On March 25, four assailants entered the Crocus City complex in Moscow. They attacked the crowd, all there for a concert, with guns, knives, and incendiary devices. When all the damage was tallied, 145 people were dead. Although Russia initially attempted to connect Ukraine to the attack, credit was quickly taken by ISIS-K. Further investigation revealed that all four of the attackers were Tajiks from Tajikistan (the country is majority Tajik but is home to several other ethnic groups).

Although ISIS is a familiar name, ISIS-K is perhaps less well known. Tajikistan, a small, former Soviet republic of 10 million, is a nation with which many are unfamiliar. To help understand the goals of ISIS-K and why Tajikistan is disproportionately represented among its recruits, we turned to SIS professor Keith Darden, chair of the SIS Politics, Governance, and Economics department, and SIS and SPA professor Joe Young.

What is ISIS-K, and how is it different from other versions of ISIS?

ISIS-K is an affiliate of the Islamic State group. ISIS-K is more regional, based in Afghanistan, and also operates in Pakistan. They are behind the massive explosion and attack at the Karzai Airport in Kabul that killed well over 150 people as the US left Afghanistan. -Professor Joe Young

The March attack by ISIS-K came at a time when the world expected any news of attacks on Russia to involve Ukraine. Why would ISIS-K target Russia and Russians?

Violent groups that wish to see some form of a global caliphate, or extreme global empire, have been opposed to Russia for decades. They cite Russian treatment of Muslims in Chechnya and Dagestan. While Russia and the US are on opposite sides of many global issues, this is one place where they have a common enemy. The US intelligence community, in fact, gave very specific details about the attack to Russian leadership, which Putin and the Russian intel community largely ignored. -Professor Joe Young

What are ISIS-K’s larger goals, and why does attacking Russia align with them?

While they espouse some international goals, they are in competition locally with the Taliban for control. Members of ISIS-K include former Afghani and Pakistani Taliban. Attacking Russia demonstrates ISIS-K’s power and extended reach. Russia has supported the Taliban, who does not have as much international ambition, in its decades long conflict with the US. -Professor Joe Young

The news that the four gunmen in the March 25 attack are Tajik presents a different face for terrorism aligned with Muslim extremism than the West—where most people likely couldn’t find Tajikistan on a map—is probably used to seeing. Why is Tajikistan a fertile ground for ISIS-K recruits?

The former Soviet republics of Central Asia, and Tajikistan especially, have been fertile areas for ISIS recruitment for quite some time. The supreme military commander of the Islamic State, Gulmurod Khalimov, was a Tajik counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism officer who defected to ISIS in 2016, and Tajiks (and Kyrgyz and Chechens) were over-represented in the ranks of ISIS fighters. 

The roots of Tajik support for armed Islamic movements goes back to the civil war of the 1990s, when the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan was part of the United Tajik Opposition fighting a Russian-backed government led by Emomali Rakhmon. Rakhmon settled the conflict, bringing moderate Islamic parties into the government, but over time, Rakhmon’s government has worked to undermine that compromise settlement, arresting political opponents and cracking down on Islamic movements. As is often the case, repression has led to both further radicalization of young Tajiks and also out-migration. Many Tajiks have become drawn to militant movements like ISIS-K both inside the country and among migrant communities in Russia—where Tajiks are often part of the shadow economy. -Professor Keith Darden

How does this attack further illuminate anger and enmity between Russia and some former Soviet republics?

The enmity of groups like ISIS-K towards the Russian government is paradoxically borne of the close ties of the Russian government to the repressive governments of Central Asia and the Middle East. It is Russia’s support for Iran, for Syria, and for the Rakhmon government of Tajikistan—all seen as enemies of Islam by these Sunni Islamist groups—that leads them to target Russia. It’s the continued collaboration between Russia and the Central Asian governments that generates hostility, rather than the kind of interstate regional tensions sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for example. -Professor Keith Darden

Russia has been globally viewed as an aggressor at least since its annexation of Crimea in 2014—and definitely since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Being the victim of a terrorist attack in which citizens are murdered tends to garner global sympathy. Did the world respond to this attack as it has to terrorist attacks in other countries?

After the Beslan school massacre in Russia in 2004 perpetrated by Chechen terrorists, Russia was viewed much more sympathetically internationally. Times have changed, and Russia’s war on Ukraine has dried up a lot of potential sympathy for its leaders. -Professor Joe Young

Few in the West expressed sympathy for Russia or Russians in response to the attack, and this reflects the general polarization in contemporary global politics. The boundaries of empathy are increasingly limited to those with whom one is politically aligned. One saw this in response to the horrific attack on Israeli civilians on October 7 as well—the attacks were celebrated in some quarters and decried in others, largely based on one’s political alignments. The Russian government is currently viewed as an enemy by many, which unfortunately meant that many in the world had no sympathy for the horrific and senseless killing of Russian civilians in this terrorist attack. -Professor Keith Darden

What should students understand about Tajikistan and its citizens to better understand the March 25 attack?

Tajikistan is a place where Soviet state-building was never particularly successful, leaving a fragmented and fractious polity in the wake of the Soviet collapse. In places like Tajikistan, the opposition to weak, incompetent, and corrupt authoritarian governments has often drawn on political Islam to promise an alternative, more ordered way of life. The repression of political Islam from legitimate politics in Tajikistan has often led people to find a home in the extremes, in a transnational Islamist movement that draws on horrific acts of terror to promote millenarian goals. This is why some poor migrants, who would ideally have made a good life for themselves in the Tajik highlands, ended up opening fire on defenseless men, women, and children in a concert venue outside Moscow on March 25. -Professor Keith Darden