Moscow rampage reveals ambition, deadly reach of ISIS successor groups

A few months before being killed in a U.S. Special Forces raid, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released a final video message that symbolically passed the torch to far-flung followers in distant lands. His self-declared caliphate had been defeated, he acknowledged, and it was now up to the terrorist group's regional chapters to carry out "revenge operations" around the world.

"Our battle today is one of attrition and stretching the enemy," Baghdadi said in the April 2019 video, released just after the fall of the Islamic State's last stronghold in Syria. "They should know that jihad is ongoing until the Day of Judgment."

Friday's bloodbath at a suburban Moscow concert hall is but the latest reminder of how effectively Baghdadi's brutal vision is being carried out. While his self-proclaimed Middle East "caliphate" is in ruins, a constellation of Islamic State regional affiliates is gaining strength in many parts of the globe, fueled by a mix of traditional grievances as well as new ones, including the war in Gaza, counterterrorism officials and experts say.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/25/isis-k-moscow-terror/