This comes in the wake of a foiled plot by a 19-year-old man who had pledged allegiance to the group, intending to wreak havoc at a series of Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna.
According to ABC News, Vorokov, the UN undersecretary for counterterrorism, stated on Thursday that the ISIS-K threat has "regrettably" become apparent in Vienna. This follows the arrest of three suspects, leading to the cancellation of Swift's concerts. Vorokov emphasized the growing strength and influence of the ISIS affiliate, describing it as "the greatest external terrorist threat to the continent."
The ISIS-K group, based in Afghanistan and named after the Khorasan region encompassing parts of Central and South Asia, has been responsible for several deadly attacks. These include a concert venue bombing in Moscow in March, which claimed at least 140 lives, and bombings in Iran in January, resulting in over 100 fatalities.
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John Cohen, ABC News contributor and former acting undersecretary for intelligence at the US Department of Homeland Security, described the current threat environment as "the most complex, dynamic and, quite frankly, dangerous" he has encountered in his over 40 years in law enforcement and homeland security.
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Lorenzo Vidino, director of the George Washington University's Program on Extremism, highlighted two patterns in the extremist ideology affecting Europe. The first is the decreasing age of would-be attackers, with those arrested in connection with the Swift concert plot being 17, 18, and 19 years old. Vidino referred to this as "a teenage dominated scene."
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The second pattern is the emergence of ISIS-K as the terrorist organization's most potent arm. Vidino noted that the group operates through branches worldwide, but ISIS-K has been the most successful and consistently active in the West, planning terrorist attacks.
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Austrian authorities revealed that the suspects were radicalized online, with chemical substances and technical devices discovered at the 19-year-old's residence. Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of Austria's Directorate of State Security and Intelligence, stated that the individual was "clearly radicalized in the direction of the Islamic State and thinks it is right to kill infidels." He added that an increasing number of young people are being radicalized through ISIS and al-Qaeda videos.
ABC News reported that US intelligence discovered a pledge to ISIS-K by at least one of the suspects in early July on the messaging app Telegram. This information was passed on to Austria, continuing a pattern of the US sharing intelligence about potential terror threats with European allies.
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Cohen, a former counterterrorism coordinator at DHS, noted that the Vienna plot aligns with the concerns of law enforcement and security officials over recent years. Terrorists have learned to exploit the internet to disseminate content designed to inspire and inform terrorist attacks across Europe and the United States.
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ISIS, which once controlled significant territory in Syria and Iraq, ruling over as many as 12 million people, has seen its footprint significantly reduced by 2019 due to American and allied counterinsurgency operations. However, Cohen stated that ISIS has adapted its tactics, using online content to influence disaffected, angry young people worldwide.
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This "highly sophisticated media operation," according to Cohen, continues to be a potent force, particularly in empowering the regional branches of ISIS, despite the group's diminished conventional capabilities compared to a decade ago.
