Kazakh intelligence services speak about the threat from the Vilayat Khorasan

On March 7, the Russian FSB announced the elimination of two militants who planned to attack parishioners of one of the Moscow synagogues. The eliminated terrorists were members of the Vilayat Khorasan group (a terrorist organization banned in Russia) and turned out to be Kazakh citizens, which was later confirmed by Astana.

Vilayat Khorasan is the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (a terrorist organization banned in Russia). Kazakhstan was warning about the threat from the group in August 2023. Representatives of the National Security Committee noted that the number of Vilayat Khorasan militants has grown more than 12 times since 2021 and reached 6 thousand people.

Kazakh intelligence services also emphasized that the terrorist group regularly calls for jihad against Central Asia’s closest neighbors, Russia and China, as well as against Pakistan and the United States.

In February 2024, the CSTO announced the escalation of the terrorist threat on the Afghan-Tajikistan border. Then the chief of the CSTO Joint Staff stated that the number of Islamic State militants in the northern border region of Afghanistan had reached 4 thousand people.

Later, a draft interstate program to strengthen the Tajik-Afghan border was presented at the CSTO website. Before this, in 2022, the idea of a security belt around Afghanistan was proposed by the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon. Official Kabul reported that they were not against Dushanbe’s proposal, but emphasized that there were no border threats for Afghanistan’s neighbors.