The impact of the phenomenon of "foreign returning fighters" on security and stability in Europe
«It is important to know the reasons of the fighters
behind their joining to « Daesh » to know whether they will be criminalized or
rehabilitated intellectually and ideologically and then integrate them within the European community,
as it is difficult to rehabilitate those who have been ideologically changed,
while it is much easier to rehabilitate
those who joined the organization for economic reasons»
Introduction
Since Daesh organization declared the establishment
of its state on 10 June 2014, the most prominent phenomenon is the accession of
young European to the organization in various branches that are spread in Syria
and Iraq, and the African countries that are nominated by the estimates; to
become alternative havens for the fighters of the organization after successive
defeats in Syria and Iraq, after the battle of Mosul, Iraq, and the Reqa in
Syria. It seems that the paradox raised by the problem of European youth joining
terrorist and extremist organizations is linked to their decision to leave
their communities that are characterized by modernity, progress, civilization,
rule of law and democracy,
and the direction to Syria and Iraq to pledge
loyalty and obedience to «Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi», and the implementation of
orders issued by him or other leaders of the organization.
Which has made the phenomenon so dual that it has
affected the security and stability of the societies in whose territory armed
internal conflicts are taking place, as well as the security and stability of
the States and communities from which the foreign fighters have been launched,
especially the European countries, which constituted a major dilemma for them
in how to deal with their consequences and to achieve the difficult equation
between harmonization in maintaining the stability and security of societies
and the maintenance of rights and freedoms, which are the essence of European
democracy and its established traditions.
However, it is noteworthy that the actions taken by
European countries, whether individually or collectively through the EU
institutions, revealed that they adopted exceptional measures to protect their
security and stability, while the attention to the issues of rights and freedoms
was ranked next to these procedures, which made the confrontation of terrorist
organizations and extremism - as sources of threat to European security - a
vital issue of interest to national governments, which have tended to enact new
legislation or take proactive measures to prevent the infiltration of foreign
fighters into their territory.
In its resolution 2178 of 24 September 2014, the UN
Security Council defined foreign fighters as "those individuals who travel
to a country other than those in which they reside or possess their nationality
for the purpose of committing, organizing, preparing, participating in, or
training or receiving training in terrorist acts.
Based on the above, the study seeks to answer a
central question, which is the repercussions of the phenomenon of foreign
fighters on security and stability in Europe?
The study also raises many complementary questions
about the justification of European youth joining terrorist and extremist
organizations, the motives of this accession and its mechanisms, and the impact
of their return on the security and stability of their communities of origin.
And the effectiveness of European policies to
address the phenomenon of returning fighters? Are the traditional
interpretations, linking terrorism to poverty or terrorism and the absence of
democracy, still capable of providing appropriate approaches to the
interpretation of such a phenomenon?
The study is divided into five main points. The
first deals with the geography and characteristics of foreign fighters in
Europe, the second is the reasons behind
joining of foreign fighters from European countries to terrorist and extremist
organizations,
the third is the recruitment mechanisms for foreign
fighters; the fourth is the potential repercussions of returning foreign
fighters; the fifth point deals with European policies to counter the returned
foreign fighters.
First: Geography of foreign
fighters in Europe
In spite of international efforts to curb adherence
to terrorist and extremist organizations, notably Security Council resolution
2178, which leads to governments pursuing their citizens who join or attempt to
join terrorist organisations, this did not prevent a large number of foreign
fighters from joining the Daesh organization, but the real problem is linked to
the lack of accurate figures on the numbers of young Europeans who left their
countries and joined terrorist organisations.
But according to the Center for the Study of
Extremism and Political Violence of the University of King's College, as of
January 2015, there were nearly 2,000 Europeans distributed in European
countries, including Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Austria,
Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.
The International Counterterrorism Center (ICCT)
estimates that the total number of foreign fighters in 23 EU member states is
3,710, the majority of whom are 2838 - from only four countries: Belgium,
France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Bearing in mind that Belgium has the highest rate of
foreign fighters, and the Center also estimates that 30% of these fighters have
returned home.
And foreign returned fighters pose a potential
security threat, and 17% of the foreign fighters are female, most of them from
large urban areas or surrounding suburbs,
Many foreign fighters are living and almost the
same, which means that extremist networks operate in specific areas, and that
between 6% and 23% of these fighters are weak in social aspects, mainly
marginalized individuals or groups of young people , Is in transition in her
life and has been recruited in a relatively short period of time.
In the same text, a study prepared by Richard
Barrett, coordinator of the United Nations Monitoring Committee on Al Qaeda
Activities and the Taliban from 2004 to 2013, referred that by mid-2015 the
numbers of those joining the lines of «Daesh» in Syria and Iraq are more than 25
thousand fighters, belonging to one hundred countries, the number of non-Arab
foreign fighters in Syria alone about 12 thousand fighters, and the number of
fighters belonging to European countries About 4,000 fighters, distributed
between «Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Sweden», which is one of
the top 20 other European countries.
The National Counterterrorism Center of the United
States, issued in February 2015, estimated the number of foreign fighters in
Syria and Iraq alone to be about 20,000 belong to at least 90 countries,
according to the same report, only 3400 fighters came from the United States
and Western Europe.
Although the previous statistics differ, it is
certain that the number of foreign fighters of European origin has become a large
number that has not occured in the history of the human conflicts.
It will have its repercussions in the future,
especially with regard to the new generations who are described as
"caliphs of the caliphate", who are members of the fighters in their
lines, who bet on them as individual wolves once they return to their places of
origin.
Estimates of
foreign fighters returned from Syria and Iraq indicate that not everyone who
left his country has returned, including those who have been killed there, or
have decided to leave for a third country.
The data for the Sufan Group indicate that the
proportion of returnees of total foreign terrorists in Syria and Iraq ranges
from 20 to 30% until December 2015, they
belong to 20 countries, including three from the Middle East: Turkey,
Tunisia and Sudan. According to the latest report by the Sufan Group in October
2017, the total number of foreign fighters who left Syria and Iraq and returned
to their countries is estimated at 5700 fighters.
Second: The reasons for the
joining of foreign fighters to terrorist organizations
The involvement of a number of young Europeans in
the terrorist organizations has raised many questions about the underlying
motives, since the countries from which these youth originated, such as
Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and other countries are all among the most
prosperous and stable countries in the world, as well as the fact that they
constitute societies where modernity flourishes.
This trend among a group of young Europeans and their
joining terrorist organizations refutes the main idea that has always linked
poverty and terrorism after young men and women of social origin joined the
lines of the Daesh organization.
Therefore, the reasons that contributed to the
European youth's joining the terrorist and extremist organizations are varied,
especially the organization of the "Daesh" which led to the emergence
of the phenomenon of foreign fighters, which can be highlighted in the
following elements:
1 - The decline of the influence of major
philosophies: The accession of European youth to the decline of the impact of
the philosophies and macro-Orthodox major in Europe, and they are theories that
could have attracted large sections of young people in the past decades, but
have now gone bankrupt and can no longer answer the questions of youth, and
left them prey to emptiness and confusion, and so some of them are looking for
fullness in groups such as Daesh, where true pluralism has disappeared, though
organizational pluralism has persisted, racial, cultural and racial
distinctions - absolute distinctions - have emerged as a substitute for
economic and social distinctions.
2- The crisis of integration: The crisis of
integration suffered by some European societies is one of the most important
factors that prompted the European youth
to join the terrorist organizations. The integration crisis is linked to the
inability of second-generation immigrants to Europe, of Muslim origin, to
integrate into European societies as they feel isolated and alienated, what
produced the "ghetto" communities, which began to form as integrated
neighborhoods, that have a closed community in European societies, their main
values are
openness and communication with one another, and the failure of these young
people to integrate within society is back to their professional or academic
failure or inability to realize their dreams in societies described as
dreamland which led them to become easy prey to terrorist organizations.
3 - Economic dimensions: The economic dimensions
constitute explanatory variables for the accession of European youth to
terrorist organizations, since the high unemployment rate is driving young
people living in peripheral suburbs and poor neighborhoods - surrounding the
major European cities (Paris, Brussels, Berlin and other cities) and belonging
to low-income families - to join Daesh. Crime rates are increasing in such
areas as well as school dropouts, in addition to the lack of basic facilities,
cultural and recreational clubs, social escort centres, vocational training.
Most of the young people in slums do not find it
difficult to take on temporary jobs, trade in prohibited goods, and smuggle to
secure their daily strength, so that fragile situation entices young people to
respond to calls from terrorist organisations such as Daesh.
4- personal characteristics:
A study by the United Nations Counter-Terrorism
Bureau concluded that the success of Daesh organization in attracting young
Europeans was linked to the situation of young people who did not have many
opportunities to play influential roles in their own country and those who had
individual tragedies, so Daesh provides them with a platform to play their
missing roles.
Third: Mechanisms for
recruitment of foreign fighters
There are several mechanisms that Daesh has
succeeded in using to attract European youth, including its management of a
sophisticated online advertising campaign; where the organization published
high-tech videos, and published an electronic magazine both in Arabic and
English languages, and has a strong presence on social networking sites, which
helped him recruit young Europeans to his branches, which can be explained
below.
1- Social media: According to reliable statistics,
250 million images a day are added on Facebook, 200 million tweets are added to
Twitter, and 4 billion hits a day via YouTube, thousands of pages containing
terrorism-related content have been posted on these sites. In their book Global
Terrorism and New Media, international experts Philippe Sepp and Dana Janbek
point out that the number of websites serving terrorist groups exceeds 50,000
sites.
And that these sites are not limited to recruitment,
but also they are playing different roles in field coordination, training, and
collecting financial aid, as well as publicity activities, so it became the
means of social communication, as virtual training camps for terrorist
organizations, which has exploited it to develop its methods and techniques; to
produce video footage, and to disseminate its data that incite to murder and
chaos by promoting false slogans promoted by a "Daesh" such as
"the Islamic caliphate and salvation in this world and the
hereafter".
And that joining the Camps «Daesh» is a victory for
Islam, and uphold the banner of unification, and the empowerment of the State
of God, considering those bombings sacrifice for the sake of God, The
organization also employed the psychological dimensions in attracting
supporters; through the use of psychological and emotional methods using
religious slogans and symbols and rhetorical language methods; to hijack minds
and sight, and to impress the recipient with the power of organization, in
which youth see compensation for his helplessness and revenge for his weakness.
Young people are sent to the networks of the organization to search for a fake
championship based on undermining the other. This led the leaders of the
International Alliance to confront "Daesh".
2- Family recruitment: In recent years, a number of
terrorist attacks have been carried out in the European depth. However, the
characteristic of some of these operations, are that those who carried them out
belong to one family, the most prominent of these operations was a terrorist
attack by the brothers Sharif, Saeed Kawashi, on the French weekly Charlie
Hebdo in January 2015, which killed 12 people and injured 11 others. The
brothers Ibrahim and Salah Abdel Salam also participated in a series of
terrorist attacks on Paris in 13 November 2015; where the first blew himself up
in a restaurant during the attacks, while the second managed to escape to
Brussels, and the Belgian authorities succeeded arresting him in March 2016,
and handed him over to the French authorities for trial.
Ibrahim and Khalid al-Bakrawi carried out the
Brussels bombings of March 2016, targeting Brussels International Airport and
the Malbec metro station, killing 34 people and injuring 271 others.
3- Youth gatherings: Youth gatherings and friends'
circles represented mechanisms for the recruitment of young Europeans, in the
presence of group travel groups of friends from Britain and other European
countries,
to join the terrorist organizations in Syria and
Iraq. The most famous of these groups «British Association of Bengal», which
includes four young British, aged between 19 and 24 years, who left Britain to
join armed groups in Syria and Iraq in October 2013, they ended up joining
Daash, and were killed in the battle of Ain el Arab Kubani at the end of 2014.
Fourth: Possible repercussions for the returned
foreign fighters:
The potential repercussions of the returned foreign
fighters vary on security and stability in Europe and can be highlighted in the
following points:
1. European security: The return of foreign fighters
to Europe is linked to the direct threats to European security, including the
risk of increased violence in European countries, as a result of what will be
borne by extremist elements of fighting ideas and combat experience obtained in
the camps of "Daesh". For example, many studies point to the risk of
the return of Bosnian fighters to European security in the Balkans and the
prospects for their formation of regional extremist networks that extend to
Serbia, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo, and the immediate risks and threats it
poses to security and stability in this region. The transfer of foreign
fighters to their country and the prevention of their deployment in many
European cities will turn them into explosive time bombs, especially after
their mental disorders were increased due to the abnormal practices in the
different areas of these conflicts.
Therefore, the terrorist operations, which have
increased intensively since the emergence of the phenomenon of the returning of
foreign fighters, not limited to a specific European city, but extended to
include many European regions in order to make the greatest impact, which made
«Daesh» targets the so-called soft targets, which are easy to hit, especially
the areas of mass gatherings with minimum security measures, which enables
elements of Daesh to carry out successive attacks, and hit the maximum number
of civilian casualties, which emerged in the targeting of the Azores coast in
Nice, while watching fireworks, an area where tourists are gathering a lot.
They can carry out attacks with primitive weapons such as white weapons and
cars, the fact that was included in the records of Abohammed Adnani, leader of
the organization «Daesh» in 2014, when he confirmed the possibility of carrying
out terrorist attacks in Western countries, through knives, or stones, or run
into cars, in case of difficulty to provide weapons and explosives, which led
to the settlement of terrorism and extremism in the heart of European capitals.
2- European identity: The spread of hate culture, in
conjunction with the return of foreign fighters following the terrorist attacks
that have seen many European cities, is a direct cause of the rise of
Islamophobia. As a result of the anger of the Europeans and the influx of
racist practices, which increases the sense of minority exclusion and a sense
of cultural differences, and increases the likelihood of individuals
sympathizing with the organization or other organizations that may emerge in
the future with the Muslim communities in Europe, especially since a number of
countries have not been able to absorb Muslims within the social fabric,
despite the policies of integration towards immigrants to Europe over decades.
In France, for example, according to the Pew
Research Center in November 2015, the number of French Muslims reaches 4.7 million,
according to the lowest estimates, representing 7.5% of the total population,
as well as a large number of residents, refugees and illegal immigrants.
According to the Pew survey conducted in France in
the spring of 2015, Muslims in France face a negative view by at least 24% of
those polled by French citizens. In the same context, another poll conducted by
Ipsos in January 2013, published in the French newspaper Le Monde, revealed
that only 26% of French believe that Islam corresponds to the values of
French society, compared with 89% for Catholicism and 75% for Judaism.
Following the escalation of terrorist attacks in France, the Muslim communities
faced further isolation and repeated attacks with the rise of Islamophobia and
extreme right-wing tendencies. In this regard, in January 2015, the British
Independent newspaper reported that 26 mosques in France were subjected to
sporadic attacks following the Charlie Ebdou attack, repeated after successive
terrorist attacks in France. There is no doubt that the terrorist operations
carried out by returned foreign fighters, the growing hatred and the rise of
racist tendencies have been detrimental to the European identity, which has
represented its ability to coexist and integrate all cultural and ideological
components for decades, which is one of its most important sources of strength.
3- The rise of the extreme right-wing in Europe: The
violence carried out by the elements belonging to their countries in Europe
will strengthen the future justification for the rise of the extreme right-wing
governments.
This will force the adoption by these right-wing
governments of tougher measures towards the non-European presence in their
countries, especially those from the countries of the Middle East, and Muslims
in particular, this will lead to an increase in xenophobia, anti-immigration
and anti-immigrants and the spread of fear of Islam, all of which fuel the
spread of violence and counter-violence, which affects the stability of
European societies in the medium and long term.
4- Growing phenomenon of individual wolves: The
phenomenon of individual wolves is one of the terrorist organizations means in
implementing terrorist operations,
especially that the strategy of individual wolves is based on using sleeping or
returning cells from conflict areas, making it difficult for countries to
follow them in the state of liquidity of returning fighters. Due to the
contraction of "Daesh" control, and the decline of its areas of
influence in both Syria and Iraq as a result of the operations of the
international coalition, the organization found in support and adoption of the
attacks of individual wolves a new outlet to claim the existence of victories,
and raise morale among existing cadres, and inspire new elements to join the
organization. Therefore, the organization has always stopped behind these
attacks, claiming that it was carried out by «soldiers of the caliphate».
In a report by the International Center for
Counter-Terrorism in The Hague of the European Commission, the structure of
terrorism has undergone a shift towards decentralization through the phenomenon
of "individual wolves".
The report indicates that the results of the
analysis of social and demographic reality were the most dangerous consequences
of these terrorist operations, as it is clear that 56 of the perpetrators of
operations in Europe were citizens of the country that was subjected to these
terrorist operations, representing 73 per cent of the total number of
perpetrators. In addition, 14 per cent of those with permanent residence in the
country in which the operations were carried out, or who have normally been
from a neighboring country, do not exceed 5 per cent, with 6 per cent Of whom
illegally infiltrated into the country concerned.
The proponents
of terrorism were not new to them; as the study found that 57 per cent of them
had a criminal past and had records with the police, and only 8 per cent of
them had received direct orders from Daesh or another terrorist organization to
carry out these operations, the larger percentage, or 92 per cent, was
influenced by the organization's propaganda, or who had a vague connection with
it or who acted on their own, inspired by the lesson of the terrorists.
Fifth: European policies to deal with the phenomenon
of foreign fighters
European policies have varied over the phenomenon of
returned foreign fighters, which can be summed up in two main strategies:
1- Proactive security policies: Many European
countries have adopted policies to prosecute returned fighters found guilty of
belonging to a "Daesh" organization, committing war crimes and crimes
against humanity, using weapons of mass destruction. The most important of
these is the recognition by France - one of the most European countries exporting
foreign fighters - laws prohibiting persons suspected of traveling to areas of
conflict in Syria and Iraq from leaving the Schengen area, with measures to
tighten control of Internet communication sites; to block extremist and
terrorist groups, as well as «Germany,
Britain and Belgium» ban the activity of Islamic organizations likely to
provide facilities to travel to the hotbeds of armed conflict in Syria and
Iraq.
In this context, Germany has completed a nine-point
plan to combat terrorism and prevent the scourge of religious extremism,
including banning the wearing of the niqab, abolishing dual nationality and
imposing strict control over external funding sources of Islamic societies and
centers, and the transfer of imams of the mosques who advocates hatred between
religions, and the withdrawal of German nationality of a German who holds
another nationality if it is proven that he fought in the lines of a terrorist
organization.
In addition, Britain's tendency to give the security
apparatus the authority to withdraw passports from individuals who are proved
to be entitled to join the "Daesh" or any other extremist
organizations, The Dutch authorities also reserve the legal right to withdraw
the nationality of those convicted of acts of terrorism and violence of dual
nationality, together with the consent of the Government of Austria to a
decision to withdraw the nationality of those found to be involved in the
fighting in Syria.
In July 2015, Belgium adopted a law making travel
abroad for terrorist purposes a punishable offense. The EU interior ministers
decided at their various meetings in Brussels in early February 2015, to
mandate customs authorities to prevent extremists from traveling to or from
returning to the EU, and to allow such authorities access to databases at the
EU level.
2. Rehabilitation and community integration
policies:
In terms of rehabilitation and community integration
measures, some European governments, namely Norway and Denmark, have pursued
"returnee status" policies from Syria and Iraq; to determine the role
they have played; is it an actual accession to the Daesh or El-Nasra
organisations or a trend to defend civilians and provide humanitarian
assistance, or joining «Daesh» was
motivated by adventure, as these steps represent a key input to learn how to
absorb them when returning home.
Conclusion
Despite efforts at multiple levels to counter the
phenomenon of returning foreign fighters, there is a European failure to
contain the growing threat of security and stability, in the absence of
collective action mechanisms achieved within a fixed timetable, which was
clearly demonstrated in the outcome of the Conference of Ministers of Defense
of the International Alliance recently hosted by Rome (in February 2018) and failed to reach a final conclusion on
what to do with foreign fighters.
Therefore, there are studies confirm the importance
of finding a common definition of this threat to ensure policy coherence,
accuracy in data collection and analysis, and focus on programs to prevent
extremism and violent extremism.
Here, it is important to know why these fighters
joined "Daesh"; to know whether they will be criminalized or
rehabilitated intellectually and ideologically, and integrate them within the
European community, taking into account
the difficulty of rehabilitating the fighters, who believe in Daesh beliefs,
while facilitating the treatment of rehabilitation of those who join the
organization due to economic reasons such as poverty away from ideological
reasons, or as a result of psychological disorders and feelings of social
isolation, or those who search for excitement, and their aspiration to take
part in a center of importance in the organization, due to the false propaganda
campaigns launched by the media of the organization, who later regret joining
the networks of Daesh after discovering that their expectations are not met by
the reality of Daesh.
There is no doubt that the terrorist and extremist
groups have greatly benefited from the
space of freedom in Europe, to establish platforms to speak in the name of
religion, to spread the ideology of extremism and terrorism from the West; to
be exported to the Middle East, in which conflicts and wars are increasing,
whether through foreign fighters or through the free use of social media, to
disseminate their extremist ideas, recruit fighters and provide the necessary
funding for their activities.
This requires the need to strengthen European
efforts to confront all extremist and terrorist organizations without
exception, and the need to tighten control over financing and criminalization,
all of which will undoubtedly contribute to reducing the infiltration of
extremism and terrorism, and will reduce the main sources that produced the
phenomenon of foreign fighters
