Posted on 10/21/2017 2:15:21 PM PDT by ForYourChildren
For months now, Western counterterrorism experts have sounded the alarm: as ISIS loses ground, foreign fighters from America and Europe may try returning home. When they do, the experts cautioned, they will carry the terror threat with them, ready and willing to strike. Law enforcement needs to be prepared.
Now, with the fall of the Iraqi city of Harija, the Islamic State's last major stronghold, and the impending collapse of its Syrian capital, Raqqa, the time has finally come. But is law enforcement prepared?
Not really.
An estimated 5,000 Europeans joined ISIS and other terrorist groups since fighting first broke out in Syria. While some surviving members may choose to remain in the region, or travel to other conflict areas like Afghanistan, a few thousand others are likely to try to make their way back home. In countries such as France, Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands, most of them are at the border, where they will be taken into custody and ultimately tried for terror-related offenses.
But that covers only those who re-enter through legal means. Most will try clandestine paths. And porous borders make such under the radar re-entry disturbingly simple, as smuggling of refugees has already made abundantly clear.
An ongoing lack of coordination of intelligence and security agencies among European countries further enables terrorists to slip in unnoticed. That's what happened with Mehdi Nemmouche, who shot and killed four people at the Brussels Jewish Museum in 2014. Reda Kriket travelled twice to Syria before being arrested in March 2016 on suspicion of plotting "at least one" attack in France. And Brussels-Zaventem Airport bomber Ibraham El Bakraoui had been previously arrested by Turkish officials as he attempted to reach the Islamic State.
"Despite improvements since 9/11, foreign partners are still sharing information about terrorist suspects in a manner which is ad hoc, intermittent, and often incomplete," a 2015 report of the Task Force in Combating Terrorist And Foreign Fighter Travel said.
In a typical example of European intelligence failures, though Dutch authorities learned of that arrest through the FBI weeks before the attacks, that information was never turned over to Belgium.
Such critical intelligence slips do not pose risks only to Europe. "The larger concern is that some European extremists might be able to make it to the United States undetected once they have left the battlefield," state the report's authors.
With visa-free entry into the U.S. for European citizens, such fears are not unfounded, and compound the threats posed by returning U.S. nationals.
Even so, some U.S. officials caution against over-reacting to the threat American returnees may cause. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper argues that most of the 40 Americans who have returned from the Islamic State did so for reasons "that don't relate to plotting" – such as homesickness and family matters. Others, like analysts at the New America Foundation put a greater emphasis on the danger from jihadists who never actually left the U.S., but were radicalized locally or online.
But not everyone agrees.
"Whether or not returning fighters carry out attacks, they return with the prestige of warriors and credibility on the street," a 2014 RAND report observed. "They are able to recruit other fighters to go to the Middle East and they can gather like-minded groups around them." RAND political scientist and International Center for Counterterrorism fellow Colin Clarke agrees, writing in the Atlantic that some returnees, both in the U.S. and in Europe, may "attempt to resuscitate dormant networks, recruit new members, or conduct lone-wolf style attacks," as some Europeans have already done.
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Yea, I understand it is difficult for them to find jobs after they get back.
After they have been trying to kill my next door neighbor who was in the army, for some reason, no one wants to work with the returning jihadist.
Go figure!
“Sweden Gives Returning ISIS Fighters New Identities To Help Them ‘Start Over’”
As known or even suspected former members of ISIS return to the countries from which they departed to join ISIS, they should be detained and whisked away to stand trial as enemy agents and war criminals.
No exceptions, no amnesty.
All of western Europe should be on Trump’s travel ban.
“What did you do in the ISIS war, daddy?”
“I was a suicide bomber, honey.”
“But you’re still alive.”
“It’s harder than it looks.”
Insanity
Simple. Execute them or send them to Gitmo.
5.56mm
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of
“Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West”
(Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
Here is your in-depth copy of the Rand Corporations:
“When Jihadis Come Marching Home”
“The Terrorist Threat Posed by Westerners Returning from Syria and Iraq”
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE130-1/RAND_PE130-1.pdf
How many Americans are we talking about and can we send them to Sweden?
But what about the ones who didn't get home sickness and came home? Where are they now?
Clapper is a disgrace to the U.S. Intelligence Community
“Sweden Gives Returning ISIS Fighters New Identities To Help Them ‘Start Over’”
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Imo, that makes Sweden, and any other gov playing this game, active supporters of ISIS and, thereby, enemy in a completely non-metaphorical manner.
Revoke their passports and bar from entry. And round up and detain any who have gotten into this country already.
Kill them all. Problem solved .
No, you can’t send them to sweden because they will be given knew identities and come right back as Lars Obenrederhaven or something!.
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