The terrorist attack in Russia should lead to world peace, not an escalation in Ukraine!

Last Friday, at least 139 people lost their lives in an indiscriminate attack at a concert hall within a shopping and performance complex in Krasnogorsk, located on the northwestern outskirts of Moscow, before the band expected to perform had even taken the stage. It is reported that the Khorasan Province branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS-K) claimed responsibility for the attack via a Telegram channel. The United States, which had warned its citizens in Russia about the possibility of such a terrorist attack by almost describing this specific incident before it occurred, also announced that it had shared intelligence with Russia beforehand. This situation led to speculation about an American hand in the attack, particularly among those in Turkey who are fond of "seeing the big picture."

There is no information beyond the fact that those captured are Tajik nationals and that ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attack. Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin's attempt to establish a link between the attackers and Ukraine was not widely accepted at first. Later, other Russian officials joined Putin. The fact that the suspects of the attack were captured near the border regions with Ukraine and Belarus is being combined with claims by Russian officials that "a window had been opened for them at the Ukrainian border." ISIS-K aside, ISIS itself and all such decentralized terrorist structures are entities open to manipulation. It is natural to question whether there was an American or Ukrainian hand behind the attack, but at this point, it has no potential to go beyond speculation for anyone other than Russian intelligence. On the other hand, terrorist attacks by such groups are not an unknown phenomenon in Russia. In fact, after the attack, many Russians went back to the bad memories of numerous terrorist attacks carried out by Chechen groups, especially from the 1990s to the 2000s. Russia had been at ease with the control it established in Chechnya through Ramzan Kadyrov. In the more distant past, it was a country targeted by mujahideen groups both for religious and ideological reasons against communism and due to the Soviet Union's attempt to occupy Afghanistan in 1979.

In more recent times, Russia has frequently been threatened by Sunni Islamist groups due to its support for the Bashar al-Assad administration in Syria, its targeting of Islamist militants, primarily ISIS members, in that country, and its development of friendly relations with Iran. Even if the US is not fond of Islamist organizations, its record is not exactly stellar when it comes to fighting them. It is no secret that the US uses such organizations, primarily Fethullah Gülen, whom it allows to reside on its own soil today, and tries to manipulate them when it cannot use them entirely. The rise of the Taliban, which is the most dominant power in Afghanistan today, also lies in the support provided by the US and its allies to the Mujahideen group to fight against the Soviets after 1979. The US only fell out with this group in 2001, when Afghanistan became a kind of terrorist haven for Al-Qaeda under the group's hospitality and served as the source of the September 11, 2001 attacks. When the US finally decided to withdraw from Afghanistan after a twenty-year occupation, it would seek to re-establish contact with the Taliban.

It must be acknowledged that Russia has more straightforward lines on this issue. Russia has often chosen to ban many Islamist groups and take measures before they directly targeted it. While FETÖ schools were banned in Russia long before they were in Turkey, Russia also defined and banned this organization as a terrorist organization through its supreme court back in 2003, showing a consistency that the US, despite being so uncomfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood, still cannot show by recognizing it as a terrorist organization. Again in Syria, while the US made a distinction between "moderate" and "radical" according to its own interests, Russia did not make such a distinction, and when it came time to face the Idlib problem, which had turned into a cauldron of pus like an appendix ready to burst, it left the burden of such a distinction on Turkey's shoulders. Russia does not refrain from repeating the warning to Turkey that "it could not fulfill this duty" whenever the opportunity arises, partly with the intention of using it as a trump card in other possible future crises with Turkey.

All of this sufficiently demonstrates that Russia does not need the manipulation of another country to be targeted by Islamist groups. On the other hand, the ISIS-K group has other motivations for targeting Russia. The area of operation of the ISIS-K group covers a vast region it calls Khorasan, consisting primarily of Afghanistan, as well as Iran, Pakistan, and Central Asia. Here, it sought to take advantage of the vacuum that emerged in Afghanistan after the US, which occupied the country in 2001, was forced to withdraw twenty years later. It entered into a fierce power struggle with the Taliban, which once again became the most dominant power in the country. Russia, which established diplomatic contact with the Taliban to protect the defense and security cooperation it was conducting with Central Asian countries, especially through the Collective Security Treaty Organization, from the dangers of a potential power vacuum after the US withdrawal, soon found itself back on the radar of this organization. In fact, when this organization targeted Americans in Afghanistan, the US also began to re-establish contact with the Taliban both to counter this organization and to make the withdrawal process smoother.

The fact that the Taliban began to have contact with both Russia and the US was used quite a bit by the ISIS-K group to discredit the Taliban and to attract new members to its own ranks from the Taliban in Afghanistan and this surrounding region. The Taliban's condemnation of this latest attack in Russia, which was claimed by ISIS-K, by accepting it as a "terrorist attack" is one of the interesting results of this power struggle between them. In the meantime, it should be remembered that the Taliban refused to use the word "terror" for the bomb attacks carried out by ISIS-K in the Iranian city of Kerman, citing the fact that it is a Western concept. This must be a strange example of how the sectarianism of these groups can take precedence over their Islamism. Returning to the subject, what can be said is that this regional struggle equation means that ISIS-K may not need the manipulation of another subject to target Russia. Nevertheless, as long as there is an organization behind this attack whose activities are not conducted openly and transparently, even suggesting that the attack consists only of its current appearance does not go beyond speculation.

What is more possible to discuss, of course, will be the repercussions of this attack and what kind of response Russia might produce. Beyond the anxiety and fear that will arise in Russian society, the political choices that will stem from this will not be predictable. As in the examples of states and regimes being pressured by sanctions, such attacks can lead to these managers being blamed by holding them responsible, as well as causing more alignment behind these managers. The statements made after the attack suggest that Russian officials may want to focus on the Ukraine war by linking Ukrainian intelligence to this attack.

The line of not letting Russia win the Ukraine war at any cost, represented by the statements of French President Emmanuel Macron, which I have been discussing for some time, served a dangerous escalation with the tendencies of some political groups in Europe, especially the Greens, not to accept the de facto exhaustion of Ukraine and, on the contrary, to elevate this conflict to the level of a systemic existential or non-existential conflict, similar to that of the Cold War. Such an escalation will eventually make dark possibilities, including the danger of nuclear weapon use, expected. Now, with this attack, even taking a break from this escalation, especially by Macron, will make a significant contribution to world peace. It is in everyone's interest for Russia and the Western world to take such a tragedy as an opportunity and put an end to this escalation.