With the attack on a mosque in quiet Oman, the fragmented Islamic State wants to show that it can still strike.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Located at the far end of the Arabian Peninsula, Oman has long been considered one of the safest – if most isolated – countries in the Middle East, spared the militant violence seen elsewhere.

An attack on a Shiite mosque in the capital this week, in which five believers were killed, shattered this image and underlined the strategy of the radical terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS) to strike on a wide scale, even years after its defeat in Iraq and Syria.

Omani police said on Thursday that the three perpetrators of the attack – who were killed in the ensuing gunfight – were all Omani citizens, a sign that Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for storming the mosque, is trying to recruit new members in the sultanate as its nationals have rarely joined international jihadist groups.

Monday evening’s attack was the latest case of a surprise, chaotic IS attack in a country where it has little presence. In January, IS claimed responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 84 people in Shiite-majority Iran. In March, armed men in Russia attacked a concert hall in Moscow, leaving more than 130 dead.

IS has “mastered the art of shock tactics,” said Fawaz Gerges, an expert on jihadist groups who traced the group’s rise in his 2016 book “ISIS: A History.”

Such attacks “are intended to demonstrate their resilience, their continued existence” after a US-led coalition shattered their power in Iraq and Syria, Gerges said.

Oman, Russia and Iran all lie outside the areas where IS has its main bases and where its fighters continue to wage small but deadly insurgencies – the Sahel region of Africa, Afghanistan, Yemen and its heartland in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq and Syria, IS fighters hiding in the desert border regions are trying to “regroup” with increased attacks, the US Central Command said on Wednesday. The number of attacks – 153 so far this year – is expected to double from last year, it said.

ISIS “needs to continue such attacks to show its followers that it is working toward its apocalyptic vision of establishing a long-term caliphate,” said Myles B. Caggins, a retired Army colonel who served as a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. He is now a senior fellow at the New Lines Institute.

The Islamic State burst onto the world stage ten years ago when its fighters conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria and declared a “caliphate.” At its peak, it controlled an area half the size of Britain and imposed a highly radical version of Islamic law. Muslims deemed to be apostates were harshly punished, thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority were killed, and thousands of women and children from the community were enslaved.

The US coalition fought against IS for years and finally defeated it in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019.

According to Gerges, the group is forming into a dangerous “transnational organization.” It is fragmented and has little central control over its various branches – but each of these branches is working to expand, he said.

Shiites have long been a target of ISIS, which views them as heretics. But Oman, located on the southeastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, was a surprising target.

The Sultanate maintains strict neutrality and often acts as a mediator between the Sunni empire of Saudi Arabia and its regional rival, Shiite-dominated Iran. The majority of the population consists of Ibadis, a more liberal branch of Islam that existed before the Sunni-Shiite split.

Peace and stability are top priorities for the government of Oman. The country’s tightly controlled state media barely mentioned Monday night’s attack and did not provide any details about the investigation.

Gunmen stormed the Imam Ali in the capital Muscat, which was packed with worshippers holding special prayers on the eve of the Shiite mourning festival of Ashura, which commemorates the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson Hussein in the 7th century in Karbala, in what is now Iraq. Many of those in attendance were Pakistanis, who make up a large proportion of the nearly 2 million migrants who work in construction and other sectors to fuel Oman’s economy.

An unidentified Pakistani worshipper at the mosque told the English-language newspaper Times of Oman that the attack and subsequent shootout with Omani police lasted an hour and a half.

During the attack, some Pakistanis inside called the Pakistani ambassador in Muscat and passed on information that helped police in their counterattack, Ambassador Imran Ali said in a post on social media platform X.

According to government and Omani police reports, four Pakistanis and one Indian were killed in addition to the three attackers. At least 28 people were injured, Omani police said.

Gerges said the attacks in Oman, Moscow and Iran were a sign that IS affiliates were looking for “convenient targets” where they could recruit small numbers of people. The shooting in Oman may have been planned by the IS affiliate in neighboring Yemen, he said.

IS has become “truly transnational. It is able to recruit local fighters, whether from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, the former Soviet Union or the Sahel,” he said. While it is not a huge organization with mass recruits, its message of “hypersectarian, genocidal” hatred of Shiites resonates with some radicals whose attacks have a “multiplier effect” that goes beyond the group’s current size, he said.

Meanwhile, IS’s main affiliates are trying to survive by seeking out unstable areas. The Afghan branch appears to be the strongest, taking advantage of the Taliban’s weak control to carry out attacks on IS security forces in regions near the Pakistani border, Gerges said.

In Iraq and Syria, IS has managed to increase its attacks, primarily against Syrian security forces and, to a lesser extent, against the better-organized, US-backed Syrian Kurdish and Iraqi forces.

But the international campaign against IS has severely hampered its ability to act, says Caggins, not only militarily but also financially and by limiting its ability to spread propaganda on social media.

It has now become more difficult for the terrorist militia to transport fighters and money between countries. However, the recent attacks show that the terrorist militia still has a certain ability, he said.

Nevertheless, the group will “probably continue to fail to capture and hold territory,” Caggins said.

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Keath reported from Cairo.