Coming full circle?
In 2001 Afghanistan was allowed to be a haven for Al-Qai’da to plan its attacks against America. It is now a haven for ISIS-K to do similar
In 1999, a terror attack struck apartment buildings in Russia, killing hundreds of innocent civilians as they slept in their beds. The Russian state blamed Chechens and Russia’s new Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed his determination to take the fight to the breakaway republic in the Caucasus. His firm leadership gave him a boost that saw him elected president the following year. This was not the only terror incident in Putin’s early years: in 2002 a crowded Moscow theatre was surrounded and those inside, again apparently by Chechen militants. The siege was broken by a disastrous Russian special forces operation in which fentanyl was pumped into the theatre, killing many of the hostages.
In both cases, the FSB bore a significant responsibility for the terror. In 1999, the bombings were planned and executed by the FSB in order to create a casus belli for Putin. This is not the place to lay out the full details of the FSB’s plot which has been exhaustively investigated in books by David Satter and John Dunlop, among others. But suffice to say, even a cursory study of the details throws up some inexplicable elements to the story. The hexogen used in the explosives was made in an FSB-guarded lab. One of the bombings was announced by a pro-Putin politician three days before it actually occurred. An attempted bombing in Ryazan turned out to have been organised by the FSB, and then it was claimed that the whole thing had been a training exercise. People who tried to investigate the bombings were killed by the Kremlin, picked off one after the other over the years.
The 2002 incident is more complicated. According to the brilliant book Putin’s People by Catherine Belton, the FSB set out to stage a hostage situation in a Moscow theatre which would then be resolved, giving Putin a boost. But the president lost his nerve when one of the Chechen terrorists shot dead a civilian, leading to the chaotic and costly operation involving fentanyl. In support of this theory is the fact that the subsequent investigation demonstrated that bombs that the Chechens had with them in the theatre turned out to be blanks. In addition, several of the supposed Chechen terrorists involved appeared to have a link either to the FSB or to have recently been arrested and then inexplicably released just before the operation began.
So, when terrorist attacks occur in Russia it’s not unreasonable to react to the Kremlin line with a measure of scepticism. Right now, it’s not entirely clear what the Kremlin line actually is in response to the massacre at the Crocus theatre. Putin seems to be saying that it was the work of “radical Islamists” , somehow in collaboration with Ukraine, whilst also darkly suggesting that “who ordered it” and “who benefits” was still a matter for investigation. Other figures in Putin’s regime have gone further, with the head of the FSB Alexander Bortnikov directly alleging that the assault was “facilitated by Western special services.” There is of course no evidence of this, although there is evidence that the US warned Russia about possible terror attacks only a few weeks ago.
In spite of attempts by the Russian authorities to spread disinformation, a certain amount of detail has emerged. It seems reasonably clear that the perpetrators were part of ISIS-K, the branch of the terror movement that operates out of Afghanistan and has mostly central Asians as its operatives. The four gunmen arrested at the theatre, who have been paraded, post-torture, in front of the media, are from Tajikistan. Although they are both radical Islamist groups, ISIS-K has been in a bitter conflict with most of the Taliban since that movement’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. In December 2023, the Taliban reported that many of ISIS-K’s members were from Tajikistan.
It’s still not clear to what extent this attack was planned and directed from Afghanistan, but that may not be very important. What is important is that a terror movement called ISIS-Khorasan, whose leadership is based in Afghanistan, is expanding its reach and ambition. On 3 January ISIS-K carried out huge bombings in Iran, killing 100 people at a Shi’a pilgrimage site. I wrote at the time about the rationale for ISIS to attack Iran, much of which goes back to an anti-Shi’a Muslim outlook at the core of ISIS ideology. Another element could be the role Iran played in supporting the Syrian government of Bashar Al-Assad against ISIS. In this context, it’s not difficult to imagine a rationale for ISIS to want to attack Russia.
ISIS has also tried to carry out attacks in Germany and Sweden and was responsible for the suicide bombing that targeted US Marines and Afghan civilians at Kabul airport in August 2021. Put simply, ISIS is against almost everyone: the Taliban (which it, improbably, regards as western stooges), Russia, Iran, China, Europeans and Americans. In 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the USA, Russia and Iran all worked closely together against the very real threat of Al-Qa’ida. With weeks of the attacks, Al-Qa’ida no longer had a safe haven in Afghanistan (this was achieved before the end of 2001). In the following 19 years of NATO operations in Afghanistan, the coalition struggled to define its objectives and rationale beyond the initial counter-terrorism mission: was it in Afghanistan to combat the opium trade, to build up democratic institutions or to make Afghanistan a better place for women? But in that period, Afghanistan was not a launching point for terror attacks against the west. Whilst it would be hard to describe the intervention as a success, it at least achieved that.
Now that western forces have left Afghanistan, ISIS-K have been able to establish a stronger foothold, in spite of the Taliban’s opposition. We have almost come full circle to a situation where ungoverned spaces in a large and geographically important territory such as Afghanistan can be exploited by terror groups all over the world. This is not a call for a renewed intervention in Afghanistan, although it is the case that leaving a small special forces and intelligence presence would probably have mitigated this risk significantly. But it is interesting to note that, where Russia was willing to work with the West back in 2001 against the common threat of terrorism, it is now trying to blame the West.