Russian news reports identified four detained suspects as citizens of Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan and where many people also hold Russian citizenship, the Associated Press reported. In interrogation videos circulated online – some of which appear to show the suspects being tortured, with one appearing to have his ear cut off – at least one of the men speaks Tajik. One of the men appeared in court with a badly swollen face (above); another had a bandaged ear.
In this piece published last night, Jason Burke notes recent western intelligence observing a major Islamic State recruitment drive in Tajikistan and other central Asian countries last year. A report put out last week by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy tracking Islamic State activity noted that operatives from Tajikistan “have become key nodes in [ISKP’s] terrorist nexus” and were involved in six of 21 reported plots and attacks over the last year.
Who are ISKP?
Khorasan refers to a region covering parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. In this piece examining claims of ISKP’s responsibility and the group’s motives and modus operandi, Jason Burke explains that the term is used “by some local Islamic rulers and so explicitly rejects modern national frontiers while evoking what its members consider the lost glory and power of Muslim empires”.
ISKP was formed in 2015, and drew Taliban fighters and other militants in Pakistan attracted by Islamic State’s resources and extremist methods. The group was initially focused on local targets but has recently carried out attacks beyond Afghanistan, with US intelligence suggesting that it was responsible for a double bombing in Iran in January that killed almost 100 people.
ISKP has targeted Russia and Russian interests repeatedly in recent years, including in a suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul. Russia is viewed by ISKP and Islamic State more widely as “a crusading power against Muslims”, Kabir Taneja from the independent global thinktank the Observer Research Foundation told Al Jazeera.
That is partly because of a view that Muslims in Russia are oppressed by the government and the history of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the brutal wars against separatists in the Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s. Another factor is Vladimir Putin’s intervention in the Syrian civil war in 2015, when Russian military support helped Bashar al-Assad secure victory over the anti-government opposition and Islamic State.
What is Russia saying?
Russian state media has made almost no reference to Islamic State’s claims of responsibility; nor have they been mentioned by Putin. Instead, there has been a focus on claims that Ukraine was either responsible or ready to harbour the perpetrators.
Meduza, an independent Russian-language site based in Latvia, reported state media employees saying that there had been an order to emphasise “traces” of Ukrainian involvement. Putin himself stopped short of directly accusing Kyiv, but said that the suspects were arrested in the western Bryansk region “where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the border”.
There is no publicly available evidence for these claims, and they have been strongly denied by Kyiv and dismissed by the US. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said “Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with” the attacks. Ukraine also claimed on Friday that the attack was “a planned and deliberate provocation by Russian special services at the behest of Putin” as “another pretext for increasing aggression”. There is no evidence for that claim either, but independent analysts have noted that Moscow is already using the attack as a tool for bolstering its case for war.
Was the attack a security failure?
On 7 March, the US issued a public warning to its citizens in Russia that said “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow”, including concerts. That warning was also shared with Russian authorities, the US said.
On Saturday, CNN reported sources saying the US was acting on a “a steady stream of intelligence” since November “that ISIS-K … was determined to attack Russia”. But Putin dismissed the warning as “provocative” and said that “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilise our society”.
In this analysis piece, Shaun Walker, Pjotr Sauer and Andrew Roth set out signs of “a catastrophic security failure on the part of Russian authorities”. They note a slow police response to the attack and claims that the FSB, the federal security service, has been largely focused on domestic opposition and potential threats from Kyiv, with thousands of security officials sent to occupied Ukraine. Another factor they cite is a view that the threat from Islamist terrorism had subsided in recent years.
It is unlikely that these concerns will be aired in Russia in the coming days. Andrei Soldatov, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, argues in this piece that this is part of a deeply ingrained culture, instigated by Putin, of protecting the security agencies at all costs and ensuring the FSB is “completely immune to any criticism”.
The FSB is expert at “killing and torture” and “investigating attacks after the event”, he writes. “But these are not the qualities that help to prevent attacks happening, and time and again, the FSB has failed.”
