ISISISIS fighters coming home after Mosul defeat pose threat to EU countries

Published 19 October 2016

ISIS supporters who left Europe to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq have been fleeing from Mosul in the face of the U.S.-led coalition offensive – and European security officials say that as they come back home, they would pose a “serious threat” to European security. Experts warn that as the group loses power, the fighters will return home and continue the ideological battle on their home turf, even if the group is no longer in control of territory in the Middle East.

ISIS supporters who left Europe to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq have been fleeing from Mosul in the face of the U.S.-led coalition offensive – and European security officials say that as they come back home, they would pose a “serious threat” to European security.

“The retaking of Isis’s northern Iraq stronghold, Mosul, may lead to the return to Europe of violent ISIS-fighters,” the EU’s security commissioner Julian King told German newspaper Die Welt on Tuesday.

Even a small number of returning jihadists would pose “a serious threat we must prepare for,” he added.

Security experts say that about one-fifth of ISIS’s fighters – about 3,700 people – are residents or citizens of Western Europe, including 1,200 fighters from France alone. These experts say that 4,000 to 8,000 militants are currently in ISIS ranks inside Mosul, the Islamist group’s last major stronghold in the country.

Turkey has expressed its own worries about ISIS fighters crossing into Turkey as the group continues to lose territory not only in Iraq, but in Syria as well.

“When [ISIS] militants are ousted from Mosul, where will they go? Not to France or Germany, but to Turkey, which is closer, and that is a threat to us,” Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said at a media conference on Monday.

ISIS has been in control of Mosul since 2014 – and although the 30,000 Iraqi army troops and Kurdish peshmerga now engaged in the effort to capture to the city face o0nly about 7,000-8,000 ISIS fighters, these fighters are among the most fanatic members of the organization, and are not going to surrender.

Moreover, ISIS fighters have placed thousands of mines and IEDs throughout the city, dug tunnels, booby-trapped bridges, and took other measure to make any advance into the city very costly for the coalition forces.

There is another problem: most of the city’s residents are Sunnis, while most of the Iraqi soldiers are Shi’a, as are all the members of the various Shi’a militias who are assisting the Iraqi military.

In the past, when the Iraqi army and the Shi’a militias liberated Sunni-majority towns from ISIS control, the safety of the Sunni residents of those towns was not a primary concern. This has led to bitterness and anger among Iraqi Sunni, already feeling disenfranchised by the government in Baghdad. Any effort to protect the safety of Mosul’s 1.5 million residents would slow down any campaign to liberate the city – and also allow ISIS to use these residents as human shields.

Western intelligence officials say that many ISIS fighters in the areas surrounding Mosul have already fled northern Iraq to go to Raqqa, the caliphate’s capital located in east Syria. Over the past three days, the Kurdish forces have taken several small towns and villages near Mosul without a fight, after the ISIS fighters have abandoned their positions and fled.

The eviction of ISIS from Mosul will bring ISIS’s presence in Iraq to an end. Only two years ago, ISIS was in control of about one-third of Iraqi territory.

As ISIS loses more territory, its fighters must go somewhere – and going back home is the most likely option.

“Learning who ISIS’s fighters are and where they come from is essential to developing effective policy responses to local conflicts that ISISs effectively links to its ideology and agenda,” Nate Rosenblatt of the New America Foundation said in a study published in July. He warned that as the group loses power, the fighters will return home and continue the ideological battle on their home turf, even if the group is no longer in control of territory in the Middle East.