Signs are emerging that over the next decade Europe’s free societies will witness a loud and violent debate over the questions of cultural and religious freedom, to be caused by jihadis returning from Syria. There is unceasing concern over the impact of jihad on Europe, especially as the native populations are set to decline in coming decades while the share of immigrants grows. On June 29, bare-breasted members of the feminist group Femen barged into a Swedish mosque to highlight issues of liberty and women’s rights in Muslim societies. Their chests were inked with slogans like “No Sharia in Egypt and the world”. Earlier, a bare-breasted Femen member climbed atop Tunisian prime minister Ali Larayedh’s car in Brussels to make a similar point.
In the Netherlands, on July 17, police arrested a 19-year-old girl for recruiting jihadis for Syria, though she was released later. Jihad is attracting the immigrants’ new generations, born and brought up in Europe. The European jihadis are young and skilled in using modern technologies such as smartphones, Facebook and Twitter. Unsurprisingly, the intelligence agencies are on the tenterhooks over the jihadis with European passports travelling to Syria, with officials unable to stop them legally. In the 9/11-after years, European nations took measures to contain Islamism, notably the French ban on the wearing of veil by women, bar on building minarets in Switzerland, border screenings and stringent counter-terror laws. These measures are not effective.
In April, the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation published a study showing that jihadis from all parts of Europe are in Syria: from Albania, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. Their number runs into, not ones or twos, but dozens and scores, notably of those from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The Syrian jihad could pose a serious threat to Europe, Australia and the US. A dozen Americans are also fighting in Syria.
David Irvine of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation revealed recently that the number of Australian jihadis in Syria has doubled to 200 in just six months. The Australians, of Lebanese descent, are now the largest group among Western jihadis fighting Syria’s Shia regime, which is deemed infidel by them.
Although exact figures cannot be established, a July 28 report in The New York Times, citing classified intelligence, put the number of Western jihadis from Europe, North America and Australia at over 600, about 10 per cent of 6,000 foreigners. Other estimates put the figure at up to 1,000.
These numbers are rising. A July 24 report by investigative website ProPublica quoted a French counter terror official as saying that between 2001 and 2010, about 50 French jihadis went to Afghanistan, whereas in just one year, 135 went to Syria. Up to 300 jihadists travelled from Belgium. The bulk of foreign fighters in Syria are from Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq.
In Tunisia, where the new government, which took over after the 2011 uprising, released the militants of Ansar Al-Sharia, which is now sending them to Syria.
From 2003 to 2009, Syria was the main training ground for Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. In Syria, the total fighting force, comprising both jihadis and rebels, is estimated at a conservative 60,000 to a high of 100,000, meaning that jihadis are roughly ten per cent. The jihadis are embedded with the Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Shaam, the Al-Qaeda affiliates. On August 6, CIA’s deputy chief Michael Morell remarked that Syria’s mix of jihad and civil war poses the greatest threat to the US. Unlike Afghanistan and Somalia, the jihadis from Syria will return with the experience of urban fighting, creating a new threat to Europe’s security.
Europe is responding. In the UK, where a British soldier was hacked to death by two jihadis this summer, the right-wing English Defence League is taking a leaf out of Hizbut Tahrir’s book and holding anti-Muslims protests. In Belgium, on a day in April, police raided 48 homes nationwide and detained six men for recruiting jihadis for Syria. In France, hundreds of Muslims engaged in violence with police last month after a woman was fined for wearing a veil.
In Spain, six youth were arrested in June for jihadi propaganda on social media. In the German cities of Berlin, Bonn and Cologne, far-right groups like Pro Deutschland, Pro Kolen and Pro NRW protest in front of mosques and schools. These are random samples, early sputterings of a time bomb.
From Palestine to Somalia and Afghanistan, it doesn’t appear that jihadis can capture power through fighting; sometimes they do capture areas and towns but security forces bomb them to retreat into hideouts. In Syria, a protracted war suits the jihadis who will train and return to Europe, the US and Australia, with each returning fighter capable of forming a nucleus of a few members. Within Europe’s immigrant populations, they will find ideological and communitarian support. The Syrian jihad’s battlelines are about to shift to Europe.
The returnees could do three things: Engage in terrorism, choose targets and bombs, leading to their arrests and killings; adopt legal means to train a new generation of Islamists who could engender Sharia movements; taunt European symbols of security and liberty, as the experience of Hizbut Tahrir suggests whose members publicly insult British soldiers returning from war zones. On their path to Sharia, jihadis want to achieve psychological outcomes.
“The religious imperative for terrorism,” writes terrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman in his book Inside Terrorism, “is the most important defining characteristic of terrorist activity today.” It is certain that the Syrian jihad’s blowback on Europe will be bigger than in the US, where people are better prepared, unlike Europeans, to counter and delegitimise Islamists through civic action.
Tufail Ahmad is director of South Asia Studies Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC