On Friday, France had its 9/11.
At least 129 people were killed at multiple locations
in Paris, including a concert hall, a soccer stadium and a popular restaurant,
the kinds of venues that ordinary Parisians flock to on a Friday night.
At, or near, these venues the attackers deployed a
mix of terrorist tactics, including suicide attackers, an assault using more
than one gunman willing to fight to the death, hostage-taking and bombings.
In the years after 9/11, we have seen various forms
of this terrible news story play out: the multiple bombs on trains in Madrid
that killed 191 in 2004, the four suicide bombings in London that killed 52
commuters in 2005, and the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, by 10 gunmen who
killed 166.
The attackers in Paris seemed to have learned lessons
from all these attacks. (By the way, this is also the case of U.S. school
shootings in which the perpetrators study the tactics of those who have gone
before them.)
French President Francois Hollande blames ISIS
for the attack, and the terror group has claimed responsibility, but so far
it's not clear where all of the attackers were from. According
to French prosecutors, one of the attackers who has been identified is a French
national known to police, and a Syrian passport was found
on one of the bodies of the other attackers.
Until now, French citizen Mehdi Nemmouche is the only
case of a Western fighter in Syria accused of returning to conduct a deadly
terror attack -- the May 24, 2014, shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels,
Belgium, that left four people dead. Nemmouche had served time in a French
prison, and he had an assault rifle when he was arrested in France.
A French
journalist held by ISIS reportedly has identified Nemmouche as one of the group's alleged
torturers. Nemmouche has been extradited to Belgium, where he awaits trial.
Returning militants from Syria are a worrying
potential source of terror attacks. And two major factors place Europe at far
greater risk of "returnee" violence from veterans of the Syrian
conflict than is the case in the United States: the much larger number of
European militants who have gone to fight in Syria and the existence of more
developed jihadist networks in Europe.
France has supplied more fighters to the Syrian
conflict than any other Western country. In September, Prime Minister Manuel
Valls told Parliament that 1,800 French citizens have been involved in jihadist
networks worldwide -- almost all of whom were drawn to the Syrian war.
Nine
months earlier, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve estimated that 185 militants had returned to France from
Syria. Of those who had returned, he said 82 were in jail and 36 were under
other forms of judicial control.
German security services report that 720 Germans have
left for Syria, and they estimate that 100 have been killed there, while another 180 have returned to Germany.
Last year, the Belgian Foreign Ministry released
figures that up to 350 Belgians had left to fight in Syria.
Upward of 700 British citizens have left for Syria, with
about half estimated to have returned to the United Kingdom, according to
British officials.
In January, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop placed the number of Australians fighting abroad at 180,
with 20 having died in Syria.
So who exactly are the estimated 4,500 Westerners who
have been drawn to join ISIS and other militant groups in Syria?
To provide some answers to that question, New America
collected information about 466 individuals from 25 Western countries who have
been reported by credible news sources as having left their home countries to
join ISIS or other Sunni jihadist groups in Syria or Iraq.
The Western fighters drawn to Syria and Iraq
represent a new demographic profile, quite different than that of other Western
militants who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s or Bosnia in the 1990s.
First, women are represented in unprecedented
numbers. One in seven of the militants in New America's data set are women.
Women were rarely, if at all, represented in previous jihadist conflicts.
While Western women are not going to fight in the war
in Syria, they are playing supporting roles, often marrying front-line fighters
and sometimes working as police officers.
They are women like Sally Jones, 44, from the United
Kingdom, who took her 10-year-old son to Syria in 2013, and Emilie Konig, 31,
one of the first women to leave for Syria, who left France and her two children
behind in 2012 to join her husband there. The U.S. State Department says both
women have encouraged terrorist attacks in their native countries, and it
officially designated both of them terrorists in September.
Second, the recruits are young. The average age of
Western volunteers drawn to the Syrian jihad is 24. For female recruits, the
average age is 21. Almost a fifth are teenagers, more than a third of whom are
female.
New America has documented an astonishing 80 cases of
Western teenagers who have traveled to the war in Syria. More than a third of
these teenagers are girls. Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany's domestic
security agency, said, for instance, in March that nine female German teens
had left for Syria.
That same month, ISIS
released a video of a French boy shooting a Palestinian hostage in the
forehead.
hird, many have familial ties to jihadism. More than
a quarter of Western fighters have a familial connection to jihad, whether
through relatives who are also fighting in Syria and Iraq, through marriage or
through some link to other jihads or terrorist attacks.
For instance the father of British ISIS recruit
Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary is Adel Abdel Bary, who was convicted in New York for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Of those with a familial link, one third are through
marriage, many of them marriages between female recruits and male fighters
conducted after they arrive in Syria.
Three-fifths of Western fighters with familial ties
to jihad have a relative who has also left for Syria. For example, the Deghayes
family in the United Kingdom had three sons, ages 16 to 20, leave to join al
Nusra Front in Syria together.
Fourth, the Americans drawn to the Syrian jihad --
250 who have tried or have succeeded in getting to Syria -- share the same
profile as the Western fighters overall: Women are well-represented, and the
volunteers are young, and many have family ties to jihad. One in six of the
Americans drawn to the Syrian conflict are women. The average age of the
American militants is 25, with a fifth still in their teens. Almost a fifth of
the American militants have a familial connection to jihad.
The American recruits are, perhaps unsurprisingly,
particularly active online: Around nine out of 10 American militants are active
in online jihadist circles.
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Fifth, for Western militants, the wars engulfing
Syria and Iraq have often proved deadly. Almost half of the male fighters and
6% of the female recruits have been killed in Syria or Iraq.
Sixth, few of the Western fighters who have traveled
to Syria and Iraq are in government custody. Only one-fifth of Western fighters
in New America's data set are in custody, and more than two-fifths of
individuals are still at large. (As indicated above, around half the Western
militants were killed in the conflicts in Syria or Iraq.)
Seventh, the most popular route to Syria is through
Turkey. Almost half of the Western foreign fighters made their way to Syria or
Iraq via Turkey. Only one of the militants is documented as attempting to use
an alternative route via Lebanon. For the rest of the Western militants, it's not
clear from the public record how they arrived in Syria.
Eighth, where an affiliation can be determined, the
majority of the Western fighters have joined ISIS: Three-fifths have joined
ISIS, while only a tenth have joined al Qaeda's affiliate in
Syria, known as al Nusra Front, and one-seventh have joined other smaller
militant groups.
Who is inspiring these militants to give up their
often-comfortable lives in the West for the rigors of the war zone in Syria?
Based on court records and press reports, New America has
identified several Western militants acting as online recruiters. Among them
are a number of Americans, for instance:
• Abdi Nur, a 20-year-old from Minnesota, allegedly
took on the role of online recruiter after leaving for Syria in the summer
of 2014.
A complaint filed in November that charged six Minnesota men with
trying to go to join ISIS accuses Nur of acting as an online recruiter and providing
encouragement and advice to the men via Kik and other social media platforms
from Syria.
• Hoda Muthana, a 20-year old
American woman from Alabama, was identified by BuzzFeed as the individual behind the Twitter
account Umm Jihad, which encouraged militants to leave for Syria.
Propaganda
ISIS has disseminated two online guidebooks to
encourage its Western recruits. In 2015, ISIS published its how-to guides
Hijrah and "How to Survive in the West." Hijrah provided potential
fighters with detailed packing lists -- advice on how to get to Turkey and dupe
customs officials into issuing visas for the country; Twitter accounts of fighters
living in Syria who can facilitate their travel; and even suggestions for
recruits to assess their personality strengths and weaknesses before leaving
home to prepare themselves better for jihad.
"How to Survive in the West" is a guide on
how to "be a secret agent" in a Western country,
giving readers tips on the making of Molotov cocktails, bombs and cell phone
detonators; hiding weapons in secret compartments of vehicles, in the same
fashion as gangs; and how to identify and evade police surveillance, even suggesting
that readers watch the Jason Bourne film series for tips on employing evasion
tactics.
In September 2014, an ISIS spokesman called for violence, specifically in France, Australia and
Canada, releasing an audiotape saying, "If you can kill a disbelieving
American or European -- especially the spiteful and filthy French -- or an
Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers
waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a
coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any
manner or way, however it may be."
Terrorism analyst: Who
could be behind Paris attacks? 01:40
Motivations
What motivates many of these Western fighters to
travel to a dangerous war zone with which most have no prior connection? A
review of both ISIS propaganda and reporting on the individual cases in New
America's data set suggests the answer is a mishmash of motivations that ISIS
has picked up on as part of its recruiting strategy, including opposition to
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, religious invocations of the spiritual benefit
of participating in jihad, the belief that religious duty requires living under
ISIS' so-called caliphate, anger and alienation from Western society, and for
some the "cool" factor of participating in a war.
Here are the rationales for joining ISIS that are
provided by a couple of ISIS' alleged American recruits:
• Abdi Nur, the 20-year-old Minnesotan, tweeted:
"Jihad Is The Greatest Honor For Man So Come On And Join Dawla Ya Iqwa
(you brothers of the Islamic State])." Nur later explained to his sister: "if I didn't care I
wouldn't have left but I want jannah (paradise) for all of us.
• Authorities say Chicago teen Hamzah
Khan left a letter for his parents before attempting to travel to Syria in
2014, explaining that "there is an obligation to 'migrate' to the 'Islamic
State." He was charged with material support of ISIS and has pleaded not
guilty.
Threat to United States
Four years into the Syrian civil war, little evidence
has emerged to support the notion that returning fighters from Syria pose a
great threat to the United States.
In the United States, there has only been one case of
a fighter returning from Syria and allegedly plotting an attack. Abdirahman Sheik
Mohamud, 22, of Columbus, Ohio, left for Syria in April 2014 and fought
there before returning home around two months later. The government alleges
that a cleric in Syria told Mohamud that he should return to the United States
to conduct an act of terrorism and that he discussed some kind of plan (with an
informant) to kill American soldiers at a military base in Texas. He has
pleaded not guilty to a charge of providing material support to a terrorist
group.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in
March, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that about 40
individuals had returned from Syria. "We have since found they went for
humanitarian purposes or some other reason that don't relate to plotting,"
he said.
We identified 23 Americans who
actually reached Syria, 46 individuals who attempted or plotted to travel to
Syria but were unsuccessful in doing so, and 14 who provided support to others
fighting or seeking to fight in Syria.
Instead of being a launch pad for attacks at home, Syria
turned out to be a graveyard for the few Americans who made it to the war zone.
