A terrifying threat: a new generation of Islamist terrorists has targeted Europe

“Ticking time bombs” – following the words of the jihadist terrorist attack in Vienna on 2 November, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz described in these words what the thousands of EU citizens who have served in the army of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and fought in Iraq and is now returning to Europe after the fall of the ISIS caliphate last March.

Even before the terrorist attacks in Vienna and the jihadist attacks in Dresden, Paris and Nice in October, many had warned, such as Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s counterterrorism coordinator, that ISIS fighters were returning to Europe after the fall of the caliphate. of the Islamic State. it will mean for European countries. Although the terrorist attacks in Western Europe in recent weeks have been perpetrated by ISIS fighters who did not return, the question of the future of European ISIS militants has come to the fore in the context of current Islamist terror attacks.

According to the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, some 5,000 Europeans have joined ISIS troops fighting in Iraq or Syria in previous years. A quarter have already returned to Europe, another quarter have fallen on the battlefield and others may commit terrorist acts in the future by returning to their own country or in third countries, Gilles de Kerchove pointed out in an August newspaper interview. .

The hotbed of ISIS propaganda is the al-Hol prisoner and refugee camp

Some of the ISIS fighters who are still in Syria may return home escaped from prison camps. The Syrian Kurdish authorities have recently decided to release 15,000 people from al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria after the health situation in the already overcrowded camp worsened due to rising coronavirus infections. The camp was packed with some 70,000 people, mostly women and children, who lost their homes as a result of the Syrian civil war. However, thousands of Islamic State fighters and relatives are also detained in the camp. The Kurdish authority operating the camp has previously warned that it cannot take responsibility for the people housed there indefinitely.

The poor conditions in the countryside are a hotbed for Islamic State propaganda. According to Hans-Jakob Schindler, director of the think tank of the Project Against Extremism, there are a significant number of residents of the al-Hol camp who have not only de-radicalized but also strengthened their radical ideological thinking. It is also reported that many women have become radicalized in the camp, and there are reports that several radicals have left the camp in the past to pay the guards.

Transforming the role of ISIS

ISIS, which proclaimed its caliphate in June 2014 in Mosul, extended its sovereignty to significant areas of Iraq and Syria for years, but also lost its last territorial enclave in March 2019. Then, in October 2019, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdad, also died in an American attack. The remaining ISIS soldiers in Syria and Iraq are currently fighting their scattered numbers, with Vladimir Voronkov, the UN Under-Secretary-General for the Coordination of Counter-Terrorism, numbering 10,000.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently warned that there is a danger that the Islamic State, which has been expelled from Syria and Iraq, will revive in Afghanistan if NATO troops withdraw early from the Central Asian country. Under the decree of outgoing US President Donald Trump, the number of US soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq will be reduced from 2,500 to 2,500 by January 15. 2,000 American soldiers are being withdrawn from Afghanistan and 500 from Iraq.

After heavy losses, ISIS is trying to reorganize itself, and the new leadership (Baghdad’s successor became Abu Ibrahim al-Kuraisi) continues with the goal of organizing or inciting terrorist acts in Western Europe. However, according to experts, it is unlikely that the ISIS leadership in the Middle East can currently plan and coordinate such a comprehensive and coordinated series of European killings as the one that took place in 2015-2016 in France. The most serious of these was the series of murders of November 2015, when Islamic State terrorists carried out coordinated attacks in several places in Paris (restaurants, cafes, the Bataclan concert hall and the Stade de Framce stadium), killing 131 people. In an attack in Brussels in March 2016, three Belgian ISIS suicide bombers blew themselves up at the airport and in a metro station, killing 32 people.

After the 2015-2016 period, less attention has been paid to Islamist extremists in Europe in recent years, following a significant decrease in the number of attacks or attempted jihadist attacks. According to Europol, there were 21 jihadist attacks in the EU in 2019, compared to 24 in 2018 and 33 in 2017. Of the 21 attacks last year, 4 failed, 14 were prevented, so they were able to carry out “only” three .

Instead of the coordinated series of assassinations organized by ISIS, similar to those of the four or five years, the counterterrorism agencies of Western Europe are relying on the actions of radicalized individuals who are being incited to terrorism by the weakened ISIS via the Internet. .

The authorities have yet to reveal any direct contact between the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Western Europe in recent weeks and the Islamic State headquarters in the Middle East. The author of the four deadly attacks in Vienna, Kujtim Fejzulaj, a Macedonian of Albanian descent who was born and raised in Austria, was reported in social media posts prior to the attack that he had sworn in as head of the Islamic State. ISIS has also claimed responsibility for the attack, but authorities are still investigating whether the Islamic State directly controlled the attack or was simply an instigator.

All that is known about the Chechen Islamist who beheaded a French high school history teacher for presenting cartoons of Mohamed in class on October 16 is that he was allegedly linked to a Syrian Islamic State fighter. In addition to a photo of the history teacher’s murder, the Tunisian attacker, who committed the deferred assassination attempt in Nice on October 29, killed three photos of the Islamic State.

And the Islamist Dresden attacker, who delayed two people in early October and inflicted fatal injuries on one, was previously convicted of recruiting for ISIS. The man, who arrived in Germany from Syria five years ago, was released five days before the delay.

Lone offenders: a new generation of jihadists

A common feature of the jihadist killings of recent weeks, as opposed to the coordinated terrorist acts carried out by smaller groups in 2015-2016, is that the attacks are carried out by lone perpetrators whose actions are presumably only inspired and not directly ordered by the Islamic State. Last year, almost all the attacks carried out or failed in the EU were committed by lone terrorists.

The former head of the French secret services, Bernard Squarcini, sees France now facing a new generation of Islamist extremists. He said tracking people unrelated to terrorist organizations poses a new challenge for intelligence services. While the perpetrators of new types of attacks are considered lone wolves, that doesn’t mean they don’t interact with others on social media. According to Squarcini, the secret services should now focus on tracking communications through social media.

Islamists Who Want To Join ISIS Are Released From Prison

According to the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) in London, it is a serious problem that European citizens arrested for attempting to join the Islamic State are released from prison around the same time after a significant number of them have been released. sentenced to roughly similar penalties. received. This means that the authorities must share their attention in monitoring and tracking many potentially dangerous people.

The terrorist who carried out the attack on Vienna was also a jihadist who had previously tried to reach Syria to join the Islamic State. In April 2019, Kujtim Fejulul was heard by the Turkish authorities at the age of 18. In Austria, he was sentenced to 22 months in prison and, after eight months, he was released last December due to his young age. There have been no serious terrorist attacks in Austria in recent years, but the phenomenon of radicalization has been observed among young Muslims. In terms of foreign fighters per capita deployed in Syria or Iraq, Austria was the second largest emitter from the EU after Belgium.

According to ICSR data, in France, of the 196 convicted terrorists who were behind bars for crimes related to the escape to Syria, 45 have been released from prison this year, 57 next and 46 in 2022. In France, last year A total of more than 200 arrests were made for jihadist terrorism, representing half of all such cases in the EU. France, the largest Muslim community in Western Europe, with some six million Muslims, has 8,000 Islamist radicals who could pose a potential threat.

Al-Qaeda doesn’t want to be left behind either

In addition to the Islamic State, al-Qaeda also aims to remain a relevant player in the competitive world of jihadist organizations. As is well known, the January 2015 attack on the editorial board of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which published cartoons of Mohamed, was carried out by two Islamists linked to al-Qaeda. And one of the main focal points of the attacks in recent weeks has been Charlie Hebdo’s reissuing of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on the grounds that a lawsuit was filed against his editorial team five years ago in connection with an attack involving 12 dead.

Amid widespread outrage in the Islamic world following the resurgence of the Muhammad cartoons, al-Qaeda declared war on France and called on the lone perpetrators to carry out terrorist acts in Europe. The terrorist organization also threatened the weekly Charlie Hebdo that similar actions to the 2015 attack would be carried out against it. In addition to the old newsroom of the weekly in Paris, on September 25, two people were delayed by an extremist Islamist who had come to France from Pakistan a few years ago.

Cover Image Source: Michael Gruber / Getty Images