Who are IS-K and why did they attack Moscow concert hall?
By Frank Gardner
Despite attempts by President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s state-controlled media to pin the blame for Friday’s deadly Moscow theatre attack on Ukraine, more details are emerging about the jihadist group IS-K that has claimed it was behind it.
IS-K is an abbreviation of Islamic State-Khorasan. It is a regional affiliate of the globally proscribed terror Islamic State group focused on Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
The group has given itself the name Khorasan as that was part of an historic Islamic caliphate spanning those countries, as well as northward into Central Asia.
IS-K has been around for nine years but in recent months it has emerged as the most dangerous branch of the Islamic State group, with a long reach and a reputation for extreme brutality and cruelty.
Along with what is left of the group’s wider leadership in Syria and Iraq, IS-K aspires to a pan-national Islamic caliphate ruled through an ultra-strict interpretation of Sharia, Islamic law.
In Afghanistan it is waging a sporadic but still deadly insurgency against the country’s rulers, the Taliban, who it opposes on ideological grounds.
