After the FBI arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma who was planning an Election Day shooting on behalf of the Islamic State, the terrorist organization re-entered what has become one of the most chaotic pre-election news cycles. November elections.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City, admitted to investigators that he and an accomplice expected to die as IS martyrs when they opened fire on the crowd on Election Day, according to charging documents.
Warnings about IS-sponsored or inspired attacks in the West have intensified in recent weeks.
In a statement about the Tawhediel case, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, noted that there was a continuing need to “combat the current threat that [IS] and its supporters represent for the national security of the United States.” Ken McCallum, head of MI5, the UK's national intelligence service, described how his agency did “an incredible job” managing the threat from the resurgent terrorist organisation.
Despite statements by senior officials, the public perception that IS was defeated or has somehow disappeared still persists.
But, experts say, before and after that incident, internal IS conversations were anything but calm: On chat forums and encrypted apps, supporters and operatives alike have been increasingly discussing attacks in the West and at home. US.
The online conversations are being led by IS-Khorasan (IS-Okay), the Afghanistan-based branch that was behind the Moscow attack that killed 145 people in March. Khorasan is a reference to an ancient region that includes parts of present-day Iran, Afghanistan, and other bordering countries.
IS-Okay has quickly become the terrorist group's most active international force, having carried out a deadly plot in Russia and another in Iran months earlier. Days after Tawhedi's arrest, US officials later confirmed he was an IS-OK agent who was allegedly leading the plot.
In a propaganda poster it published in September, IS-Okay highlighted American targets as first on its hit list.
“[IS-K] “It recently reiterated its intention to target the United States with a poster showing one of its militants holding a grenade in front of the US Capitol building with the legend 'you're next,'” said Lucas Webber, senior intelligence analyst. of threats at Tech In opposition to Terrorism, a watchdog organization working with government agencies around the world.
The Guardian obtained the same poster, which was published online through a well-known IS-Okay platform.
“This is further concerning given the branch's mass casualty attacks against Russia and Iran, leaving the United States as the remaining adversary on this short list for a successful external operation,” Webber said.
Webber said Tawhedi's arrest provided insight into the “rise” of attempted plots in the United States coming from ISIS. For example, earlier this week a Maryland man was charged with supporting ISIS with the criminal complaint describing his attempt to purchase a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Webber continued: “This follows a Tajik [IS suspect] arrested in Costa Rica; a Central Asian network installed in New York City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia; as well as a Pakistani citizen living in Canada who was allegedly planning an attack against a Jewish center in New York.”
While IS-Okay has taken advantage of the tumult in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in the summer of 2021 and established a base of operations in that country, its broader movement has also been recruiting heavily since the October 7 attacks. and the Israeli military operations that followed.
It is part of an IS-Okay recruitment scheme aimed at young men in the West who cannot easily travel abroad. An acquaintance of Tawhedi, who was an Afghan citizen who arrived in the US after the fall of Kabul, was charged in France in a similar plot.
In a spring issue of Voice of Khurasan, its English-language propaganda magazine, IS-Okay encourages “direct contact with the organization” through encrypted communications and covert recruitment in Western locations.
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Riccardo Valle, research director of the Islamabad-based publication. Jorasán's diary closely follows IS movements on everything from Facebook and Instagram to Telegram and the lesser-known encrypted chat app Rocket.Chat.
“Online discussions are very diverse,” he said. “However, there has been an increase in talk about carrying out attacks or doing hijra [migration] to tamkeen – lands where IS is strongly present and controls.”
For years, a long-running debate within IS channels is whether or not it is more effective for its followers to carry out attacks at home or travel to active war zones where IS operates and join its ranks. over there.
On a Rocket.Chat forum, the communications platform of choice among IS supporters and operatives, Valle said a user posted a message lamenting Tawhedi's arrest.
“I feel like if we had had contact with these brothers before they bought the guns from the informants, things would have been different,” they said, while another wrote: “I live out west and we can do more damage here.”
In other chats that Valle had access to and shared with The Guardian, users talked about “kitchen bombs, commercial drones” and other possible simplistic tools to carry out terrorism.
Another Rocket.Chat user, as Valle showed to The Guardian, ran an account to attack Jews with knives in an unnamed Western country.
“Now take a kitchen knife and hold it to the throat of a young Jewish boy your age when no one is paying attention and then run away,” the user wrote.
Webber noted that part of the problem in raising awareness about the gravity of the moment is the “common misconception that [IS] was defeated.”
But, he added, there are still branches in “Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and other places.”
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