{"id":28515,"date":"2016-09-07T11:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T01:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=28515"},"modified":"2016-09-07T12:41:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T02:41:52","slug":"islamic-states-european-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/islamic-states-european-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Islamic State\u2019s European strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"9332121623_76541444da_z\"<\/p>\n

Terrorist attacks by Islamic State (ISIS) affiliates and sympathisers over the past year have raised alarms in Europe, but they\u2019ve not yet reached the frequency Europe\u00a0experienced in the 1970s<\/a>, according to the\u00a0Global Terrorism Database<\/a>. However, whereas previous waves of terrorism in Europe stemmed from internal conflicts, today\u2019s deadly surge is linked to instability outside the continent.<\/p>\n

The latest attacks are emerging from the political vacuum left by fallen dictators in the Middle East and North Africa. So, just as there seems to be no end in sight for the violence in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, or for Egypt\u2019s extreme polarisation, or for the fragile security situation in Tunisia and Algeria, there is little reason to believe that attacks in Europe will end anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Making matters worse, July\u2019s\u00a0bloody putsch<\/a>\u00a0in Turkey\u2014where\u00a0270 people were killed<\/a>\u00a0and another 1,500 wounded in just a few hours\u2014makes the country an even more attractive ISIS target. ISIS feeds off troubled states from which it can draw recruits and launch attacks \u2013 either by establishing an \u2018official Province\u2019, as in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt, or by supporting secret cells and small combat units, as it has done in Tunisia and Turkey already.<\/p>\n

These two modes of operation\u2014insurgency and terrorism\u2014go hand in hand. When an insurgent organisation loses control of territory or battlefield momentum, it resorts to terrorism, reasoning that attacks on softer civilian targets are cheaper, easier, and just as politically effective. This is why ISIS wants to strike Europe directly, even as it loses territory in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.<\/p>\n

ISIS has multiple goals in following this path. It believes that terrorist attacks in Europe will deter the West from striking territories it controls, and it wants to avenge the more than\u00a020,000 members<\/a>\u00a0it has lost to Western coalition airstrikes. Moreover, it wants to stoke anti-Muslim animus, thereby further alienating European Muslims from the rest of European society and boosting its supply of recruits in Europe. Similarly, it wants to sow discord among\u00a0European religious and minority communities<\/a>\u00a0themselves (the Sunni\u2013Shia and Sunni\u2013Alevi divide being two clear examples).<\/p>\n

ISIS\u2019s objectives in using terrorism are not new; but its capacity for carrying out attacks is. It has managed to sustain its terror operations in Europe despite being heavily bombarded since 2014, because it has been able to draw from relatively small subsets of more than 5,000 Europeans who have joined the fight in Syria.<\/p>\n

The exact number of European fighters who have received training from ISIS and returned home is\u00a0still unknown<\/a>. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who led the November 2015 Paris attacks,\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0he was one of 90 ISIS-trained terrorists in Europe. ISIS has allegedly trained\u00a0400-600 fighters<\/a>\u00a0for \u2018external operations\u2019 involving urban guerrilla warfare, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), surveillance, counter-security, and forgery.<\/p>\n

ISIS has so far hit France and Turkey the hardest. France has suffered more than\u00a0230 deaths<\/a>\u00a0and about 700 injuries, while Turkey has endured more than 220 deaths and about 900 injuries. As it happens, France and Turkey are each the source of a relatively high number of\u00a0foreign militants<\/a>\u00a0fighting in Iraq and Syria, with an estimated 700 French citizens and 500 Turks fighting under the ISIS flag.<\/p>\n

So why has ISIS focused on attacking France and Turkey?\u00a0Preliminary findings<\/a>\u00a0by two scholars show negative reactions to French\u00a0la\u00efcit\u00e9<\/em>\u2013the tradition of secularism in public and political life\u2013among disenfranchised young Sunni Muslims in French-speaking countries. This, the argument goes, facilitates their radicalisation and recruitment by extremists.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0more factors\u00a0need to be investigated<\/a>. For example, French foreign policy in the twenty-first century recognised many Middle Eastern grievances. France opposed the war in Iraq in 2003; intervened militarily against Libya\u2019s dictator, stopping a potential crime against humanity in March 2011; and saved a fragile democracy in Muslim-majority Mali in 2013. While these policies were perceived favourably in most of the Middle East, ISIS and their supporters and sympathisers saw things differently.<\/p>\n

Turkey, for its part, has long been an attractive alternative model for other Muslim-majority countries. Until its latest challenges, democracy seemed to be succeeding (if in fits and starts), and economic growth was as high as\u00a09%<\/a>\u00a0in recent years. Given its Western leanings, it\u2019s no surprise that ISIS has dedicated several issues of its official magazine,\u00a0Dabiq<\/em>, to attacking the Turkish model and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan. An earlier iteration of ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq, reportedly ordered vehicle-borne IED attacks on Turkey as early as April 2012.<\/p>\n

Europe needs its democracies to unite around a common strategy to defend against manifold security challenges. Signs of disunity and fragmentation\u2014to say nothing of bloody coup attempts\u2014serve ISIS\u2019s publicly declared objective<\/a>\u00a0of \u2018weakening European cohesion\u2019.<\/p>\n

While France and Turkey have stood out as ISIS targets, they aren\u2019t alone. But, given their shared position, their bilateral relationship is especially important, and diplomats from each country should get to work shoring it up. Any further tensions will only undermine the potential for strategic cooperation. Now is the time to come together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terrorist attacks by Islamic State (ISIS) affiliates and sympathisers over the past year have raised alarms in Europe, but they\u2019ve not yet reached the frequency Europe\u00a0experienced in the 1970s, according to the\u00a0Global Terrorism Database. However, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":560,"featured_media":28518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[273,325,275,837],"class_list":["post-28515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-counterterrorism","tag-europe","tag-foreign-fighters","tag-isis"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Islamic State\u2019s European strategy | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/islamic-states-european-strategy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Islamic State\u2019s European strategy | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Terrorist attacks by Islamic State (ISIS) affiliates and sympathisers over the past year have raised alarms in Europe, but they\u2019ve not yet reached the frequency Europe\u00a0experienced in the 1970s, according to the\u00a0Global Terrorism Database. 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