Terror Hunters Trade Hamas for ISIS-K, Perhaps With Some Relief

In light of the deadly ISIS-K attack on the Crocus City Hall in Russia last month, the homeland security complex is newly focusing on a high-profile Islamic State attack inside the United States, according to new government reports and statements. For seven months, Hamas has been the primary focus of federal counterterror operations, with the FBI anticipating a terrorist strike intended to highlight America’s military support for Israel.

“I see blinking lights everywhere I turn,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in December, addressing post-October 7 domestic threats and a new obsession with Hamas that came out of the Gaza war.

Within the past week though, members of Congress are demanding that the government provide classified briefings on the ISIS-K threat, expressing “serious concern” about the group’s reach. The New Jersey homeland security department, one of the country’s most active counterterrorism hubs, has also produced an intelligence brief this week warning about potential ISIS-K attacks. And the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has produced a hand-wringing report about the current U.S. capability to conduct “‘over-the-horizon’ counterterrorism operations” in Afghanistan to thwart the group’s future operations. 

In a way, the shift from Hamas to ISIS-K is one welcomed by the terror fighters because the focus eliminates all of the tricky politics associated with the Gaza war, especially the difficulty the FBI and others have had separating pro-Palestinian sentiments from support for Hamas. And, not coincidentally, all of the focus on pro-Trump so-called domestic extremists. The Al Qaeda-like attack in Moscow also harkens back to a familiar threat and the 20-year war for the federal government, one even emanating from Afghanistan.

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ISIS-K, known as Islamic State Khorasan, is the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate that is now active in south Asia and the Caucasus. The name Khorasan comes from ancient Persian and refers to the region that encompasses Afghanistan and northeastern Iran, and portions of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan. Surviving fighters from Al Qaeda have congregated under the banner of ISIS-K. The Director of National Intelligence labels ISIS-K, founded in 2015, as one of ISIS’s “most lethal branches.”

In some ways, ISIS-K is the actual successor to Al Qaeda, which introduced high-profile attacks in northwest Africa and Yemen, culminating in 9/11. Before the assault in Moscow which killed 140 last month, ISIS-K had attack the U.S. directly when during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan it sent a suicide bomber that killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans at the Kabul airport. Since assuming command in 2020, the group’s leader, Sanaullah Ghafari, has pledged further attacks, and he has taken on the ISIS goal of trying to create a physical Islamic caliphate.

Beginning in 2022, ISIS-K has also increased its messaging targeted on the United States. The ISIS Al-Naba newspaper commented on the initial indictment of former President Donald Trump, claiming “American unrest is looming on the horizon” and that “this is taking place by the arrangement of Allah.” ISIS-K’s English-language Voice of Khurasan commented on the raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, claiming “America is a ‘banana republic’ corrupt at a level not seen before.” ISIS-K has also commented on gun violence, highlighting gun killings in America and calling them “tit for tat” for U.S. foreign policy failures.

Last month, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of Central Command, said that ISIS-K “retains the capability and the will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.” When asked whether the military is conducting sufficient strikes on ISIS-K in Afghanistan given the U.S. withdrawal, Kurilla told Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., “in a classified setting, ma’am, I can talk about where we are in terms of the find, fix, and finish on them.”

In a April 3 intelligence brief from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness obtained by The Intercept, the agency warns, “The ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) attack in Russia highlights the group’s aspiration to become the most active ISIS affiliate, conduct global attacks, and inspire homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) to threaten the U.S. and Europe.”

In the same breath, the brief acknowledges that ISIS itself remains “a low threat to New Jersey and the surrounding region” and that the group has never “successfully conducted a directed attack within the U.S.” thanks to global efforts, such as that of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. The brief says that coalition and U.S. operations have “diminished ISIS’s military capability, territorial control, leadership, financial resources, and online influence.”

“The largest threat from ISIS still comes from [Homegrown Violent Extremists] who consume ISIS propaganda, radicalize, [and] often pledge allegiance to the group,” the brief concludes. (The FBI says that the majority of foreign-inspired terrorists in the U.S. continue to be ISIS-affiliated, as they have been for most of the past decade. On Saturday, the FBI arrested 18 year old Scott Mercurio, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for planning to attack local churches and allegedly providing material support to ISIS. “This case should be an eye-opener to the dangers of self-radicalization, which is a real threat to our communities,” Shohini Sinha, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Salt Lake City field office said.)

The new threat posed by ISIS-K was further amplified in a recent letter sent by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., demanding a classified briefing on the ISIS-K threat. 

“ISIS-K’s recent attacks further highlight their ability to strike around the globe. Their operations include a suicide bombing in Iran in January of 2024 and a massacre at a concert hall in Moscow in March,” the senators wrote. “Further, ISIS-K planned attacks against civilians in Germany and the Netherlands were also thwarted. It is evident the potential and desire for strikes by ISIS-K around the globe, including against the United States, remains significant. As former Director of Intelligence for CENTCOM, retired Army Major General Mark Quantock recently stated, ‘The U.S. remains target No. 1 for ISIS-K.’”

Late last month, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also said that Wray confirmed to him that an ISIS-linked smuggling network was penetrating the U.S. southern border. Rubio told ABC News that ISIS-K had “reconstituted itself as we warned would happen when we had this disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. One of the reasons why we didn’t want to withdraw precipitously is because you gave them operating space to reorganize themselves and plan externally.”