International report reveals the future of ISIS in Europe

Mouaz Mohammad

The Netherlands-based European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies published a report on Friday, November 15 entitled “ISIS: What will be its activity in Europe?”, which discussed the future of the organization on the continent and the possibility of terrorist attacks there, especially with the return of foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq.

ISIS: the actual threat

According to the center, terrorism remained a major threat to security in EU member states in 2018. Terrorist attacks were carried out in Paris, Liege and Strasbourg, leaving ISIS the de facto and current threat, especially after the discussion about foreign fighters returning to their countries of origin and the difficulty of controlling their flow and monitoring their movements accurately.

The report said that the level of ISIS terrorist activity in Europe has declined. It pointed out that the number of deaths fell by 75% from 827 in 2016 to 204 in 2017, noting that preliminary data for 2018 indicate that this trend will continue.

Europe has gotten better from the impact of terrorism and recorded a significant decrease in the number of deaths caused by it, despite the threat of returnees and cyber extremism, the center pointed out. However, the number of terrorist incidents has risen to 282 since then.

According to the report, the decrease in these terrorist attacks in Western Europe suggests that the ISIS’s ability to plan and coordinate terrorist attacks on a larger scale has declined and that increased measures to counter terrorism are effective.

Intelligence efforts

ISIS relied heavily on the security and intelligence aspect of its work more than the military effort, the report said, pointing out that leaks from within the organization revealed that it depended on a military security academy to train some of its members and gave them long lessons online in the field of intelligence.

The center stressed in its report that the organization is still a threat despite its defeats. It pointed out that ISIS’s intelligence service, which is one of the secret units making up its organizational structure, is provided with all available resources, enabling it to recruit spies, contact large numbers of extremists all over the world, and play a vital role in all the terrorist operations launched by ISIS.

ISIS’s future in Europe

According to a report by the Independent on March 24, ISIS plans to direct new terrorist attacks in Europe after losing its last stronghold in Syria, revealed by documents dropped by jihadists detailing plans to organize, finance and carry out large terrorist operations in Europe.

Meanwhile, the European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies pointed out that observers have painted a disturbing picture of a global Islamist extremist movement that, despite recent setbacks, still poses a major threat due to the large number of foreigners who have traveled to the “caliphate” to fight, many of whom are still alive.

Observers have explained that the source of international concern in the future in terms of foreign ISIS fighters stems from the possibility of some of them joining al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups that may emerge.

While the military defeat of ISIS has been accomplished, this does not mean the defeat of ISIS as a movement and ideology, which can continue in many locations and regions, especially Western Europe, the report laid out.

The center predicted that ISIS’s decline will result in an increase of attacks on European territory, although less significant than in the past, as well as the return of more jihadists to Europe, even in small numbers.

The report noted that it is possible for the organization’s secret cells to suspend their activities in Europe in order to hide from the European security and intelligence services and then carry out a series of attacks by relying on the element of surprise.

Tighter control

The report stressed the need to increase intelligence coordination among European countries, as well as intensify intelligence efforts to monitor extremist groups locally or in Syria and Iraq. It also called for intelligence services to step up infiltration into suspected neighborhoods that contain sleeper cells that may have belonged to ISIS.