Afghan IS branch top suspect in Moscow attack
The Islamic State group (IS) has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 100 people — terrorism experts say its Afghan branch is likely responsible.
Since the fundamentalist Taleban took over Kabul, the ISKP — the Afghan branch of IS — has managed to poach members from its rival movement and has repeatedly shown off its will and capability to strike outside Afghanistan’s borders. An August 2021 blast claimed by the group killed 100 civilians and 13 American soldiers at Kabul airport — just as the United States was withdrawing from the Afghan capital and the Taliban laid their hands on power.
It was the deadliest-ever attack by IS against the US. Washington offered a $10 million reward for information on ISKP’s leader Sanaullah Ghafari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajir. Born in 1994, he is “responsible for approving all ISIS-K operations throughout Afghanistan and arranging funding to conduct operations,” according to the US State Department, which uses an alternative acronym for the ISKP.
The US foreign ministry placed Ghafari on its foreign terrorist blacklist in November 2021. Afghanistan’s IS branch was built by the group’s envoys arriving from Iraq and Syria — unlike almost everywhere else in the world, where pre-existing outfits pledged to its cause, said Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) research outfit and a former UN terrorism expert. “They have very close connections to the centre, much more than the other affiliates,” Schindler told AFP, adding that this gives them access to ample funding.
Lucas Webber, co-founder of specialist website Militant Wire, highlighted that the “ISKP has emerged as the most internationally minded IS branch... producing propaganda in more languages than any other branch since the height of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria.” It has been mounting an “ambitious and aggressive campaign to bolster its external operations capabilities and strike its various enemies abroad,” he added. — AFP