By Maj Gen Jagatbir Singh, VSM (Retd)
On 22 March 2024 at least 137 people were killed, including three children, and more than 150 injured when camouflaged gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall, in Moscow’s Northern suburb of Krasnogorsk, and then set fire to the building. The attackers claimed to be members of the Islamic State’s Khorasan.
The Islamic State wrote on Telegram on 23 March that the attack was “carried out by four IS fighters armed with machine guns, a pistol, knives and firebombs,” as part of “the raging war” with “countries fighting Islam”. They repeated their claim again on Saturday. While the ‘original’ IS may have been largely defeated in the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, IS-K is proving itself to be a ‘worthy’ successor to its parent legacy.
It is the deadliest attack in Russia for almost two decades when Islamist insurgencies had marked the first decade of Putin’s rule. Terrorists had then taken more than 1,000 people, including hundreds of children, hostage in the Beslan school siege. At that time, President Putin said; “We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten”.
The Attack
Many people in hospital were in a critical condition and the Governor of Moscow region said rescuers would continue to search the site for “several days”.
Some witnesses filmed the gunmen from the upper floors as they walked through the stalls shooting people, sharing the footage on social media. “The terrorists used a flammable liquid to set fire to the concert hall’s premises, where spectators were located” the Investigative Committee said, and that people died both from gunshot wounds and smoke inhalation after a fire engulfed the 6,000-seater venue. The gunmen appear to have planned the attack carefully, setting fires by an emergency stairwell in order to herd people toward a killing zone in the middle of the lobby.
Helicopters were brought in to drop about 160 tonnes of water, but it took ten hours for the fire to be contained. Investigators said a man who jumped on one of the gunmen as he was shooting at the concert goers, “immobilising” him and thus “saving the lives of people around him” would receive an award.
Russian MP Alexander Khinshtein said the attackers fled in a white Renault car and were stopped in the Bryansk region, about 340km away from Moscow. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced 11 people had been arrested, including four “directly involved”.
Russia’s interior ministry said they were foreign nationals. Unconfirmed reports have mentioned nationals from Tajikistan, Mr Khinshtein said passports from the country had been found in the car. But it is surprising that the terrorists have been caught alive and did not commit suicide as their supporters can now be traced.
In Moscow, residents stood in long lines in the rain to donate blood for those hospitalised, and mourners came to lay flowers outside the concert hall. Memorial posters featuring a single candle replaced some advertising billboards in the capital and major events were cancelled across the country.
IS-K
ISIS-K emerged in 2014 and 2015 in Afghanistan and Pakistan, after its leaders broke away from al-Qaida and the Taliban. Its fighters declared loyalty to the even more violent and extremist Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which was gaining influence at the time, mounting attacks in Iraq and Syria.
IS–K seeks to destabilize, overthrow, and supplant existing governments in the historic Khorasan region with the goal of creating a Caliphate in South and Central Asia, governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. In January, it bombed the commemoration ceremony of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Kerman, Iran causing a high number of fatalities.
With the Moscow attack, the terrorist group seems to be expanding its geographical scope. Russia had in decades past dealt with religiously inspired militancy, including in Chechnya and Dagestan. In more recent times, Russia had intervened to turn the tide in favour of Syrian forces fighting both their political opponents and jihadists.
There were also reports that Chechens and other Russian jihadists had fought against Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the Syrian civil war. Now that the Syrian front is largely quiet, these militants, under the IS-K flag, may have decided to take their fight to Russia to avenge their defeat.
The group later released highly graphic footage from the attack. The video shows one of the gunmen opening fire on several people. The New York Times has cited Colin Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst, as saying; “ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years.” “ISIS-K accuses Moscow of having Muslim blood in its hands, referencing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria,” Mr Clarke said.
In footage on social media, one of the suspects said he was offered money to carry out the attack. “I shot people,” the suspect, his hands tied, and his hair held by an interrogator”. When asked why, he said: “For money.” The man said he had been promised half a million roubles ($5,400). One was shown answering questions through a Tajik translator.
Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has previously been reported to have recruited radicalised nationals from Central Asia, including Tajikistan. In a phone call on Sunday, Putin and the Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon, “noted that security services and relevant agencies of Russia and Tajikistan are working closely in countering terrorism, and this work will be intensified”.
Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer who has specialized in counterterrorism and Central Asia said; “The Central Asian element of ISIS has always targeted Russia,” he added. “I don’t think there is shock and surprise in Russian intelligence that there was an issue. It just simply wasn’t sufficiently high on their agenda.”
It is unclear as to why the group chose this moment to strike when Russia had intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, supporting President Bashar al-Assad against ISIS. Maybe they felt that the terrorist threat emanating from Central Asia had become a blind spot as Russia was focused on Ukraine.
A statement from the White House condemning the attack described the group as a “common terrorist enemy that must be defeated everywhere”.
President Putin’s Reaction
“I express my deep, sincere condolences to all those who lost their loved ones,” President Putin said in an address to the nation on Saturday. “The whole country and our entire people are grieving with you.”
He vowed to punish those behind the “barbaric terrorist attack”, saying four gunmen trying to flee to Ukraine had been found and detained” and in his television address said “terrorists, murderers, non-humans … have only one unenviable fate: retribution and oblivion.”
Russian television showed security services interrogating four bloodied men, who spoke Russian with an accent, on a road in the Western Bryansk region, which borders both Ukraine and Belarus “They tried to escape and were travelling towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” said President Putin.
Sunday was observed as a day of national mourning and he promised: “All the perpetrators, organisers and those who ordered this crime will be justly and inevitably punished.”
Olga Skabeyeva, a prominent state television host, claimed on Telegram that Ukrainian military intelligence had recruited assailants “who would look like ISIS. But this is no ISIS”.
President Putin did not name the Islamist terror group during his public statements on the attack, while directly accusing the “Ukrainian side” of involvement.
Kyiv has strongly denied any connection, with Ukrainian President Zelensky in his evening address on 23 March accusing Putin of trying to shift the blame onto them. “What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious,” he said. “Putin and the other scum are just trying to blame it on someone else.”
Conflicting Narratives
The US Embassy in Russia had warned on 07 March that “extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts”, advising caution. Just three days earlier, President Putin had publicly dismissed a US warning of an “imminent” attack in Moscow as propaganda designed to scare Russian citizens. Speaking to FSB Chiefs he had called it a “provocative” statement and “outright blackmail … to intimidate and destabilise our society”.
The Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov told the TASS news agency on Saturday that the US did not pass any specific information through the Russian Embassy in Washington about preparations for the attack. Nothing was passed”. “No concrete information, nothing was transferred to us.”
The US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said; “there was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever” while Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday any statement made by US authorities to vindicate Kyiv until the end of the probe into the attack should be considered as evidence.
Need To Combat Terrorism
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, disregarded the US intelligence reports that IS was behind the attacks. “I wish they could have solved the assassination of their own President Kennedy so quickly,” she wrote on Telegram. “But no, for more than 60 years they have not been able to find out who killed him after all. Or maybe that was ISIS too?”
Terrorist attacks are tragic assaults on ordinary people. Terrorists have the ability to keep metamorphosing themselves which includes their organisation and methods whereas their ideology remains. A portion of the Al Qaeda which had carried out the 9/11 attacks had become ISIS and then IS-K.
The attack comes as a reminder of the threat of terrorism posed by groups like IS-K and Al-Qaeda and the expansion of their operations. Just as it took a multinational effort to defeat the Al Qaeda and ISIS, a similar endeavour will be needed to destroy IS-K before it spreads its wings.
This will require the international community to closely coordinate with the Afghan Taliban, whom IS-K opposes. Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq need to be at the forefront of the fight against the Khorasan faction, as these countries are the most vulnerable to IS-K’s forays. The Central Asian states and Russia should also be on board to contain the threat, and neutralise it. The need is for a collective effort. Further Russia’s claims of state support for IS-K needs to be investigated after all the organisations need financial and material support.
The Arab countries condemned the attack and declared their solidarity with Russia. Saudi Arabia emphasised “the importance of fighting and countering all forms of extremism and terrorism.”
In a post on X, the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated, “Spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Conveyed our deepest condolences on the loss of lives in the horrific terrorist attack in Moscow”. He reaffirmed India’s resolution to continue fighting terrorism in all its manifestations.
Conclusion
Terrorism remains one of the most serious threats to global peace and security, and requires a unified and resolute response from all nations.
Confronting a terrorist attack of this magnitude naturally reflects the hybrid nature of the ongoing war. The twist being that the terrorists were not from Ukraine but from the ISIS a fact which is not being acknowledged by Russia. However, the full consequences of the attack are hard to access.
Israel when confronted by a similar attack about six months ago have resorted with overwhelming force in a bid to eliminate the Hamas it is now to be seen how President Putin responds. However, the shape of the response will take remains unclear till the precise motive and origin are established.
A mass information campaign followed by forceful demonstrative actions can be expected. If the responsibility of ISIS is accepted by Russia it may respond by cracking down on Russia’s Muslim minority communities in the North Caucasus region and beyond.
Terrorists are utterly indiscriminate in what they do and are prepared to kill in the most horrific way. The world must thus be vigilant and unite while eliminating terrorism in all forms. The attack is a deplorable act that must be unequivocally condemned by all nations and individuals who value peace and security.
The author is an Indian Army Veteran.
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