by Viktor Vasiliev
The action of the “prison jamaat” of ISIS in Rostov-on-Don showed that experts were right when they predicted that the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall was just the beginning. The statements and plans of the Islamic State must be taken extremely seriously.
There is ample open-source evidence, including statements by Russian officials and public experts, to suggest that the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, known as Wilayat Khorasan, will carry out a large-scale terrorist attack as early as this summer to capture a separate region in Central Asia. Asia.
The action can take place either in the format of a territorial invasion or be accompanied by terrorist and political activity designed to destabilize the entire region. The only question is where exactly to wait for the blow.
Activation of ISIS-Khorasan
“Vilayat Khorasan” has existed since 2014. Initially, the group consisted mainly of Afghans who broke away from the Taliban, but later militants from other countries, including the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, began to join it.
The UN Security Council report of 2023 stated that Vilayat Khorasan includes citizens of Pakistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The Afghan United Front (AUF), led by Sami Sadat, a former Afghan special forces commander, published an interesting report on June 5 with information about the Vilayat Khorasan.
The report states that ISIS-Khorasan currently has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan and is thus able to carry out attacks "across the region." Moreover, the size of these forces is rapidly increasing and opens up the possibility not only of suicide attacks, riots and murders in cities, but also of systemic attacks on government targets or economic centers.
Vilayat Khorasan is currently the largest and strongest center of IS in the world. The branch's leadership is based in Baluchistan in Pakistan, and its members are stationed in Afghanistan. According to the report, by the end of 2023, many active ISIS leaders from Syria and Iraq traveled to the Balochistan region of Pakistan and Kunar province of Afghanistan.
The data from the report of the United Front of Afghanistan generally confirms recent publications (dated June 15) by Russian expert Andrei Serenko. According to his sources, “in a number of provinces of the country, ISIS has intensified attempts to recruit former security forces of the republican regime - military personnel of the Afghan National Army (ANA), special forces soldiers (commandos), employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the security service.”
The jihadists offer good wages by Afghan standards ($400-450 per month), as well as protection from ongoing Taliban repression. Former security officials, who have become outcasts under the current authorities, often agree to be recruited.
A significant increase in the recruitment campaign may indicate that ISIS is preparing for a large-scale military action in the region. Serenko suggests that the terrorists' plans may be connected with Northern Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Factions and diasporas
Vilayat Khorasan is an ethnically and geographically heterogeneous network. It is known that the branch includes four centers - Afghan, Pakistani, Iranian and Central Asian.
A major attack in the Moscow region was carried out by the forces of ISIS-Khorasan Central Asia, which relies on a large Tajik diaspora. The latter is largely formed from Tajiks who were forced out of the Republic of Tajikistan itself by the Emomali Rahmon regime, which harshly suppressed any manifestations of religious radicalism.
The April news that security officers of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan detained two Tajiks who were traveling from the Vladimir region of Russia to Pakistan to join the Islamic State banned in Russia is very typical in this sense.
But the largest and most radical ethnic faction in ISIS-Khorasan Central Asia are the Uzbeks. There are about 1,000 militants. They also carry out general management of the center.
The Uzbek faction of ISIS-Khorasan Central Asia arose from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in the summer of 2015, when the deputy leader of the IMU, Amir Usman Ghazi, rebelled against his own Amir Aziz Yuldash, son of Tahir Yuldash, the founder of the IMU.
Ghazi and his followers, numbering about 60 fighters, pledged allegiance to ISIS and demanded that Aziz do the same. Aziz and about 40 of his men refused. In response, Usman Ghazi arrested them all, killing 40 militants and Aziz's entire family, including his mother, wife and one-year-old son. By pure chance, Yuldash himself managed to escape, but he was later killed by the Afghan Taliban, in 2020.
Currently, it is the Uzbek faction “Vilayat Khorasan” that is most motivated and inclines the branch to take active action in the territory of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Over the past two years, they have created quite developed networks in these countries and attracted a significant number of young radicals.
The Uzbeks who were in Syria returned to Afghanistan two years ago, and they focused all their efforts on recruiting their relatives who traditionally lived in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as in Uzbekistan itself. Using social media, their preachers attracted a large number of followers.
Russia is under attack
The propaganda of Vilayat Khorasan draws special attention of its adherents to the fact that Russia maintains good neighborly relations with the Taliban movement, which seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.
In September 2022, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack near the Russian embassy in Kabul, which killed two employees of the Russian diplomatic mission - one of the few that did not stop working after the Taliban came to power.
Russia was one of the first countries to establish relations with the leadership of the Taliban. The Taliban have repeatedly taken part in high-profile state events in Russia (the same SPIEF).
ISIS-Khorasan considers Russia the main support of the Taliban.
The global goal of the leaders of “Vilayat” is to return Afghanistan to the 1990s and transform the country into a new central base for ISIS. Terrorist and recruitment activity on Russian territory is connected with this.
But if in relation to Russian territories the maximum that the organization is capable of is sabotage, then in relation to Russia’s allies in Central Asia its capabilities are an order of magnitude higher.
Who can be targeted by ISIS
In April 2024, the then head of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, met in Astana with colleagues from the SCO countries. Shoigu noted that the situation in Afghanistan is complex and is a source of the spread of terrorism and extremism.
Washington began to actively restore its positions in Central and South Asia after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. I believe that everyone present shares the opinion that the deployment of military infrastructure in the region by the United States and its allies is unacceptable. Such intentions must be regarded as a direct threat to stability in the SCO space,” the head of the military department emphasized.
In June, already in the status of Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Shoigu repeated these theses. During a meeting of the Committee of Security Council Secretaries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Almaty, he outlined the threat to the countries of the bloc as follows:
“We are recording the emergence of new militant training camps and the ongoing transfer of terrorists from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan. The likelihood of terrorism spreading beyond the country’s borders is increasing.”
The problem has been voiced at the highest level. It remains to understand where the blow will be struck.
The militants are waiting for the height of summer (July-August) to take advantage of the opened paths through the passes on the borders of Afghanistan with Tajikistan and Tajikistan with Kyrgyzstan and make their attack unexpected. If Uzbekistan is chosen as the target of the Islamists, the blow will also fall on the southern regions of Kyrgyzstan.
If we assume that such an attack could be used in the interests of the West, then we must admit that Tajikistan itself is of little interest in this role. It is much more interesting to disrupt the emerging logistics corridor between Moscow and Beijing (including the officially announced start of construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway).
The south of Kyrgyzstan and regions inhabited by ethnic Uzbeks are under serious threat. And from there, if they manage to gain a foothold, the extremists could spread their influence to other regions of the Fergana Valley (primarily Andijan and Namangan).
Let me remind you that the suicide bomber who carried out an explosion in the metro in St. Petersburg in 2017 was a 22-year-old native of the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan, an ethnic Uzbek Akbarzhon Jalilov.
Ideal goal
Due to the liberal policy of the Kyrgyz authorities in the field of religion, the most radical Uzbeks of Uzbekistan itself have found refuge in this country. Moreover, it was ethnic Uzbeks, immigrants from the southern regions of Kyrgyzstan, who were most noticeable among the new adherents of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, rather than Uzbeks from Uzbekistan itself. The same is largely true for the also fairly large Tajik diaspora in Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan is also Russia's closest ally in the CSTO. The political closeness of the two countries and the bilateral growth of economic cooperation have reached an unprecedented level. Destabilization of the south of the country could also be used to remove Moscow-friendly Sadyr Japarov.
The probable direction of impact can be determined by the method of exclusion.
Uzbekistan, with its strongest army in the region and a stable socio-economic situation, is simply too tough for ISIS-Khorasan. Tajikistan, due to the already pro-Western political position of its leadership and the absence of any significant geopolitical interests of Moscow and Beijing in the country, is also an unlikely target.
Thus, the only “ideal” target remains - Kyrgyzstan, whose southern regions are of significant geopolitical importance for Beijing and Moscow.
A scenario cannot be ruled out, according to which the Tajik special services will simply provide a “corridor” for terrorists through their territory. In 1999, during the so-called After the Batken events, fighting lasted for two months in the south of Kyrgyzstan with the participation of, among other things, the armed forces of Uzbekistan against two hundred militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. According to rumors, the Tajik authorities then simply “let through” the militants, thus hoping to “annoy” Islam Karimov, with whom Emomali Rahmon had tense relations at that time.
In the south of Kyrgyzstan (Batken, Osh and Jalal-Abad regions) there are about 1 million ethnic Uzbeks, who at one time were known for their extreme opposition to Islam Karimov.
As a national minority in the region, Uzbeks regret the events of 2010, when, as a result of interethnic clashes in the city of Osh, they found themselves on the losing side. The Americans, for their part, even tried to play the genocide card. ISIS-Khorasan can also “play” on this same grievance, among other things.
Vulnerability of Kyrgyzstan
If we talk about the internal political situation in Kyrgyzstan itself, despite the outward appearance of calm and high ratings of the current head of state, in practice everything is being done to deprive Japarov of political and power levers of influence.
Not only has the obvious political opposition been largely purged from the country, but also, surprisingly, pro-presidential political parties in the Jogorku Kenesh (the country's parliament) have found themselves in the minority.
Parliament is controlled by its chairman Nurlanbek Shakiyev, who initiates the adoption of unpopular and frankly odious laws. At the same time, Shakiyev is developing his own foreign policy activity.
For example, on March 8, the Chairman of the Jogorku Kenesh visited London at the head of an official delegation, where he met with the Speaker of the House of Commons of the British Parliament, Lord Harvey Hoyle, and stated : “Strengthening comprehensive relations with Great Britain is a priority in the foreign policy of Kyrgyzstan.”
Such unpopular measures as raising tariffs, introducing new taxes, excise taxes, refusing to work with the Russian payment system MIR, etc. are also being taken by the cabinet of ministers under the leadership of Akylbek Zhaparov and Edil Baisalov (the latter is completely controlled by the British).
Thus, the actions of parliament and the government provoke social discontent, the addressee of which is the president. This prepares the ground for protests.
Another direction of discrediting Zhaparov is throwing in compromising material. For example, it was alleged that he received $3 million for his election campaign from a corrupt official.
A great many such facts and “purely random” but unpleasant political coincidences have accumulated in the Kyrgyz Republic in recent months. All this makes the first person of the state very vulnerable and can play against Kyrgyzstan in the event of external terrorist sabotage or a full-fledged invasion of militants in the south of the country.
A full-fledged territorial invasion of ISIS-Khorasan from Afghanistan, if it takes place this summer, will most likely be accompanied by terrorist attacks in all major cities of Central Asia, similar to the terrorist attack in Crocus City in the Moscow region. And in this situation, the absence of a stable central government will not allow us to effectively curb the terrorist threat.
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