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»

Dr. Mubarak Ahmed – An expert in regional affairs

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