For the first time, ISKP has started to mount mass casualty attacks outside its normal operational area of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Its first major external attack occurred on January 3, 2024 in Iran, where two ISKP bombers carried out twin suicide bombings in Kerman, Iran, during an event commemorating the death of Quds Force leader General Qasem Soleimani (who was killed in 2020 in Baghdad by a US drone strike).

The attack, which killed 94 Shia, was ISKP's first beyond the borders of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

The March 22 Moscow attack was ISKP's second successful attack this year, killing more than 139 people at the Crocus City Hall. At least four Tajik gunmen launched an attack with automatic weapons and petrol bombs, killing 139.

Although IS claimed the attack without specific attribution to ISKP, the background of the Central Asian attackers and previous warnings of ISKP attacks on Russia suggest the attack was the group's first successful attack beyond Afghanistan's immediate neighbours.

Despite all efforts to destroy IS in Iraq and Syria, it has managed to survive there - albeit much diminished. It has however continued to prosper in Africa and South Asia, and online.

ISKP is a regional branch of IS active in South-Central Asia, primarily Afghanistan, where it aims to create a Sunni caliphate. In furtherance of that objective, it has conducted numerous high-profile attacks against civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Some of its notable attacks include a suicide bombing in August 2021 that killed 13 American military personnel and at least 169 Afghans at Kabul airport during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, twin suicide bombings in July 2018 that killed at least 131 at election rallies in Pakistan, twin bombings in July 2016 that killed 97 Hazara (Shia) protestors in downtown Kabul, and a suicide bombing in July 2023 that killed 63 at a political rally in Khar, Pakistan.

While the majority of ISKP attacks have occurred in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, the group claims to have launched rockets into Afghanistan's northern neighbours, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

ISKP's beginnings can be traced back to 2015 following the despatch of Afghan and Pakistani militants from al-Qaeda-aligned groups to the Syrian civil war.

They returned to the region with instructions and funding to recruit fighters for a branch of the Islamic State in the Khorasan region. (Khorasan is a vast area comprising northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan.)

Today, ISKP is engaged in a protracted, low-intensity conflict with the Taliban government. Although the Taliban and ISKP co-operated against US and allied forces, since the US withdrawal ISKP has shifted its focus to destabilising and overthrowing the Taliban regime in order to establish its Islamic caliphate.

The Taliban response has been largely ineffectual, allowing ISKP to expand; it now controls large areas of northern Afghanistan.

There have been many IS-inspired terrorist incidents and plots in Australia since IS was founded in 2013, but fortunately none resulting in mass casualties.

There has, however, been the potential for mass casualties. Back in 2017 an IS-inspired plot to bomb an Etihad flight out of Sydney was thwarted by Australian security intelligence assisted by Israel's Unit 8200, a sigint branch of the military intelligence agency Aman.

Had the plot succeeded against the Abu Dhabi-bound aircraft, there would potentially have been more than 400 deaths. (In October 2015 IS had succeeded in destroying a Russian passenger aircraft using an explosive device. It downed a Metrojet airliner flying from Egypt to Russia, resulting in 224 deaths.)

Fortunately, it would be much more difficult for IS attackers to enter Australia to carry out a terrorist attack than Western Europe, with its porous borders and ready access to automatic weapons.

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Attacks like the recent Moscow attack may however inspire local IS-inspired individuals to attempt a mass casualty attack here.

Probably a greater danger for Australians will be attending sports events and concerts in Western Europe. IS and ISKP will continue to view mass gatherings as desirable and accessible targets and will try to motivate local sympathisers to conduct these attacks.

They will also try to infiltrate experienced ISKP terrorists to undertake them - like the ones who conducted the Moscow attack.