EDITORIAL: Russia observed Sunday as a day of mourning for Friday’s terrorist attack at a packed concert hall on Moscow’s outskirts that left 137 people dead and 154 others wounded, at least one dozen of them critically.
All the four assailants were arrested while fleeing in a car, according to President Vladimir Putin, to Ukraine — strongly denied by Kyiv — which had “prepared a window” for the terrorists to cross the border into that country.
Whatever the validity of this allegation, the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the carnage, saying on a Telegram channel that it was carried out by its fighters “armed with machine guns, a pistol, knives and firebombs.”
As regards the question why target Russians, it is believed to be linked it to Russia’s successful intervention in Syria where jihadists, including from the Russian republic of Chechnya, fought against the Assad regime backed by certain Western powers and some regional countries. Some of those groups gathered under the umbrella of al-Nusra Front, though mostly vanquished, still control the north-western Syrian enclave of Idlib and parts of neighbouring provinces.
The ISIL which rose from the ashes of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has almost ceased to exist with the decimation of its caliphate, but its offshoots pose a serious threat to peace and security of other countries. The four gunmen involved in the Moscow massacre have been identified as nationals of Tajikistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan where jihadist groups, including the so-called IS-K (Islamic State of Khorasan), and the self-proclaimed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are active.
It is worth noting that the IS-K has strengthened its ranks by recruiting both Afghan Taliban and TTP defectors who see their own organisations not radical enough. Nearly half of its fighters, point out the UN and US reports, are from the TTP. Although the Kabul government claims it has vanquished the IS-K, this terror outfit has repeatedly demonstrated that it retains the capability to launch attacks inside Afghanistan as well as in neighbouring countries. It has been involved in several acts of terrorism in Pakistan.
Last year, 59 people lost their lives in two back-to-back suicide bombings, one at a Balochistan mosque and the other on a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police station. This past January, the IS-K claimed credit for suicide bombings in Iran at a memorial for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Gen Qassem Soleimani that killed about 100 people and wounded scores of others.
It has spread its tentacles in the Central Asian Republics as well, so borne out by the fact that the four men who committed the appalling atrocity in Moscow belong to Tajikistan. No country, especially in this region, is safe from their nefarious designs.
It is a clear and present threat, which must be fought everywhere. The Afghan Taliban need to realise that the jihadists of different hues operating on their soil to target other countries also undermine the stability of their own state. They would be wise to join hands with Pakistan and other states affected by these terrorists, including Russia and China, to do all that is necessary to defeat the IS-K.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
Comments
Comments are closed.