With the re-emergence of a multipolar world order and the intensification of great power competition, Western countries have largely deprioritized the global war on terrorism with the hope that jihadist threats would fade away following the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. As Russia has reasserted itself and China rises as a major player on the global economic and military stage, the heightening tensions between the United States and these competitors are becoming a focus for the Islamic State (IS). Though many deemed the organization “defeated” after the 2019 collapse of the last vestiges of the territorial “caliphate” in Syria, IS is again reinvigorated and projecting power beyond past theaters of conflict as a comparatively more globally interconnected and complex force in its external operations. It is also guiding and inspiring attacks against Western and Eastern powers alike.1 In this way, it can also be said that the Islamic State itself is becoming more decentralized, with recent attacks involving international operatives from Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.2
The Afghanistan- and Pakistan-based Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP) has risen as the most active IS branch carrying out current external operations and is unrivaled in the international scope of its online propaganda and multilingual production. ISKP began the year by conducting dual suicide bombings in Kerman, Iran on January 3, 2024, causing close to 400 casualties, and a January 28 shooting at a Roman Catholic Church in Istanbul, Turkey, that left one man dead and another injured. Relentless in its pursuit of high-profile and public targets, multiple ISKP-linked plots have been identified and prevented in Europe in recent months.
Likewise, in September 2024, Costa Rican officials reported picking up a man of Tajik origin in the country’s northern region for his alleged ties to the Islamic State, though no accusations have emerged of a specific plot being underway to date.3 In terms of international plots and attacks, jihadism expert Aaron Zelin found ISKP to be involved in 12 such plots in 2023 and 22 so far in 2024. He notes the related countries include the United States, Austria, Belgium, India, Iran, Italy, France, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Turkey.4 This broad targeting ambition demonstrates how ISKP has emerged as a major player in the worldwide jihadist movement. It is unique in its military and—much more notably—propaganda focus on three of the world’s so-called “great powers”: Russia, China, and the United States.
Many of ISKP’s goals laid out in its propaganda are aspirational and unrealistic given the group’s present capabilities. However, there is a pattern of ISKP attempting to deliver on its rhetorical and propaganda promises with violent action. To achieve this, it must contend with the security realities of the three major states, as well as planning according to their respective geographies. China’s long but hardened border with Afghanistan makes it an attractive but difficult-to-reach target. Potential domestic recruits, radicalized Uyghurs living inside Xinjiang, face crackdowns from Beijing, making internal targeting similarly difficult. Instead, Chinese workers, businesspeople, teachers, diplomats, and tourists within Afghanistan have been the target of ISKP violence. Unlike Russia and the United States, China does not hold the same historical baggage of military interventionism in Afghanistan or Iraq and Syria, making it a sometimes less important military target than the other two great power alternatives. However, the state’s treatment of the Uyghurs and expanding security footprint throughout Muslim societies in Asia and Africa have led to ISKP designating Chinese diplomatic and economic efforts as a propaganda priority.
ISKP has also attacked Russian interests within Afghanistan, including in a bomb blast at the country’s Kabul embassy in September 2022 which killed six, two of whom were embassy staff.5 Russia’s border has proven comparably more permeable to ISKP operations than China’s. ISKP members were reportedly responsible for the mass-casualty Crocus City Hall attack outside Moscow in March 2024, during which four militants killed nearly 150 people. Both before and after the Crocus operation, Moscow’s relationship with the Taliban, treatment of its domestic Muslim population, and military interventions against the Islamic State in Syria and in the Sahel had made it a major target in the eyes of ISKP. Like Beijing, Moscow has cautiously strengthened its relationship with the Taliban, drawing the continual ire of ISKP propagandists. Given that the Islamic State has been targeting Russia since the 2010s, there is no indication that this posture will change.
The United States, which has been a central focus of the Islamic State and ISKP propaganda since their respective formations, enjoys the protection of two large oceanic buffers that have thus far shielded the country from the same level of IS directed violence. Inside Afghanistan, ISKP was a frequent target of the U.S.-led coalition forces, and the group claimed the suicide attack against Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate that killed roughly 180 people, including 13 U.S. service members, in August 2021.6 Since that time, ISKP has made even more frequent threats against the United States in its propaganda in an effort to direct and encourage attacks there. This was further illustrated in early October 2024, when authorities arrested an Afghan plotting an election day terror attack, marking the eighth ISKP-related plot uncovered in the US since 2016.7 Given its aggressively expressed intent to strike abroad and its history of doing so, no state should be too dismissive of ISKP’s international ambitions.
Origins, History, and ISKP’s Internationalization
When the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, countless Afghan citizens and foreigners gathered and fled through Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in an attempt to escape from the incoming Taliban regime.8 On August 26, 2021, an explosion tore through the airport, killing 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. military personnel. The attack was carried out by a lone ISKP bomber, Abdul Rahman al-Logari, who was later identified as one of the thousands of ISKP members released by the Taliban from a pair of detention centers in 2021.9
Following the withdrawal of the U.S. military and supporting international coalition and the toppling of the Afghan government, ISKP’s enemy set was simplified. The Taliban became ISKP’s primary focus in Afghanistan, where the group is principally active. The branch has continuously focused on criticizing the Taliban’s foreign relations and quest for international recognition, as well as the level of outside investment and humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. Its propaganda rails against the Taliban regime’s engagement in international politics and the broader global community. “The Taliban have already been integrated with the global system of the infidel nations, and the moment of their international recognition is just a matter of time,” ISKP’s Al Azaim Foundation wrote in a November 2022 issue of Voice of Khurasan, ISKP’s flagship English-language magazine. The editorial further claimed that the government in Kabul was working with a “system that demands subjugation to the international laws of kufr and blasphemy.”10 Additionally, ISKP’s territorial presence covers areas of Pakistan where it employs similar rhetoric against Islamabad for its domestic policies and dealings with countries viewed as enemies of Islam such as the United States, China, and Russia.
ISKP is transnational in nature, increasingly so since the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan. ISKP traces its origins to individual defectors from several Islamist militant groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region that had banded together in 2014 and pledged loyalty to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Some of these groups included militants from other organizations such as al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.11 The following year, the new IS faction declared its intent to take the name of the Khurasan Province, which refers to a geographic area covering Central Asia, a majority of India, and parts of Iran.12 In this spirit, ISKP has been a transnational organization since its formation, conducting operations in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, while also subsuming Central Asian militant elements such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan into its fold.13 By 2016, ISKP had established a foothold in four districts of Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar.14 This has given the organization a historically diverse and indeed somewhat contradictory set of enemies, including the U.S.-led international coalition, the Pakistani state, the since-deposed Afghan Republic government, and, more recently, Taliban forces. Membership is now international—with members from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, and other countries15—and responsible for successful attacks against Iran, Russia, and multiple plots foiled in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and elsewhere.16 This outreach has been accomplished largely due to ISKP’s dedication to multilingual propaganda efforts on social media environment.
ISKP now produces propaganda in more languages than any other IS branch. Through declarations within its media output, ISKP consistently broadcasts which countries are in its sights before it attempts to carry out or inspire operations. While it views the governments of the world’s major powers as often cooperating or working towards similar secular goals and suppressing ISKP’s supposedly Islamic movement, its writings show how the terrorist organization is adapting to the dynamics of multipolarity, thereby posing significant challenges to international security. Such nuance also exemplifies the complexity of the ISKP media ecosystem, which is made up of a variety of different publications spanning official, unofficial, and supportive outlets which provide a range of products such as newsletters, magazines, and graphic design. Each of these outlets engages with Islamic State and ISKP membership and messaging to various degrees, similar to the distinction during the Caliphate between Islamic State membership (muba`yain) and civilian supporters who had not pledged membership (munasirin).17 Using its sprawling propaganda apparatus, ISKP releases analyses of the tensions between the U.S.-European bloc and China and Russia, aiming to exploit and exacerbate current and future conflicts between these states for ISKP’s benefit.
ISKP Sees Opportunity in Multipolarity and Great Power Conflict
ISKP is savvy in its understanding of this new era of great power competition and sees an opportunity to exploit the evolving multipolar order to exploit security gaps and a lack of focus on terrorism. In doing so, it hopes to stoke tensions between its enemies, fuel chaos, and inflict damage upon its strongest state adversaries. ISKP criticizes the Taliban and Pakistan’s foreign relations but also develops standalone lines of attack against each of the great powers and is increasingly focused on the rising tensions between the Unted States, China, and Russia.
In the August 2024 issue of the English-language edition of its Voice of Khurasan magazine, ISKP addresses these concerns directly, particularly concerning rising tensions in the Middle East. Noting that Iran has become an “actor in the new multi-polar world that Russia, China, and other allies want to create against the U.S.”18 the author laments the possibility that Jordan, the U.A.E., Israel, and Saudi Arabia will fight for American interests in the Middle East.19 Using the war in Gaza as a stage for greater conflict, ISKP’s analysis surmises that while Tehran seeks to recreate the Persian empire, Jerusalem aims to craft a “Greater Israel” from which they will “rule the whole world,” while the U.S. seeks to occupy its enemies to retain the title of global hegemon.20
In this article, titled “Sufyani’s Army is Gathering,” the propagandist writes:
The real agenda of the U.S. on Gaza is to draw Iran into a war in the Middle East as much as possible before going to war with China, to eliminate it if they can with the Jewish ‘state’ and other allies in Europe […] and if they cannot, to cut off its hands and feet so that it cannot help China and Russia. […] The biggest reason for this is that the U.S. has persistently energized the Jewish ‘state’ against Iran, patting it on the back and pointing to Iran as the main culprit of what is happening in Gaza.
ISKP will continually aim to exploit geopolitical tensions between the great powers as they carry out attacks. The organization remains acutely aware of the broader global context, interpreting and commenting on geopolitical developments in its propaganda through the lens of its peculiar worldview and interests. ISKP propaganda acknowledges the divides among the group’s enemies, pragmatically dividing Russia and the United States into the heads of “crusader East” and “crusader West,” respectively. Any government that chooses to exist as part of the international political system is seen as corrupt by the Islamic State, and even Sunni-led states that theoretically should be more in line with the Islamic State’s religious inclinations are accused of apostasy. Other nations, such as Shia Iran and any of its various proxies, are all considered to be parts of a large global effort that prevents the formation of the global caliphate. Tehran is thus a top enemy as well and is viewed as the power center and driver of an ambitious Shia expansionist project.
In some cases, ISKP propaganda messaging has presaged successful attacks or attempted plots carried out by ISKP affiliates. However, it is important to note that, although ISKP has a history of telegraphing its moves, many of its threats do not result in direct action. Such is the case of the 2024 European Cup in Germany: while ISKP propaganda made direct threats against individual stadiums, no known plots were intercepted by German or European authorities. Only one individual who had applied to work as steward and security staff at events related to the games was arrested in June 2024 for allegedly donating cryptocurrency to ISKP.21
ISKP versus the United States
There is little doubt that ISKP regards the United States as a dangerous and central enemy. A large amount of propaganda material is dedicated to inspiring and promoting attacks within the United States and against its interests abroad. A poster released by Al Azaim Media in September 2024 telegraphs this intent through the depiction of a militant gripping a grenade: In the distance, the White House sits with crosshairs trained on the building, and the words “You are next” splashed across the cover. ISKP resents the United States for being a lead actor in global efforts to combat IS, as being a top supporter of Israel and various (ostensibly apostate) Arab states, and for its history of intervention in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
As far back as 2016, ISKP and its supporters sought to attack the United States at home. Charges were unsealed the following year against four individuals who plotted to carry out shootings and bombings in heavily populated areas of New York City, namely Times Square and the subway system. One of the suspects stated that the operation was approved and sanctioned by ISKP directly.22
Even before the attack against U.S. military personnel and Afghans at Kabul airport's Abbey Gate in August 2021, the United States had remained a competitor on par with the Taliban as the chief focus of ISKP’s vitriol and attacks. ISKP was at war with the U.S.-led coalition force in Afghanistan and the Taliban for years before and during the latter’s ascendency to power in 2021. Despite this focus on the United States, the bulk of ISKP’s actions after its formation in 2014 were initially aimed against Afghanistan’s Shia community, the Taliban, and the Afghan National Army (ANA), the since-deposed Afghan Republic forces being seen as an extension of American power. The focus on these weaker targets was likely due to the organization’s need to continuously carry out attacks that would garner international attention and maintain its relevance as a fighting force among the broader Islamic State milieu yet would be easier to accomplish compared to attacking U.S. forces. It was also during this same period that the remaining U.S. and NATO forces began to conduct operations against ISKP.23
U.S. forces have consistently hounded ISKP leadership, including killing its third most senior leader, Shahidullah Shahid, in a drone strike in 2015;24 dropping an 11-ton Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb on an ISKP base in Nangarhar in 2017; and conducting a campaign of intense bombing operations in the Nangarhar and Kunar regions in 2019. These operations, among others, took a severe toll on ISKP’s ranks and operational capacity inside Afghanistan, resulting in the loss of many in the organization’s upper- and middle-tier leadership. The propaganda response from ISKP lends some insights into how this period impacted the group.
ISKP’s media outlet, Al-Azaim Foundation, wrote in a 2022 issue of the Voice of Khurasan about the losses it incurred in this period, including from the MOAB strike on its cave complex. In an article, ISKP admitted that the strike had been a major blow but claimed that the group had moved beyond this setback. Part of this success is rooted in the organization's ability to adapt to changing internal and external environments. While the U.S. aerial bombardment continued to punish ISKP in its stronghold, counter-terrorism operations on the ground were increasingly conducted form the late 2010s onwards by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the then-Afghan government’s main intelligence arm, as U.S. and NATO forces began pulling back. While NATO strikes were successful in eliminating leadership figures and senior members of the branch ub 2016 and 2017—such as Hafiz Saeed Khan, Abdul Rauf Khadim, Sheikh Abdul Haseeb Logari, Saad Emarati, Abu Saeed Bajauri, Abu Saad Erhabi, Sheikh Jalaluddin, and Qari Hekmat25—ISKP used these deaths as fodder for its propaganda. Particularly notable is the death of ISKP leader Abu Omar Khorasani (Zia ul Haq), who was captured by Afghan government forces in 202026 and executed by the Taliban after the latter retook power in 2021.27
ISKP propaganda casts the entire West as “led by the United States” in covert war against Islam. Beyond the battlefield, ISKP has written in Voice of Khurasan that the United States is running “multi-billion-dollar projects” to spread “propaganda and fear among the Muslim masses.”28 The group has also accused the country of “relentlessly bombard[ing] at us various manifested forms of fitnah [discord] that manage to convince the ordinary folks to believe that mujahidin are dreaded terrorists.”29
Despite the protracted war fought by the U.S.-led coalition against the Taliban, ISKP tells its supporters that the U.S. government installed the Taliban in power for “their own kufri interests” (referring to kufr, i.e., unbelievers). ISKP has even alleged that the U.S. government is paying the salaries of the Taliban regime.30 These claims fit within a broader pattern of ISKP painting much of its opposition as working directly for or in the interests of the United States. The history of U.S.-led and -supported counterinsurgency operations against ISKP has helped make the United States a fixation of the group. ISKP has made its intent to attack the United States abundantly clear in its propaganda.
While there have not been allegations of a specific plot by ISKP in recent years, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested eight Tajik nationals with ties to ISKP in June 2024. (ISKP has had particular success recruiting radicalized Tajiks into its ranks.31) The accused were arrested in New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia for separately entering the country illegally through the southern border.32 Prior to that, August 2023, U.S. officials reported halting a network that had been smuggling individuals into the country from Uzbekistan, with at least one individual in the smuggling ring having ties to an unnamed foreign terrorist group. (No allegations were made against the migrants themselves, and the FBI maintained that it had not found a specific terrorist threat from that ring.33) Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security identified an IS-affiliated smuggling ring in June 2024 that was alleged to have brought over 400 people from Central Asia to the United States.34 An unnamed official in the Biden administration told NBC News at the time that the ring had a “potential tie to ISIS,” and though they did not specifically mention ISKP, the geographic area the smugglers drew from is one of ISKP’s most fertile recruitment grounds.35 Authorities were reportedly seeking to arrest as many of the immigrants who came through this route out of an “abundance of caution,” but stressed that there was no evidence of a specific plot at this time.36
ISKP versus China
Though comparably less involved in direct military confrontations with IS, China has been a target of the organization and its Afghanistan-Pakistan branch since the group’s founding in 2014. During the initial declaration of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014, he spoke of the “torture and degradation” of Muslims living in “East Turkestan,” accusing China of violating the “most basic rights” of members of the Ummah (global Muslim community) in its borders.37 East Turkestan refers to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the control of the Chinese state. Considered to be the homeland of the Uyghur Muslims, China’s security policies and treatment of the indigenous population have been a major point of Islamic State and ISKP propaganda.
ISKP in particular is one of the most bellicose and active anti-Chinese outfits among the IS provinces. In its propaganda, ISKP describes Chinas as one of the worst countries in the world in terms of its domestic oppression and “massacres” against Muslims—ahead of even India’s actions in Kashmir—while adding that China is also competing “to strengthen its grip on this land.”38 While many jihadist organizations use the Chinese policy against the Uyghur Muslims as fodder for propaganda—China is viewed as an imperial power by most jihadists, sometimes drawing comparisons to the British East India Company39—ISKP is active in targeting Chinese interests, property, and nationals inside Afghanistan and encouraging attacks within China’s borders (although it has been less successful in this latter effort).
IS Central threatened China in a video released in 2017 in which ethnic Uyghur militants threatened to “shed blood like rivers.”40 ISKP has also sought to challenge and disrupt China’s economic and political expansion in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In 2019, the Islamic State’s official newsletter, Al-Naba, accused Beijing of using BRI investment to “strengthen its ties with tyrannical governments.”41
China took an interest in Afghanistan’s mineral wealth years ago. In 2007, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation won a $3 billion bid to begin mining copper from Mes Aynak in Afghanistan’s Logar province, which is the second largest deposit in the world.42 Since then, China has poured more into its economic cooperation and ties with the country, including increased diplomatic contact.43
Despite allowing Uyghur militants to operate inside Afghanistan during the 1990s, the Taliban removed members of the Turkestan Islamic Party, a Uyghur militant group, from its 76-kilometer border with Afghanistan in October 2021 as an attempt to appease China.44 Beijing has demanded that the Taliban hand those fighters over to Chinese authorities. This point of tension has not prevented ISKP from using growing relations between the two governments as propaganda fodder, however, wielding the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of Xinjiang Muslims as a cudgel against the Taliban.
ISKP wrote in an issue of Voice of Khurasan that, “[the] red atheists’ […] hands are soaked with the blood of innocent Uyghur Muslims.”45 ISKP has also utilized Uyghur fighters for attacks: In October 2021, a suicide bomber detonated his vest in the Gozar-e-Sayed Abad Mosque in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing and injuring over 100 people. ISKP identified the Uyghur bomber as “Muhammad al-Uyguri.”46 Prior to that, in May 2017, a local Islamic State affiliate kidnapped and executed two Chinese nationals in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Shortly after, the pro-IS Al-Battar Media Foundation, now partnered with ISKP’s Al-Azaim, announced that it had declared war on China and would threaten Beijing’s “New Silk Road” project in support of Uyghur Muslims.47 Releases from Khalid Media, an ISKP-aligned media outlet, have likewise juxtaposed footage of Taliban officials shaking hands with Chinese officials alongside images of the detainment and abuse of Uyghurs by Chinese security forces in Xinjiang. Chinese nationals, interests, and diplomatic officials are all named as targets for “killing and capture […] seizure and sabotage” by the Islamic State.
While Islamic State’s Hind Province (ISHP) and Pakistan Province (ISPP) have made statements condemning China over the issue of the Uyghurs, ISKP has claimed several direct attacks against Chinese interests. On December 12, 2022, ISKP militants assaulted a hotel in Kabul, targeting Taliban and Chinese officials who were meeting there. The attack injured five Chinese nationals alongside 18 other victims while three attackers were reportedly killed by Taliban security forces.48 One month later, on January 11, 2023, a suicide bomber detonated his vest outside of the Taliban’s foreign ministry building in an attempt to target a Chinese delegation that was visiting at the time.49 IS’s al-Naba newsletter reported of the incident: “About 30 Chinese communists and their apostate guards were killed and wounded in a double attack on a Chinese hotel.”50 More accurate news sources reported three deaths and 18 injuries in the hotel assault.51
ISKP has also used the issue of Xinjiang independence to bring Uyghur fighters into its ranks, producing propaganda content aimed at Muslims in Xinjiang.52 ISKP’s Uzbek media wing released a document in September 2022 detailing the benefits of targeting Chinese pipelines in Central Asia, highlighting their geostrategic importance to Beijing given China’s fear that the United States could block maritime chokepoints in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Malacca in the event of a future war.53 In February 2023, ISKP dedicated a 117-page book, titled Supporting the Muslims of East Turkestan, to China and its treatment of the Uyghurs. In the book, ISKP asserts that the “Chinese will continue to shed the blood of Uyghur Muslims,” and adds an ISKP-specific interpretation of the region’s history and the resource interests of China and Russia.54 ISKP claims China will bring “war with soldiers, aircraft, missiles” to Xinjiang,55 ISKP further accuses China of plundering Muslim resources and exploiting political tensions: “Just as China has subjected millions of Muslims to intellectual warfare and oppression inside China, in the same way, outside of its rule, they have been striving day and night in their enmity towards Islam and Muslims, through trying to control the geopolitical situations in the countries of the Muslims.”56
The connections between China and ISKP’s other perceived enemies are also emphasized significantly in propaganda. In the July 2024 issue of Voice of Khurasan, ISKP’s propagandists made note of several security conferences held between Chinese and other nations’ officials, reportedly to discuss IS presence in the region, emphasizing the attendance of a Taliban official at these conferences.57 In the same issue, ISKP also highlighted a separate meeting of “the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)” to address “[their] fear of Khurasan Wilayah.” ISKP wrote that, “Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, China, Russia, and India joined and emphasized that the Taliban militia should stop the Islamic State fighters, to prevent the threat and protect the security of the SCO member states.”58
Beijing’s associations with nations such as Iran, Syria, and Russia have also been the focus of the Islamic State’s propaganda. In April 2023, ISKP released a 21-minute-long video criticizing Islamabad, spending considerable time highlighting Beijing’s growing influence and footprint in the country through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and threatening to attack related projects. ISKP criticizes Pakistan’s “ever-increasing ties with China” and its alleged subjugation to Beijing through CPEC.59 The narrator asserts that China engages in so-called debt trap diplomacy to increase its leverage over foreign governments via the BRI. CPEC, ISKP claims, is a way for the “Chinese Atheists” to control Muslim populations “under the pretext of development projects” and might perhaps lead to the annexation of Pakistani territory.60
ISKP versus Russia
The Islamic State designated Russia as one of its top enemies early on. In Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s significant “Message to the Mujahidin and the Muslim Ummah in the Month of Ramadan” speech in July 2014, he described the world as divided into “two camps”—the “Muslims and the mujahidin” on the one hand, and the “Jews, the crusaders, [and] their allies […] led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the Jews,” on the other.61 Russia’s status as a priority target was elevated after its military intervention in support of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in 2015. Since then, Russia’s increasingly close relations with Iran, the work of Russian private military companies (PMCs) such as Wagner Group across Africa, and other aspects of Russian foreign policy have all made Moscow a target in the eyes of IS and especially ISKP. When criticizing the Taliban’s increased dealings with Moscow, ISKP reminds its audience of Russia’s legacy of interventions in Muslim countries, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its wars in Chechnya.62
ISKP became increasingly vocal in criticizing and threatening Russia following the Taliban takeover in August 2021, taking the opportunity to attack Russia’s embassy in Kabul just over a year later.63 The group has since started a Russian-language arm of Al-Azaim and has heavily emphasized Russia’s historical and contemporary influence in Central Asia. Just before the suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in September 2022, ISKP asserted that the “groundwork is being laid for a world war” between the United States and its allies against Russia in Ukraine and against China over Taiwan, simultaneously urging supporters to “cast fear into the hearts of the sons of Putin and Russia, kill them with cars and knives.”64
The group has viewed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a positive development that would bring mutual harm between two of its most powerful enemies. In an August 2022 Voice of Khurasan article titled “The Black Hole in Ukraine,” ISKP voiced that, “This time the victims were not the Muslims of Chechnya, nor Afghanistan nor Syria; the war was to be fought on the ‘peaceful lands of Europe’—as the kufar try to make the world realize. It’s a Crusaders vs Crusaders war; Crusaders invading Crusaders; Crusaders massacring Crusaders; Crusaders desecrating the sanctity of people of the cross.”65
In March 2024, Russian authorities thwarted a plot in which authorities found “[f]irearms, ammunition, as well as components for creating improvised explosive devices,” according to the state-run TASS news outlet.66 Two suspects were killed in the counterterrorism raid and were reported to have connections to ISKP. Reports from Turkish authorities subsequently alleged that an ISKP plan to attack a Moscow shopping mall in June 2024 had been halted after law enforcement officials investigating the ISKP attack against an Istanbul church uncovered the plot. Reports say that Ankara’s intelligence agency informed the Kremlin, which was able to intervene.67 That same month, Russian authorities arrested three individuals from a “Central Asian country” for an alleged plot to carry out an explosive attack in the Stavropol region.
Yet, it was ISKP’s role in the infamous attack on Crocus City Hall outside Moscow on March 22, 2024, that brought the Islamic State’s animosity towards Russia to the fore. The attack left at least 143 people dead as 4 militants armed with incendiary devices and firearms stormed the concert venue.68 The tragic night at the concert was the deadliest act of terrorism in Russia in over a decade, and both official and unofficial IS and ISKP media outlets hailed the attack as a victory against the head of “Crusaders East.”69
When footage of the suspects’ arrests began to be released in the days following the Crocus attack—including a video of one suspect allegedly being forced to eat his severed ear—the Al-Azaim Foundation released a poster titled a “Threat to All Brutal Russians, Including Putin,” which warned the country to “stop abusing and torturing” ISKP captives.70 Similarly, in the issue of Voice of Khurasan that followed the Crocus attack, ISKP listed Russia as one of the top three “barbaric” powers, alongside the United States and Iran, accused of leading international coalitions against the Islamic State. In the subsequent April edition of the Voice of Khurasan magazine, the authors mocked Russia, even titling the issue “The Bear Bewildered” in reference to the animal often used to symbolize Russia. Infographics released in English by the pro-IS Halummu translation service detailed the death toll and provided more information about the “Invasion of Moscow,” including a breakdown of the weapons used and casualties.
In its propaganda, ISKP presents itself as keenly aware of the military and diplomatic efforts being waged by various nations against the group. While the organization revels in the great powers’ attempts to eliminate ISKP, it also acknowledges the fragility of its position and the weight of these efforts. For example, in a July 2024 Voice of Khurasan article on the recent SCO meeting, the authors remarked that Russia's defense minister and head of intelligence had turned to the “Taliban militia” to “level the terror threat” posed by the group in Central Asia.71
ISKP Welcomes Rising Geopolitical Tensions
ISKP’s fixation on the emerging tensions between the so-called great powers of the world—Russia, China, and the United States in particular—is set to grow as the group remains acutely aware of and interested in the potential of exploiting these conditions. ISKP ultimately invites escalating tensions and potential conflict between the United States, China, and Russia, as it believes that any conflict will weaken its most powerful enemies and keep them distracted while the jihadists plan external operations and inspire supporters around the globe to violence. The group recognizes that the great powers are significantly more powerful than all of the Islamic State provinces but nonetheless encourages its supporters not to lose faith. The group spends a significant amount of space in its propaganda arguing hopefully, often in the face of significant contrary evidence, that its enemies in the international state system are highly vulnerable and that jihadists now have an opportunity to advance their cause.
The branch has most aggressively targeted Russia in operations to date by establishing transnational networks able to penetrate deep into Russian territory, networks it has built through appeals to Central Asians on Russian-language media. ISKP has seen an opportunity to exploit the fact that Russia’s security and intelligence organizations are overstretched by the war in Ukraine, continued military intervention in Syria, and growing activities throughout Africa.72 The suicide bombing against Russia’s embassy in Kabul in 2022, the mass casualty attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March 2024, the growing number of plots foiled in Russia, and the intensified propaganda campaign against Russia all illustrate this trend.
ISKP views Russia and China as pursuing their own unique international trajectories while remaining aligned against the United States. ISKP has asserted that in Ukraine, “war started with the Russians [wanting to prove] their superiority over America.”73 In ISKP’s assessment, this conflict is just one of more to come, which will set the stage for the group’s enemies to further weaken each other, as “America has been a furious enemy of Islam throughout the last century, and Russia has proven no different.”74 The group has directed Muslims to withhold support from either party, shed their “inferiority complex,” and build their own power under “the camp of Islam.”75 It further claims that the United States is “disposing” of Ukraine, calling it one of Washington’s “pets,” while predicting a much bigger global war on the horizon between the “Crusaders” in the “East” and “West.” It sees the U.S.-Russia proxy conflict as spreading, giving the example of the July 2024 ambush of Wagner fighters in Mali by Tuareg separatists whom Ukrainian officials indicated they may have supported.76
ISKP also sees signs of a coming world war in East Asia. It forecasts that the great powers’ allies will be dragged into the conflict, including the “Western puppet” South Korea and China-aligned North Korea as well as U.S.-backed Taiwan. Moreover, the group published an in-depth analysis titled “China’s Daydream of Imperialism” in which it says China’s “booming economy has become a global concern for many international players” as “such an economic shift is a real challenge for the U.S. hegemony in the world.”77 The Chinese, ISKP insists, have “been using their economic surplus for strengthening themselves [sic]militarily” with the “future ambition of conquering the world and establishing their own power sphere.”78 The article maintains that there is “no possibility of a consensus” between Washington and Beijing, which will push “the enemies of Islam into a full-fledged war” that will result in their mutual destruction.79 ISKP declares that at this point, “the oppressed Muslims will witness a brand new wind of change—the establishment of a global Khilafah.”80 The piece ends by threatening China, claiming that the country will never “be able to protect themselves from the sharp knives of the Khilafah soldiers” and concluding, “By Allah, we have not forgotten the innocent Uyghur Muslims whom you subjected to the stream roller of oppression.”81
The United States remains ISKP’s most powerful enemy and a principal focus of its propaganda. To date, ISKP has been unable to organize a successful attack inside the United States, but there are indications that the organization is attempting to bring agents into the country. ISKP has dedicated much space in its propaganda volumes to comment on U.S. foreign policy and attempt to explain, e.g., “What Our Enemies Are Thinking,” while celebrating previous strikes such as the attack on the Kabul airport in August 2021.82 ISKP’s expanding transnational threat is closely tied to its online propaganda strategy, which serves to advance the group’s recruitment, radicalization, and messaging and draws on multiple global issues to appeal potential recruits and supporters, such as the conflict in Gaza or the Russia-Ukraine war. For example, in a March 2023 editorial titled, “And Gas Balloon Intimidates the Goliath of the Time,” that mocked American concerns about a suspected Chinese aerial object entering U.S. airspace,83 the group notes that “Tyrannical military powers are sometimes afraid of their own ominous shadows, and such a fear sometimes makes them more aggressive, just as venomous snakes bite out of fear.” The editorial concludes by implicitly threatening the United States by questioning “America’s capability of digesting another 9-11 styled heavy blow to its mainland.”84
ISKP highlights the role of the United States, Russia, and China in each emergent conflict across the globe. In the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent military response in Gaza, the group has aggressively sought to tap into hostile sentiments against Israel to incite violence against its enemies, publishing tactical advice on targeting and weapons selection against Western and Israeli interests. The Al-Azaim Foundation released a video in October 2023 in response to the outbreak of fighting that encouraged its supporters to travel to Palestine.85 In its propaganda, the group has made note of Washington’s support for Israel alongside Iran’s support of Hamas, presenting the Islamic State as the only true Islamic movement independent from these countries. This aligns with the Islamic State and ISKP’s line of denigrating any Islamist groups that receive support from Iran, which it views as a land of apostates. Despite ISKP’s repeated attacks against Iran over the years, most notably against Shia shrines in the country, ISKP has been willing to capitalize on Hamas’ October 7 attack as a tool for propaganda. (ISKP has also criticized the Taliban for failing to aid the people of Gaza.)
ISKP ties each of these actors and conflicts together, noting in its coverage on the regional fallout of the war in Gaza, for example, that all international states are tied together by global commerce: “Consider the strategic locations, from Malaysia to the Strait of Hormuz in Iran, then through Bab al-Mandab in Yemen, the Suez Canal in Egypt, the Red Sea, and even the Strait of Gibraltar” reads on editorial, which further claims that “The security of these maritime routes directly benefits countries like China, India, the United States, Iran, Russia, Israel, and Europe.”86 ISKP then hints that it seeks to undermine this economic interconnectedness in order to undermine these countries and end their “dominance over the world.”87
ISKP’s robust media apparatus has proven resilient and difficult to counter. ISKP makes use of a series of different communication channels that leverage diverse platforms and storage sites to keep its messages online. These include so-called “alt-tech” social media platforms that advertise privacy and a lack of moderation as distinguishing features of their business models.88 Countering this messaging will require good faith public-private partnerships, alongside legal pressure, and the deployment of new technology to disrupt these communications networks.