Deadly Attack In Russia Brings Islamic Terrorism to the Fore

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Happy Wednesday! Inflation has hit many Americans where it hurts, driving up prices for everything from fuel to housing. To add insult to injury, cocoa prices are reaching record highs—up 138 percent so far this year—and chocolate companies are now considering price hikes. Everyone stock up on your chocolate bunnies now.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• A Russian court on Tuesday extended the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for the fifth time, ruling that he would spend another three months in pretrial detention. Gershkovich was arrested in Yekaterinburg, Russia, almost a year ago and has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison on espionage charges, which both he and the U.S. government unequivocally deny. The State Department has designated him “wrongfully detained” and demanded his immediate release.

• British judges ruled Tuesday that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States until the U.S. government has provided assurances regarding the protection of his First Amendment rights and a guarantee that he will not receive the death penalty—though none of the espionage charges he faces in the U.S. for sharing classified information in 2010 and 2011 carry the sentence. The ruling delays his extradition—first approved in 2022—and gives the U.S. three weeks to comply with the request from the panel of judges. In the absence of a reply from the U.S., Assange may appeal his extradition.

• The Coast Guard announced Tuesday evening it was ending its search-and-rescue operation to retrieve the six members of an eight-person construction crew still missing after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, collapsed early Tuesday morning. Based on the water temperatures when they would have fallen into the Patapsco River and the time elapsed since, the six are presumed dead. One member of the crew survived the collapse unharmed and another is currently hospitalized. The Port of Baltimore has paused vessel traffic, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said yesterday that there is no timeline for bringing shipping back online. The port is one of the largest in the country, and President Joe Biden said in remarks Tuesday that he wants “to move heaven and earth to reopen [it] and rebuild the bridge as soon as humanly possible,” with the federal government financing the reconstruction. Moore told reporters yesterday the ship that hit one of the bridge’s columns had lost power and issued an emergency call for help moments before the collision.

• The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case regarding the ease of access to the abortion drug mifepristone. The majority of the justices questioned whether the doctors bringing the case challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to expand access to the drug in 2016 had sufficient legal grounds to do so. A decision in the case is expected this summer.

• The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s New York criminal hush-money case on Tuesday imposed a gag order on Trump. The measure—sought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in February—is the third such restriction on the former president across three separate legal cases. New York Judge Juan Merchan barred Trump from “making or directing others to make public statements” about witnesses in the case, the lawyers and staff involved in the case—with the exception of Bragg—or their families. The trial is currently scheduled to begin on April 15.

• In a court filing Tuesday, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake chose not to contest allegations that she defamed Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer when she accused him of committing election fraud during the state’s 2022 elections. She had failed to file a response to Richer’s June lawsuit, which accused her of baselessly claiming Richer stuffed ballot boxes with fake ballots and intentionally made the ballot confusing for voters in an effort to “rig” the election. Lake has asked the court to convene a jury to decide the damages she owes Richer in the case.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Tuesday in a speech in Oakland, California, that Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy California lawyer and philanthropist, will serve as his running mate in his independent bid for president. Shanahan—married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin until last year—has donated millions to the super PAC supporting Kennedy’s campaign.

Terror Strikes Moscow

On Friday night, just before 8 p.m. local time, some 6,000 Muscovites were getting ready to enjoy a sold-out rock concert at the mostly full Crocus City Hall venue in a northern suburb of Russia’s capital.

People were still milling about, moving to their seats when there was a repeated popping sound. At least four gunmen entered the sprawling complex killing anyone they encountered, including shooting some at point-blank range. When the shooters entered the auditorium, they sprayed automatic gunfire at the red seats from which people were fleeing. Then, the attackers set the venue on fire. By 8:30 p.m., a half-hour after the band Picnic was supposed to have taken the stage, thick black smoke was billowing from the complex, now engulfed in flames. It wasn’t long before the roof collapsed, by which point the attackers had already fled.

The terrorists killed at least 139 people and injured more than 100 others, many of whom are still in critical condition. The attack—for which Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, quickly claimed responsibility—was the worst in Russia in almost two decades. Though the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was largely defeated on the battlefield in 2019 after its rise in 2014 and 2015, its operations continue on multiple continents, and Friday’s events have turned the world’s attention back to the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. In an era where political and foreign policy priorities are firmly oriented toward great power competition—including, for the West, countering Russia’s revanchist and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine—analysts warn the Moscow attack could be a harbinger of more to come.

But Friday evening’s attack didn’t come entirely out of nowhere. In fact, earlier this month, the U.S. warned Russia that such an incident meeting almost the exact particulars of the Crocus City Hall shooting could be imminent. The U.S. embassy in Moscow alerted U.S. citizens to the risk on March 7—though that warning, ultimately wrongly, specified an event that was set to occur within 48 hours. Days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin labeled the United States’ cautions “blackmail” meant to “intimidate and destabilize our society.”

By the time Putin—just re-appointed in sham elections to a fifth term as president—addressed the nation on Saturday, 19 hours after the attack, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said they had captured 11 terrorists. The FSB claimed that the four who had committed the violence at Crocus City Hall had been apprehended near the border with Ukraine and said, without evidence, that they had “contacts on the Ukrainian side.”

In his speech, Putin doubled down on the implication that Ukraine was somehow involved. “They tried to hide and move toward Ukraine where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” he said Saturday afternoon. Putin presented no evidence to support his claim that there was a concerted effort by Ukrainian authorities to allow the terrorists to pass through what is effectively the front line of Russia’s war with Ukraine—nor did he mention ISIS-K, which had already claimed responsibility.

“This is very embarrassing [for the Russian government],” said Lucas Webber, a researcher who studies violent non-state actors and co-founder of a site tracking and analyzing militant activity and armed conflict around the world. “I think that has fed into the kind of reactionary rhetoric and blaming various parties—including Ukraine—by Russian government officials and influential figures.”

Ukrainian leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelenksy, vehemently denied the claims. The Ukrainian foreign ministry said the spurious link was an effort to create “anti-Ukraine fervor” that would make it easier to mobilize additional Russian troops, and U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson concurred with Ukraine’s denial. “ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack,” she said Saturday. “There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.” On Sunday, Putin finally acknowledged that “radical Islamists” had committed the attack, but nevertheless claimed that they’d done so at Kyiv’s behest.

After the alleged perpetrators were captured, video footage emerged that appeared to show members of the Russian security services brutally beating several of the men when they were apprehended. Gruesome clips showed uniformed men mutilating one terrorist and pummeling another with the butt of a gun. On Monday, the four men—all reportedly from the Central Asian former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan—appeared in a Moscow courtroom looking battered, bruised, and swollen. One was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair, barely conscious and wearing a hospital gown. Another had a bandage across his head, having had his ear partially severed by his Russian captor. Authorities made no effort to hide the fact that the suspects had been beaten, likely as part of interrogation. If convicted, which they surely will be, the men face life in prison on terrorism charges.

The images from Friday evening harken back to attacks that were much more common a decade ago when ISIS was on the rise—building its Sunni caliphate in Iraq and Syria and orchestrating or inspiring horrific attacks across the West. The November 2015 attacks in Paris, France, as well as the 2016 airport and metro attacks in Brussels, Belgium, and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, were all ISIS-coordinated or -inspired.

The U.S. and its allies declared victory over the ISIS caliphate in 2019, but the group never totally went away, even if it lost its strongholds. ISIS-K, an affiliate of ISIS, has been on the rise over the last several years. It operates mostly in Central Asia—primarily in Afghanistan, which shares a border with Tajikistan, where the Moscow attackers are from. “[ISIS-K] has various ebbs and flows in terms of its regional operations and its strength and capacities, but it has really reemerged,” Webber told TMD. “It’s been on the upswing since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.”

The group—which is also an enemy of the Taliban—was behind the August 2021 Abbey Gate terrorist attack at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. Marines and more than 150 Afghans during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country. “The Taliban has been fighting [ISIS-K], but has many other problems of its own, and there was never any realistic prospect that the Taliban could gain a greater degree of security control over Afghanistan than the U.S.-backed Afghan government did,” said Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. “Afghanistan’s neighbors are only making things worse. So expect [ISIS-K] to continue to expand its capabilities, as we warned when the U.S. was pulling out of Afghanistan.” A 2023 United Nations report suggested the group is organized in a network structure, which makes it nimble to work across the region and avoid being decapitated in any single effort to destroy it.

The group has also been increasingly active outside Afghanistan, causing U.S. leaders to raise the alarm. In March of last year, Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, testified before Congress that the Islamic State affiliate could be ready to launch an attack “against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning.” Germany and Austria foiled ISIS-K plots in December of last year. This January, ISIS-K attackers killed nearly 100 people in two blasts in Iran—a predominantly Shia Muslim country—during a memorial for Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, whom the U.S. assassinated four years earlier. That same month, ISIS-K was likely responsible for an attack on a Catholic church in Turkey’s capital of Ankara, which killed one person. But for the terrorist’s gun jamming, the attack could have been much deadlier. And in early March of this year, the FSB said it had prevented the group from carrying out a planned attack on a synagogue.

But why attack Russia? ISIS-K has made Russia a particular target because of the country’s engagement in the Middle East over the last decade and, before that, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. “ISIS perceives Russia as the vanguard of Shia Islam, with Russians propping up the Assad regime in Syria, working closely with Iran […] and also working on the ground in Syria with Hezbollah,” explained Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center. “If you think about ISIS’—and especially [ISIS-K]’s—hit list of who they hate the most, Shia are actually above even the United States, Israel, and other so-called ‘apostate’ regimes. So the fact that the Russians seem to be aiding Shia countries and groups is very problematic to [ISIS-K], in particular, which has a highly sectarian agenda.”

ISIS-K propaganda welcomed Russia’s war in Ukraine in the hopes that it would weaken both Russia and the West, which has contributed militarily and financially to Ukraine’s defense. “They saw opportunity in Russia having its military, security, and intelligence apparatus and resources spread thin with the various interventions in Africa, the war in Syria, and the full-fledged conventional war of attrition in Ukraine,” Webber told TMD. “I think they acted upon these grievances and Russia’s rising priority as a target with a kind of opportunistic mindset, where they sought to exploit the distractions and the deficiencies in security coverage domestically.”

But just because ISIS-K is particularly motivated by its “grievances” against Russia doesn’t mean an attack on the West is out of the question. While the U.S. seemed to have fairly good intelligence about what was likely to occur in Russia this month, such foresight isn’t a given. “I think the attack has really been very successful in a number of aspects for the Islamic State,” added Webber. “I think it’s a sign of things to come, and Western [governments] shouldn’t be complacent and should be concerned about this.”

Worth Your Time

• College basketball phenom Caitlin Clark is one of the best players in the country—man or woman. She’s the highest-scoring NCAA basketball player of all time, and, at 21 years old, trying to “see the gulf between her potential and her reality and close that distance,” Wright Thompson reported in a thoughtful profile for ESPN. “Her teammates came to understand that they were dealing with someone like Mozart. She wasn’t rude, nor necessarily nice, just a different species. At one point that year a sports psychologist came in to work with the team. She started going around the room and asking the players when they felt stressed and anxious and how they reacted to those feelings. One by one, the young women described familiar symptoms and scenarios: sweaty hands, a fear of the free throw line, struggling with breathing, anxiety about the last possession. Finally it was Caitlin’s turn. She seemed a little embarrassed. ‘I never am,’ she said. Everyone in the room somehow understood she was being more vulnerable than cocky.”

• Writing for the Atlantic, Theo Baker, a Jewish student at Stanford University, sketched a picture of the rancor and division on his campus in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. “Many young people have come to feel that being angry is enough to foment change,” he wrote. “Furious at the world’s injustices and desperate for a simple way to express that fury, they don’t seem interested in any form of engagement more nuanced than backing a pure protagonist and denouncing an evil enemy. They don’t, always, seem that concerned with the truth. The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant ‘From the river to the sea.’ This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us—an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter—killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza. Across the many conversations and hours of formal interviews I conducted for this article, I’ve encountered a persistent anti-intellectual streak. I’ve watched many of my classmates treat death so cavalierly that they can protest as a pregame to a party.”

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Toeing the Company Line

• Does the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Apple have merit? Do media companies have a responsibility not to “platform” voices they disagree with? Will the Supreme Court weigh in on the FDA’s moves to make abortion drugs available without in-person doctor visits? Declan was joined by Kevin, Jamie, Will, and John to discuss all that and more on last night’s Dispatch Live (🔒). Members who missed the conversation can catch a rerun—either video or audio-only—by clicking here.

• In the newsletters: Nick tried to read (🔒) the tea leaves on two early 2024 polling trends.

• On the podcasts: Jonah is joined by psychologist and author Rob Henderson on The Remnant to discuss his new book, Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class.

• On the site: Jonathan Ruhe argues the success of the U.S. military’s February strikes against Iranian proxies prove Iran can be contained and Jonah takes a look at Trump’s potential running mates. Plus, Thomas Koenig and Thomas Harvey examine whether Sen. John Cornyn, who is seeking to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell as Senate Republican leader, is open to certain filibuster reform.

Let Us Know

Did the U.S. declare victory over ISIS prematurely or is the “War on Terror” over regardless of the potential threats from radical Islamic terrorists?

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