Turan Research Center

On November 26, two West Virginia National Guard soldiers were shot just blocks from the White House in what officials describe as a targeted ambush. President Donald Trump labeled it an “act of terror” and ordered a federal investigation.

The facts of the attack are still emerging, and there is no evidence yet that it is linked to any foreign organization. What it already shows, however, is how abruptly terrorism can return to the center of American politics.

That reality has been ignored during Washington’s recent reengagement with Central Asia. On November 6, President Trump hosted the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan at the White House for the tenth C5+1 summit. The agenda was dominated by critical minerals, rare earths, and the “Middle Corridor” trade route that bypasses Russia.

After a decade of very limited engagement, treating Central Asia as a serious economic and energy partner is an important shift. So far, however, the revived C5+1 has placed more visible emphasis on critical minerals and connectivity than on the one area where the region is already central to Western security: the rise of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K. For this new economic partnership to be truly durable, it will need to be matched by a more developed track of joint security measures against these shared threats.

Central Asia and the New Wave of ISIS-K attacks

Over the past two years, ISIS-K has turned from a largely Afghan-focused insurgent group into one of the most active external operations hubs in the Islamic State network. A striking share of the operatives involved are from Central Asia, especially Tajikistan.

The clearest example is Russia. On March 22, 2024, four gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall complex outside Moscow, shooting concertgoers and setting the venue on fire. The attack killed around 150 people and injured more than 600, making it one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern Russian history. ISIS-K claimed responsibility, and Russian reporting has identified the four alleged gunmen as Tajik citizens recruited via online channels while living as migrant workers in Russia.

Just weeks earlier, on January 3, 2024, a commemorative gathering in Kerman, Iran, near the grave of Qasem Soleimani, was hit by twin suicide bombings that killed more than 100 people. The Islamic State soon claimed responsibility, and U.S. intelligence later assessed that ISIS-K organized the attack from Afghanistan. Iranian officials said at least one bomber and a key organizer were Central Asian, including a Tajik national.

Europe has seen the same pattern in disrupted plots. German prosecutors have charged a cell of Tajik, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen nationals with forming an ISIS-K network and scouting targets in Germany and other Western European countries. Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, French officials named ISIS-K the primary terrorist threat to the ames, and security services stepped up engagement with Central Asian communities in France in response to earlier attacks by Tajik ISIS-K supporters in Iran and Russia.

Recent events underline how quickly this threat is evolving. On January 20th, the group claimed an attack in Kabul that it framed as targeting Chinese interests, and pro-ISIS-K media channels followed by pushing anti-China messaging in multiple regional languages. On January 27th, Azerbaijani authorities said they disrupted a plot in Baku linked to ISIS-K that targeted a foreign embassy. These episodes reinforce the wider pattern. ISIS-K is not only projecting outward from Afghanistan but also seeking opportunities across the broader region.

The U.S. security agencies monitor the group’s external operations with increasing attention. The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment lists ISIS-K as the Islamic State affiliate most focused on plotting attacks against the West, and U.S. defense and intelligence assessments increasingly frame affiliates in Afghanistan as among the most serious foreign terrorist threats to the homeland. Congressional testimony on South and Central Asia now routinely highlights Tajik and other Central Asian nationals in ISIS-K related investigations in Europe and the United States.

In other words, the pattern is already visible. Many of the most consequential ISIS-K attacks and plots in the last two years have either been carried out by Central Asian militants or built on recruitment pipelines that run through Central Asia, Russia, and Turkey and then extend into Europe.

Regional Factors Shaping ISIS-K’s Reach into Central Asia

Some of the ingredients are not entirely new. The Tajik civil war in the 1990s, the emergence of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the later travel of a number of Central Asian nationals to ISIS in Syria and Iraq created small but durable transnational linkages and security legacies. None of this means Central Asia is predisposed to extremism, and the overwhelming majority of Central Asians rejected these movements. But the history matters in a narrow sense. When contemporary drivers align, especially migration-related marginalization and online propaganda, external actors like ISIS-K can more easily activate existing networks and narratives.

Recently, several structural trends have created a set of vulnerabilities for ISIS-K recruitment and external operations.

First, the security landscape in Afghanistan has changed in ways that favor ISIS-K. Since the Taliban takeover in 2021, ISIS-K has lost territory inside Afghanistan but preserved much of its leadership and has shifted toward a strategy that prioritizes spectacular external attacks over holding ground. UN monitoring and independent analysis describe the group maintaining cells in northeastern Afghanistan, building an external operations wing, and using remote areas to train recruits and coordinate attacks in Russia, Iran, and Europe. The Taliban do fight ISIS-K, but they have limited capacity to police remote provinces or run a modern intelligence service. That creates pockets of space where ISIS-K can plan abroad, facing far less pressure than it did during the height of the U.S. presence.

Second, Tajikistan is especially vulnerable. It is one of the poorest states in the former Soviet Union, with a porous border with Afghanistan and a political system that fails to deliver broad-based growth. Remittances from migrant workers in Russia make up a large share of GDP, migrants comprising around 25% of the total workforce. [JA1] After the Crocus City Hall attack, Russian authorities intensified scrutiny of Central Asian migrant communities through stepped-up checks, detentions, and deportations. Economic dependence on migration, backlash in host countries, and weak governance at home all create exactly the kind of marginalization that ISIS-K recruiters exploit. Analysts and journalists who have traced the backgrounds of militants involved in Moscow and Kerman have repeatedly found patterns of low-wage work in Russia, social isolation, and exposure to online propaganda in Tajik and Russian.

Third, ISIS-K has built a tailored propaganda machine for Central Asians. The group’s media arms produce materials in Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz, as well as Russian, distributed through encrypted channels rather than high-visibility global platforms. The broader Middle East context shapes the information environment that ISIS-K exploits. Europol assessesthat the conflict in Gaza has amplified terrorist and violent extremist narratives inside the EU, driving radicalization and mobilization, and that propaganda around the conflict has been instrumentalized across the ideological spectrum. A recent UN briefing and independent monitoring highlight how ISIS-K has intensified recruitment efforts directed at Tajikistan and other Central Asian states, including outreach to disillusioned Taliban fighters and members of local extremist groups such as Jamaat Ansarullah. This shift has made radicalization less dependent on travel to Syria or Iraq. Instead, individuals can move from grievance to connection with ISIS-K networks almost entirely online, while physically located in Russia, Turkey, Central Asia, or Europe.

Fourth, regional powers are distracted. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine has drained Moscow’s military and diplomatic bandwidth, while its response to Crocus City Hall has focused more on suggesting links to Ukraine and intensifying scrutiny against migrants. Iran is consumed by internal unrest and regional confrontation. China’s role in Central Asia remains primarily economic. That leaves Central Asian governments facing a transnational terrorist network with fewer reliable security partners and limited resources of their own.

C5+1: Big Economic Deals, a Quiet Security Gap

Against that backdrop, the 2025 C5+1 summit in Washington was a turning point. It showed that the United States is treating Central Asia as more than a logistical appendage to Afghanistan or a buffer between Russia and China. The summit produced major economic announcements, including new American-backed investments in Kazakhstan’s tungsten and uranium sectors and expanded cooperation on critical minerals and transit routes. Official statements and most media coverage framed the summit as a geoeconomic success. The Trump administration presented Central Asia as a “win-win” partner that can help diversify U.S. supply chains away from China and Russia while benefiting from American investment and technology. What was largely missing in the public agenda was any ambitious, visible initiative on counterterrorism.  Security was mentioned, but there was no flagship program on border management, no new joint mechanism focused specifically on ISIS-K networks, and no public signal that Washington views Central Asia’s role in the emerging terrorism landscape as a strategic priority on par with minerals and corridors. That is a notable shift from earlier phases of U.S. engagement in the region, when the U.S. Central Asia relationship was primarily organized around security cooperation linked to Afghanistan. In the years after 9/11, geography elevated Central Asia’s strategic value, and several regional governments supported U.S. and NATO operations through basing and transit arrangements, making counterterrorism and related security coordination the core frame for engagement. That may reflect understandable caution. U.S. policymakers do not want to be pulled back into Afghanistan or to revive the image of a boundless war on terror. But treating Central Asia as mainly a commercial opportunity at the very moment when Tajikistan has become central to ISIS-K’s external strategy might create a strategic blind spot.

Aligning Security and Connectivity

There are three ways the United States could effectively engage the region on security.

1. Make ISIS-K and Central Asia a formal, standing priority in C5+1. The U.S. and the five Central Asian governments should restore and upgrade a dedicated working group on terrorism and violent extremism within this framework. Its focus should be narrow and practical: mapping ISIS-K networks that connect Afghanistan to Central Asia, Russia, Turkey, and Europe, sharing information on Central Asian militants involved in recent attacks and plots, and pooling analysis of online propaganda in Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz language spaces. That would send two important messages. To Central Asian leaders, it would show that Washington takes their security concerns seriously. To U.S. agencies, it would create a regular venue for integrating regional partners into a threat picture that now directly affects Europe and, potentially, the United States.

2. Focus assistance on the specific gaps ISIS-K exploits. Central Asian governments do not need large American bases. They need better tools in three areas: Borders, especially along the Afghan frontier, and key transit nodes linking Central Asia to Russia and Turkey. Data and watch listing systems, so that high-risk individuals who move between Afghanistan, Central Asia, Russia, Turkey, and the EU do not disappear into bureaucratic cracks. Investigative capacity, so that terrorism cases are built on evidence and networks can be mapped, instead of relying on mass arrests that fuel resentment. These are relatively low-cost investments compared with traditional military deployments, yet they can significantly complicate ISIS-K logistics and recruitment.

3. Link security to the human terrain of Central Asian migration. Much of the ISIS-K story runs through Tajik and other Central Asian migrants whose grievances are rooted in humiliation, hopelessness at home, and online propaganda. A credible U.S. approach should therefore include support for programs that work directly with Central Asian communities in Russia, Turkey, and Europe, as well as with young people in Tajikistan and neighboring states. That includes legal assistance and labor rights work that reduces exploitation, educational and economic opportunities that give alternatives to recruitment, and locally grounded counter-narratives in Central Asian languages. Much of this can be funded out of existing democracy, governance, and development budgets if Washington explicitly defines preventing violent extremism as part of its development mandate.

None of these steps will fully eliminate ISIS-K, and Central Asia should not be portrayed as a region defined by terrorism alone. The point is narrower. ISIS-K’s external operations have increasingly relied on facilitation networks that touch Central Asia, and that has direct implications for European security and for U.S. interests. A C5+1 agenda centered on minerals and connectivity will be more durable if it is paired with a practical, partner-led security track focused on intelligence sharing, border integrity, and investigative capacity. Aligning the economic and security pillars in this way reduces the risk of strategic surprise and helps ensure that the Middle Corridor is built on resilience.

Ali Mammadov is a PhD researcher in political science at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and the Managing Editor of the Center for Security Policy Studies. His work focuses on military alliances, multipolarity, and the strategic behavior of rising and middle powers, with analysis appearing in the Atlantic Council and The National Interest and cited by the Financial Times and the U.S. Congressional Research Service.