S.-backed fighters five years ago expelled the core of ISIS from its so-called caliphate in Syria and declared victory, remnants of the group remained in the country.
ISIS-K is believed to be active in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, and appears to have aspirations to attack Europe and the United States, according to US officials.
According to a July 2023 report to the United Nations Security Council, ISIS-K has between 4,000 and 6,000 members present in Afghanistan, including fighters and their families.
To be sure, while most of the American public
has stopped thinking about groups like ISIS
, American defense officials have not.
Gen. Michael Kurilla, who heads U.S. Central Command, told a House committee last week that ISIS-K “retains the ability and willingness to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad within "Just six months with hardly any prior notice."
He also warned that core members of ISIS are languishing in Syrian detention camps.
The four suspects detained after the attack on the concert hall in Moscow when they were presented in court, on March 24, 2024.Getty Images
“[There are] more than 9,000 detainees in 27 detention centers in Syria,” Kurilla explained.
“We have to repatriate those detainees so that they can be prosecuted or reintegrated, rehabilitated back into their societies.”
The good news, from the American perspective, is that the United States appears to have significant intelligence on ISIS-K's plans and intentions.
US officials warned both Iran and Russia that ISIS-K was prepared to attack in those countries before the attacks occurred.
Putin rejected the warning, but the US embassy in Moscow issued a public statement in which he warned Americans to stay away from concert halls.
“It's impressive,” Byman said.
“It demonstrates that
America's counterterrorism capability remains an important factor
.”
“If they are trying to do something in Europe or the United States, there is at least a reasonable chance that American intelligence can detect it.”
Still, U.S. officials are concerned that even if they can detect planning involving multiple terrorists, they cannot guarantee that they will uncover a plot that involves sending one or two people to the United States, or one that involves a lone extremist. that is already in the country.
Islamic State in Khorasan was founded in 2015 by splinter members of the Pakistani Taliban.
It includes people of Afghan and Pakistani origin, as well as Central Asians.
The group is now at war against the Taliban government in Afghanistan, putting pressure on the terrorist organization.
“I would say
ISIS-K poses a little bit of a bigger threat
, but right now they are under attack by the Taliban regime,” Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told senators earlier this month.
“And it is a matter of time before they may have the capacity and the intention to actually attack the West.”
A woman cries in front of the Crocus concert hall, in Krasnogorsk, on the outskirts of Moscow on March 24, 2024.Getty Images
According to Byman,
several ISIS-K plots in Europe have been disrupted
, for example with a wave of arrests of people from Central Asia in Germany and the Netherlands in July.
In January, according to Turkish authorities, two masked ISIS-K members attacked and killed a person in a Catholic church in Istanbul.
Russia, which invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, crushed a rebellion in Muslim-majority Chechnya in the 1990s and backed the Syrian government against ISIS in the 2010s, has long been a target of jihadists, according to reports. experts.
“By attacking Russian targets, ISIS-K seeks in part to deter further Russian involvement in the Middle East,” wrote terrorism experts Sara Harmouch and Amira Jadoon.
“But also, such attacks provide great publicity to their cause and
are intended to inspire their supporters around the world
.”