With mosque attack in quiet Oman, a fragmented Islamic State group aims to show it can still strike

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- At the corner of the Arabian Peninsula, Oman has long been seen as one of the safest — if reclusive — countries in the Middle East, spared militant violence that has struck elsewhere.

An attack on a Shiite mosque in the capital this week that killed five worshippers shook that image and underscored the radical Islamic State group's strategy of striking far and wide years after its defeat in Iraq and Syria.

Omani police said Thursday that the three gunmen in the attack — who were killed in a subsequent gunfight — were Omani citizens, all brothers. It was a sign the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the mosque storming, is working to recruit in the sultanate, whose nationals have rarely joined international jihadi groups.

Monday night's attack was the latest instance of IS inflicting surprise mayhem in a country where it doesn't have a significant presence. In January, IS claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 84 people in Shiite-majority Iran. In Russia in March, gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall, leaving more than 130 dead.

IS has “mastered the art of shock tactics,” said Fawaz Gerges, an expert on jihadi groups whose 2016 book “ISIS: A History” traced the rise of the group.

Such attacks “are designed to show its resilience, that it still exists” after a U.S-led coalition shattered its hold in Iraq and Syria, Gerges said.

Oman, Russia and Iran all are outside the areas where IS has its main branches and where its fighters continue to wage low-level but deadly insurgencies – the Sahel region of Africa, Afghanistan, Yemen and its core in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq and Syria, IS fighters hiding in the desert border regions are trying to “reconstitute” with stepped-up attacks, the U.S. Central Command said Wednesday. The number of its attacks – so far 153 this year – is on track to double the number from the previous year, it said.

IS “has to continue these types of attack to show to its followers that they are working on their apocalyptic vision of establishing a long-term caliphate,” said Myles B. Caggins, a retired Army colonel who served as spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition that fought IS in Iraq and Syria. He is now a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute.

The Islamic State group exploded onto the world stage 10 years ago when its fighters captured a large swath of Iraq and Syria and declared a “caliphate.” At its peak, it ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom, and imposed a virulently radical version of Islamic law, inflicting harsh punishments of Muslims considered apostates, killing thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority and enslaving thousands of the community’s women and children.

The U.S. coalition battled IS for years, finally shattering it in Iraq and 2017 and in Syria in 2019.

Gerges said the group is reshaping itself as a dangerous “transnational organization.” It is fragmented, with little central command of its various branches – but each of those affiliates is working to expand, he said.

Shiites have long been a target of IS, which considers them heretics. But Oman, on the southeastern edge of the Arabian peninsula, was a startling target.

The sultanate maintains a strict neutrality, often acting as a go-between for Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia and its regional rival, Shiite-majority Iran. Most of its population are Ibadi Muslims, a more liberal offshoot of Islam predating the Sunni-Shiite split.

Peace and stability are a top priority of Oman's government, and the country's tightly controlled state media hardly mentioned Monday night’s attack and has given no details on the investigation.

Gunmen stormed the Imam Ali in the capital Muscat, packed with worshippers holding special prayers on the eve of the Shiite mourning festival of Ashoura. The festival marks the 7th-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, at Karbala in modern-day Iraq. Many of those inside were Pakistanis, who make up a large number of the nearly 2 million migrants who help power Oman’s economy working in construction and other fields.

One unidentified Pakistani worshipper at the mosque told the Times of Oman, an English-language daily, that the attack and subsequent shoot-out with Omani police lasted an hour and a half.

During the attack, some Pakistanis inside called the Pakistani ambassador in Muscat giving information that helped the police in their counter-assault, the ambassador Imran Ali said in a post on the social media platform X.

Four Pakistanis and an Indian were killed, along with the three attackers, according to their governments and Omani police. At least 28 people were wounded, Omani police said.

Gerges said the Oman, Moscow and Iran attacks were a sign of IS branches seeking out “targets of opportunity” where they can recruit a small number of people. The Oman shooting may have been planned by the IS affiliate in neighboring Yemen, he said.

IS has become “truly transnational. It has the ability to recruit local militants, whether from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, former Soviet Union or the Sahel,” he said. It’s not a huge organization with mass recruits, but its message of “hyper-sectarian, genocidal” hatred of Shiites finds an appeal among a few radicals whose attacks have a “multiplier effect,” resounding beyond the group’s current size, he said.

Meanwhile, the main IS affiliates work to survive by finding pockets of instability. Its Afghanistan branch appears to be the strongest, exploiting weak control by the Taliban to carry out attacks on its security forces in regions near the Pakistani border, Gerges said.

In Iraq and Syria, it has succeeded in increasing its steady attacks, mainly against Syrian security forces and to a lesser degree against the better organized, U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish and Iraqi forces.

But the international campaign against IS has severely hampered its capabilities, Caggins said, not just militarily but also by cracking down on its finances and ability to spread propaganda on social media.

It is more difficult now for it to move fighters and money between countries – but the recent attacks show it does still have some capability, he said.

Still, the group “likely will remain incapable of taking and holding territory,” said Caggins.

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Keath reported from Cairo.