ISIS terrorism in Europe raises fears of systematic campaign

Mustafa Kamel

Europe is living in constant anxiety because of the threats spread by ISIS on the internet to target European countries through lone wolves.

It seems that the terrorist organization is planning to launch more operations in the heart of Europe, similar to the recent Vienna attack in which four people were killed on November 2, as part of ISIS re-launching what has been described as its “European campaign”.

The recent terrorist attacks in Austria and France have caused the European Union to take measures to tighten the screws on extremist groups that are still active on European soil.

ISIS campaigns

The recent Vienna bombing and its repercussions for neighboring countries illustrate ISIS’s determination to re-launch its terrorist campaign throughout Europe.

The French newspaper Le Monde reported that there is a great risk in seeing ISIS reconfigure its transnational networks after the fall of its last stronghold in Syria and the elimination of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but Baghdadi’s successor has managed to resume terrorist acts faster than expected.

The newspaper said that the terrorist organization opened its European campaign in May 2014 with a gun attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels by a French terrorist returning from Syria, which left four dead, followed by attacks with automatic weapons and explosives in Paris in January and November 2015 and then Brussels in March 2016. Then terrorists used vehicles to run over people, as happened at a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016, Stockholm in April 2017, and Barcelona in August 2017. In recent years, European cities have lived in a bleak atmosphere and were subjected to many terrorist operations in cities in France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Finland, which caused hundreds of victims, in addition to material losses and other damage.

Despite the security plans taken by the European Union, the resurgence of activity of some individuals living inside Europe has motivated the continent to take steps to enhance security on its external borders and to pass legislation to remove terrorist content from the internet.

Continuous operations

There have been 16 terrorist operations since last year in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, and the perpetrators were of Middle Eastern origins but had legal status in Europe.

The European Center for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies was able to analyze these attacks and noted that stabbing operations are the most used, which means that extremist elements have lost much of their ability to obtain explosives or firearms.