Two and a half years into their reign, the Afghan Taliban have cemented their ultra-conservative rule across the war-torn country but have yet to turn their fighting force into a traditional military. VOA spoke to analysts who say the former insurgent force does not need to pattern itself after a standard military to effectively counter a mounting security threat from […]

The suspected shooters in the Crocus City attack were Tajiks, which has caused a backlash against labor migrants in Russia. Relations between Tajikistan and Russia, however, are unlikely to be impacted. Responsibility for the March 22 terrorist attack at the Crocus City concert hall near Moscow has been claimed by the Afghanistan-based Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), and most of the […]

Sanaullah Ghaffari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajar, is reportedly the ISIS-Khorasan (Daesh) branch leader and is holed up in Pakistan, Reuters reports. The 29-year-old took over as leader in 2020 and under his leadership the group has carried out extreme attacks as a means of recruiting, Reuters reported. Reuters noted that little was known about Ghafari before the deadly 2021 […]

Summary Introduction India is home to some two hundred million Muslims, one of the world’s largest Muslim populations but a minority in the predominantly Hindu country. Since India’s independence, Muslims have often faced discrimination, prejudice, and violence, despite constitutional protections. Experts say anti-Muslim sentiments have heightened under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party […]

What happened? On the evening of 22 March, militants mounted a harrowing attack on Crocus City Hall, a music venue in the suburbs of Moscow, taking at least 139 lives. Surveillance camera footage from inside the building shows the assailants firing ruthlessly upon concert attendees with light automatic weapons, adding to the chaos by setting the premises ablaze. The arson […]

What is ISIS-K? ISIS-K, short for Islamic State Khorasan Province, is a regional affiliate of the larger Islamic State group. The affiliate group operates primarily in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, although it has presence throughout the historical “Khorasan” – a region that includes parts of the modern-day nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, along with other Central Asian countries. Established in […]

The South China Sea is a critical world trade route. In 2023, 10 billion barrels of petroleum and petroleum product and 6.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) passed through the South China Sea.1 The sea stretches from Singapore and the Strait of Malacca in the southwest to the Strait of Taiwan in the northeast. The sea […]

The United States is assigning responsibility for Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people on the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-Khorasan. A State Department official confirmed to VOA that the U.S. gathered intelligence suggesting IS-Khorasan was planning an “imminent” attack in the Russian capital, leading to a […]

On March 25, 2024, the Al-Azaim Foundation, a media outlet linked to the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), published an English-language poster threatening to carry out attacks against Russians, including President Vladmir Putin.[1] The poster capitalized on the March 22 attack in Moscow, which the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for without specifying in its three statements which regional branch […]

Following the March 22, 2024 attack on the Crocus City Hall music venue in Moscow, in which an estimated 137 people were killed and for which the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility, Hasht-e-Subh, a prominent independent daily in Afghanistan, has warned that support for the Afghan Taliban government has led to the strengthening of a range of jihadi organizations, such […]