Islamic State Says Its Attack on the Russian Embassy in Afghanistan Shows the True Jihadist Path and the Taliban’s Deviation From It
Islamic State Says Its Attack on the Russian Embassy in Afghanistan Shows the True Jihadist Path and the Taliban’s Deviation From It
In the 355th edition of Al-Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) weekly newsletter, published on 8 September, the front page covered the attack in Afghanistan earlier in the week against the Russian Embassy.
On 5 September, an Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) suicide bomber blew himself up “outside the consular section of Russia’s Embassy in Kabul”, on Darul Aman Avenue, just as a senior diplomat, Second Secretary Mikhail Shakh, was leaving the building: Shakh, a Russian security guard, and four Afghans were killed, according to Russian and Taliban officials. The Taliban claimed that its security forces shot dead the suicide bomber as he approached the Embassy, but the bullets detonated the explosive vest.
Al-Naba 355 presented the suicide attack as a “major security development” and named the “solider of the Islamic State” responsible as Waqqas al-Waziristani.
“The martyred mujahid was able to bypass all the fortifications [al-tahseenat] and security measures imposed by the Taliban militia on the Kabul area in general, and on the Crusader Embassies in particular, and succeeded in reaching the gate of the Russian Embassy, and detonated his explosive vest in the midst of a gathering of Embassy employees and the spies contracted by them, who were waiting in line to complete exit visa procedures”, Al-Naba writes. While this is not an outright denial that Al-Waziristani was shot dead before he could blow himself up, it does implicitly seem to deny that claim from the Taliban.
The Naba article claims that twenty-five people were killed and wounded in the attack. “[A]mong the dead were at least two Russian employees, one of whom was a ‘diplomat’,” Al-Naba says, agreeing with the independent reporting, while putting its own ideological spin on this to present all the Afghan civilians among the casualties, whether employed at the Embassy or not, as “spies”.
Al-Naba focused on the messaging around the attack, both at an international level, claiming the group had “once again surprised the enemies of the Islamic State” and plunged analysts into confusion, and locally, mocking the Taliban for their “promises to the Crusaders”, specifically Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, who had, about ten days earlier, reassured everyone that they could send diplomats to Kabul, with no reason to worry about ISKP, because the Taliban had virtually eliminated the group—something that is objectively untrue and unlikely to ever be true.
The Naba article used the fact that the Taliban had “quickly” condemned the attack—being sure to mention that the slain officials the Taliban called “victims” were from “the former Soviet Union”, which did so much to destroy Afghanistan—to emphasise IS’s narrative that the Taliban is not really a jihadist group, but has gone down a road of making so many ideological concessions to “Crusaders”, West and East, in order to gain power, that it was now their puppet.
The main editorial, which is always the main ideological statement in Al-Naba, continued this theme. It used to be a consensus among jihadists that “Crusader” Embassies were fair game, says the editorial, but now, when IS actually acts on this, and “attacks the Embassy of a Crusader country that drank the blood of Muslims, it has become immoral! It became a conspiracy against Islam and Muslims! And a ‘suspicious jihad’ created and manipulated by global intelligence [agencies]!” “These Embassies are no longer ‘dens of spying’ [awkarin lil-tajassus] on Muslims, as the ‘jihadists’ used to call them in the past”, Al-Naba goes on: now, the Taliban and its media talk “as if the Crusader Embassies sitting in Muslim lands exist to serve the Muslims and defend their rights”.
Al-Naba pours scorn on the “pink jihadists” (al-jihadiyeen al- wardiayn) who condemn attacks on “the nests of spies and coordination centres of the war on Islam”, claiming they want to “follow the path” of Chechnya’s warlord-president Ramzan Kadyrov, appointed and sustained by Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, and the former elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was supported by NATO, both of whom, in IS’s perception, secured power by putting themselves at the service of infidels.
Partly exasperated and partly taunting, the Naba editorial says:
We did not expect that after all these years we would have to remind [people] of the danger of the Crusader Embassies and Consulates, and their role in the scorched earth war against Muslims. We did not expect that we would need to talk about the legitimacy of targeting these Embassies. …
Today, however, it turns out that these [Embassies] are no longer “permissibles” for these people. The distinction between “their elites” and “the common people” [that the Taliban and its allies now insist on] is a stupid one, as they are all of one mind.
What calamity have these “pretenders to jihad” inflicted upon the minds and hearts of Muslims, so that targeting Crusader Embassies has become a matter of contention?! What crime did these lost deceivers commit in returning generations of Muslims to the centuries of wandering and mistrust, making them suspicious of an operation targeting the Embassy of a state that has killed more Muslims than the Jews?! We still remember the beginning of the “Russian-Ukrainian” war, the way some leaders of the apostate movements rushed to broadcast fatwas to Muslims living in Ukraine, permitting them to fight in the ranks of the Ukrainian Crusader army against the Russian Crusader army!
Al-Naba attacks those Islamists who said it was permissible, “under the pretext of revenge against Russia, which has committed the most heinous crimes against Muslims in Syria”, for Muslims to join a Christian army, but now condemns IS for attacking the Russians and even accuses IS of causing strife within the Muslim community.
In Al-Naba’s telling, the ISKP attack was a strike for Afghanistan’s independence, something the Taliban claims to want, targeting an Embassy that has been there since Soviet times, through the NATO presence, to forge relations with the governing elite to have them carry out Moscow’s interests. Getting into its stride, Naba adds, referencing the editorial headline, “Emirate of Embassies!” (Imarat al-Safarat):
It was noticeable to everyone after the attack that anxiety dominated the statements of the Taliban leaders, fearing that their relationship with Russia would be damaged, and fearing that the rest of the Crusader Embassies would be forced to leave Afghanistan, which they considered a danger and harm to their “emirate,” whose taghut claims that he seeks to establish an “independent Islamic system.” We do not know what kind of “Islamic system” begs for a Russian Embassy to remain, begs for the return of an American Embassy, celebrates [having] a Hindu Embassy, and dreams of a Chinese and Iranian one?! It is as if it nothing more than an “Emirate of Embassies”, and we do not know how it can be an “independent Islamic system” if it is not even able to dispense with the Embassies of the enemies of Islam, who are still devoted to their enmity and war against Muslims in every arena.
Movements that have “become addicted to roaming the palaces of the tawaghit of the East and of the West, and leaning on the thresholds of their Embassies, in search of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘support’, are movements that lack Islamic legitimacy”, Al-Naba says, trying to acquire a currency that can be “spent only in the markets of humiliation and servitude to other than God”.
The Naba editorial concludes that monotheism (tawhid) and jihad are the “source of pride for Muslims”, not “making pilgrimages to the Embassies of infidels, seeking their affection and begging for crumbs from them”. Al-Naba celebrates the massacre at Kabul Airport in August 2021 and now this attack on the Russian Embassy as showing how jihadists should deal with “Crusaders” and demonstrating that IS “will continue to fight the enemy near and far, the original infidel and the apostate, because its jihad is a comprehensive legal jihad that does not differentiate between one taghut and another, deriving its legitimacy from the Qur’an and the Sunna, not from the Embassies of the infidels, and receiving its support from the full treasuries of God Almighty.”