As world powers clash, ISIS returns for revenge

The Islamic State militant group is capitalizing on widespread unrest and flaring tensions over major conflicts, including those raging in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, to pave the way for new, deadly attacks across the globe, analysts told Newsweek.

The once-sprawling caliphate declared over a decade ago by the Islamic State (referred to as ISIS or IS) was largely defeated in Iraq and Syria by 2019 at the hands of an array of campaigns waged by local forces and international powers, including the United States, Russia and Iran. But the jihadis have since regrouped within the region and beyond, becoming particularly active in parts of Africa and in Afghanistan, where ISIS’ so-called Khorasan province (referred to as ISIS-K or ISKP) has emerged as an especially capable force when it comes to carrying out operations worldwide.

After claiming some of the deadliest-ever attacks in Iran and Russia earlier this year, along with a slew of other lethal operations, ISIS-K has increasingly set its sights on the West. Dozens of arrests have been carried out in European countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as the U.S., where an Afghan national purportedly linked to the group was detained last week over an alleged plan to conduct an Election Day attack.

Meanwhile, the broadening divisions between world powers on issues spanning from Eastern Europe to East Asia serve as new opportunities for the geopolitically savvy ISIS-K to make good on its substantial uptick of threats.

“ISKP follows macro geopolitical shifts and rising tensions between the great powers very closely, publishing online propaganda detailing analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and strategic maneuvering between the United States and China around Taiwan,” Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and research fellow at the Soufan Center, told Newsweek.

“The group welcomes wars between the great powers that would weaken them and overtly states its intent to exploit existing and potential conflicts to strike its adversaries while distracted and overstretched,” he added.

Unrest Returns to the Middle East

In the Middle East, where ISIS first emerged from Al-Qaeda in Iraq before rapidly spreading beyond the country, a new conflict has consumed the region over the past year. The massive attack led by the Gaza-based Palestinian Hamas movement against Israel last October has sparked a wider confrontation between Israel and the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance.

With Tehran backing militias striking Israel from Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen and conducting two direct large-scale strikes against its longtime foe in response to Israeli operations regionwide, the U.S. has provided extensive military aid to Israel and doubled down on sending additional troops and military assets to the Middle East. Israel, meanwhile, has only expanded the scope of its operations, conducting its first major incursion into neighboring Lebanon in 18 years.

The ensuing outrage over the growing death and destruction wrought by the conflict has served as ample fuel for ISIS-K’s sophisticated, multilingual media networks.

“Since the Hamas attack on October 7, [2023], Israel’s military response, and the consequent protracted conflict,” Webber said, “ISKP has been publishing a high volume of online propaganda content to tap into grievances fueled by the war and incite supporters to violence against the U.S. and West for supporting Israel.”

“ISKP’s Voice of Khurasan magazine, which is disseminated on the Internet, social media platforms, and messaging applications, features frequent calls for attacks and tactical advice on weapons and target selection,” he added.

A recent issue of the magazine, published in August, reported extensively on the conflict in the Middle East, naming all sides as enemies, and predicted further escalation surrounding other flashpoints that could be exploited by the group.

“The real agenda of the U.S. on Gaza is to draw Iran into a war in the Middle East as much as possible before going to war with China, to eliminate it if they can with the Jewish ‘state’ and other allies in Europe, and if they cannot, to cut off its hands and feet so that it cannot help China and Russia,” one article stated.

The Voice of Khurasan author went on to name a number of conflicts in which “many states are ready to quickly attack their enemies because of any war that America might enter,” including those involving North Korea and South Korea, North Korea and Japan, China and Taiwan, China and India, India and Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, Russia and Europe and the U.S. and China.

“By the grace of Allah,” the author continued, “the Muslims will make great strides due to their enemies fighting each other and the confluence of event in their favor.”

Exploiting Insecurity in Europe

Russia’s war in Ukraine, which continues to rage on without any clear end in sight since being launched in February 2022, has also been depicted by ISIS-K as an opportunity to stir discord among world powers in line with the group’s messaging.

“From a purely propaganda standpoint, ISKP has compared the conflict in Ukraine as the battle between the Romans and the Persians that historically allowed Muslim fighters to conquer swathes of territory in the advent of Islam,” Riccardo Valle, a research analyst and research director at The Khorasan Diary, told Newsweek.

“ISKP argues that Russia and the U.S. will be distracted and consume their resources while the group will exploit the conflict in order to strike at both the countries, Russia and the U.S.,” he said.

This approach came to fatal fruition when ISIS-K killed some 145 people in a shocking attack at a concert being held in Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow in March.

Coming less than three months after the group killed more than 100 people at a commemoration in Kerman, Iran for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by the U.S. in January 2020, the attack in Russia demonstrated the group’s willingness and capability to stage large-scale operations not witnessed since the height of ISIS’ reign.

Moscow has sought to link the attack directly to Kyiv, which initially claimed the mass slaying was a “false flag” event intended to draw up domestic support for the Russian war effort. Ukrainian and Western officials have denied any link between Kyiv and the attack, but the fallout of the conflict appears to have offered at least some practical benefits for ISIS-K as it ramps up activity in Europe, particularly threatening large gatherings such as sporting events.

In June, the head of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution stated that ISIS-K has exploited the flow of refugees from Ukraine as a means of transporting operatives to Western Europe.

Valle also noted that “ISKP depicts the war in Ukraine as the best opportunity for Muslims who fight on both sides to use the weapons at their disposal to carry out attacks on both sides to take revenge of the Russian and U.S. campaign in Syria against IS.”

He argued that “the same reasoning is applied to the conflict in Gaza, with the notable distinct element that ISKP actively calls for indiscriminate attacks against the West in retorsion for the latter’s support for Israel via a well-developed propaganda machine spearheaded by Al-Azaim Foundation.”

“Meanwhile,” Valle said, “ISKP considers the conflict between Israel and Iran and the latter’s allies as a good opportunity for IS to resurge in the region and boost its forces.”

“From a practical standpoint, we are already witnessing these events,” he added, “Not only the attacks in Russia, but also the plots uncovered in Europe and the U.S. but also in Israel confirm that IS thrives on regional and international instability.”

The War at Home

ISIS-K has also taken advantage of unrest closer to home. The group’s activity has heightened substantially since the U.S. withdrawal from its longest-ever war in Afghanistan in September 2021, the subsequent takeover of the Taliban and the regional frictions that followed.

After battling for two decades as an insurgent force, the Taliban finds itself today fighting to rein in militants as the current governing power of Afghanistan. And while the Taliban continues to score victories in its effort to uproot ISIS-K, it has suffered defections in its ranks and a lack of significant international cooperation as the self-declared Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan remains unrecognized on the world stage.

Rampant mistrust among nations in the region and beyond has only exacerbated the issue, narrowing the space for meaningful security cooperation.

“This is visible both on a regional level, such as in the case of the contrasts between Afghanistan and Pakistan and Afghanistan and Tajikistan accusing each other of fostering ISKP,” Valle said, “and on an international level, with Russia and the U.S. having a difficult time in cooperating with each other in the security domain concerning violent extremist organizations.”

“Furthermore, on a country-based level,” he added, “the propagandistic instrumentalization of militants’ attacks for political gain, such as the Moscow attack but also in Iran, in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan fuel conspiracy theories that IS can then capitalize on for its own narratives.”

As governments fail to find common ground, ISIS-K doubles down on its efforts to portray itself as the most powerful jihadi force on the planet.

“This year has witnessed a notable increase in incidents involving the planning of terrorist attacks by individuals or cells affiliated with ISKP in Europe and the United States,” Abdul Sayed, an independent researcher specializing in armed groups in South and Central Asia, told Newsweek.

“Simultaneously, there has been a marked escalation in ISKP’s propaganda and messaging efforts, with a primary focus on Afghanistan and the broader region, encompassing South Asia to Central Asia,” Sayed said. “These efforts are primarily aimed at mobilizing support from militants for an insurgency against the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

So, while ISIS-K maintains its global ambitions, the group’s prevailing focus is to continue exploiting gaps in Afghanistan’s security in order to undermine the Taliban’s legitimacy and physical hold over the country.

“The central theme of ISKP’s messaging and propaganda is the development of a force within Afghanistan that aligns with its extremist ideology and engages in combat against the Taliban,” Sayed said. “The ultimate goal of this strategy is to displace the Taliban from power and establish ISKP’s governance in the region.”

“To this end,” he added, “ISKP’s propaganda efforts are largely focused on undermining support for the Taliban and its allied jihadist groups, while simultaneously attracting their followers to its own cause.”

Bringing Back the Caliphate

Yet in spite of its viral online presence and growing network of supporters, ISIS-K appears to hold little territory within Afghanistan, a far cry from the once sprawling span of ISIS lands across Iraq and Syria.

“Whilst ISKP’s vigor and zeal in recruitment and activity is undeniable, its reach is limited due primarily to the group’s lack of ideological appeal at the grassroots in Afghanistan,” Ahmed-Waleed Kakar, an analyst and founder of AfghanEye, told Newsweek. “This further lends itself to the group’s failure to assert itself physically in terms of any territory it would otherwise seek to hold.”

Lacking the level of homegrown support that the Taliban has traditionally enjoyed in Afghanistan, disaffected communities in neighboring regions have become a critical lifeline for an internationalist ISIS-K.

This effort has manifested in the group’s strategy of channeling grievances over issues such as Kashmir, a majority-Muslim territory divided between and claimed in whole by India and Pakistan, both of whom accuse one another of aiding and abetting militant groups. ISIS-K has also stepped up outreach to the Caucasus region, particularly Russia’s majority-Muslim southern republics that have a history of violent insurgency.

ISIS-K’s messaging appears to be resounding particularly strongly in Central Asia, a vast region that has long been in the crosshairs of the competing interests of China, Russia and the U.S. since the collapse of the Soviet Union and particularly so since the Taliban takeover of neighboring Afghanistan.

“ISKP’s primary success in recruitment seems to stem from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, in particular Tajikistan,” Kakar said. “Attempts to curtail religious practice and expression in these countries has only exacerbated this situation that could pose threats for regional stability, whilst the Taliban has increasingly accused Pakistan, with whom it is at loggerheads, of providing ISKP with sanctuary.”

As such, even with the Taliban’s efforts, Kakar said, “no attacks by the group overseas can be ruled out.”