• Western States Must Repatriate IS Fighters and Their Families Before More Escape Syrian Camps

    For more than a year, European powers have dallied over the question of what to do with the tens of thousands of Islamic State (IS) fighters and adherents captured following the fall of the so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Now the U.S. decision to withdraw troops and Turkey’s subsequent invasion of northern Syria on 9 October means the West has lost the luxury of inaction.

  • Persistent Anti-Semitism Hangs over EU

    Anti-Semitic hate speech, harassment, and fear of being recognized as Jewish — these are some of the realities of being Jewish in the EU today. It appears to be getting worse, finds a major repeat survey of Jews from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, the largest ever of its kind worldwide.

  • The Yom Kippur Shooting in Halle, Germany: The New Terrorism Reality

    The far right is beginning to dominate the terrorism stage in the Western world. It was responsible for every single extremism-related killing in the United States in 2018—including six mass-casualty incidents. Last year was the most violent in terms of U.S. terrorism since 1982. These networked adversaries, operating within a loose, leaderless ideological framework, are a different kind of terrorist. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s new Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence highlights this, noting the proliferation of perpetrators writing manifestos rather than being motivated by radicalizers or taking orders from commanders. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware write for the Council of Foreign Relations that the Yom Kippur shooting in Halle, like Christchurch, represents the confluence of three significant trends in terrorism: a rising far right, the targeting of places of worship, and the use of social media and livestreams.

  • Trump’s Syria Withdrawal Is a Boon for ISIS — and a Nightmare for Europe

    With the surprise withdrawal of US forces in Syria and the subsequent — and immediate — commencement of Turkish military operations against Syrian Kurdish forces, chaos has ensued. Kurdish forces are claiming that hundreds of ISIS prisoners have escaped at the Ain Issa detention facility while fighting raged nearby, while two officials told the New York Times that the U.S. military had failed to secure 60 or so high-value detainees before its forces departed. President Donald Trump, however, has assured Americans that his new approach would not prove a threat to the US homeland, saying, “They’re going to be escaping to Europe.” Daniel Byman writes that Europeans, to be sure, will not find this reassuring.

  • Disinformation and Terrorism

    Most of the discussions that take place around the concept of disinformation–false information spread deliberately to deceive–typically focus on the role of nation-states like Russia and China. But violent non-state actors, including terrorist groups, rely on disinformation as well, and some groups have developed fairly sophisticated disinformation capabilities. The objectives of these non-state actors can vary but are almost always some combination of spreading fear and terror, recruiting new followers to the cause, radicalizing individuals, and confusing and distracting public safety officials in order to sap finite resources.

  • Averting an ISIS Resurgence in Iraq and Syria

    The Islamic State (ISIS) has not made a comeback in Iraq or Syria – yet. A new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) says that “Conflict between Turkey and the SDF along the Syrian-Turkish border almost certainly will relieve pressure on ISIS, which lost its last territorial foothold in eastern Syria in May 2019 but persists as a deadly insurgency. Since May, the SDF has continued to pursue ISIS remnants across the north east and to hold thousands of ISIS detainees and ISIS-affiliated family members. Yet the SDF has warned that it will be forced to redirect its forces toward Syria’s northern border should Turkey attack. The consequences may be disastrous for areas farther south, where ISIS is most active, and for prisons and camps that hold ISIS militants and were already vulnerable to attack before the latest events.” The ICG notes that “Turkey’s intervention in north-eastern Syria, following President Trump’s 6 October decision, has put ISIS’s near defeat in Syria in question.”

  • Accountability for Islamic State Fighters: What Are the Options?

    President Trump’s precipitous decision to withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria has already had dramatic consequences. One of the questions Trump’s hasty Twitter announcement raises involves the fate of the thousands of ISIS fighters no in detention in Syria. The Kurdish SDF is currently holding more than 10,000 Islamic State fighters—including at least 8,000 Iraqis and Syrians and 2,000 foreign fighters—in overflowing temporary detention centers in northeastern Syria. The biggest camp, al-Hol, houses around 70,000 people related to ISIS fighters, including about 10,000 foreigners and 30,000 Islamic State loyalists. The SDF has already said that it was withdrawing its guards from the Islamic State detention centers and camps in order to deal with the Turkish invasion. On Sunday, nearly 900 ISIS followers have escaped from one of the camps. Emma Broches writes that as Turkey’s offensive continues, it’s useful to review what the future might hold for these prisoners. “If the security surrounding the detainees deteriorates, the Islamic State will likely exploit the situation and create a further opportunity for its ongoing resurgence.”

  • Racists Are Recruiting. Watch Your White Sons.

    Raising teenagers can be terrifying. Squishy little babies become awkward hormonal creatures who question their parents’ authority at every turn. Joanna Schroeder writes that she expected that. “What I didn’t predict was that my sons’ adolescence would include being drawn to the kind of online content that right-wing extremists use to recruit so many young men,” she writes. “Unfortunately, extremists know how to find new recruits in the very place our sons spend so much of their time: online. And too often, they’re more aware than we are of how vulnerable young white men are to radicalization.”

  • Victims of IRA Terror Tell Jeremy Corbyn to Apologize

    Nearly 40 victims of IRA violence have called on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to apologize for his support for Irish republicanism, accusing him of “giving succor” to terrorists. In an open letter to mark the 35th anniversary of the Brighton bombing, the families of the dead demand that he condemn the terrorist campaign waged by the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s. A report from Mainstream, a new campaign group against extremism in politics, also reveals evidence of Corbyn’s closeness to London Labour Briefing, which ran an infamous editorial after the Brighton attack claiming that “the British only sit up and take notice when they are bombed into it.” The 1984 bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, during the Conservative Party conference, killed five people and injured thirty-one.

  • German Synagogue Attacker Used Homemade 3D-Printed Plastic Gun

    Experts say that the fact that the neo-Nazi who on Wednesday attacked a synagogue in Germany used a 3D-printed gun should serve as a warning to security services, experts have said. The 27-year old suspect had been experimenting with 3D-printed guns for two years, and along with racist and anti-Semitic tracts, he posted instructions on plastic gun making which, he noted, would take no more than $50 for the materials and one weekend worth of time.

  • 18 Years After 9/11, Why Is Guantánamo Still Open?

    If he wants to upstage his predecessor, Donald Trump should take the necessary steps to close down the detention facility at Guantanamo. In the meantime, as long as the proceedings in the 9/11 case continue under [the newly appointed judge in the case, Air Force Col. Shane] Cohen, it’s clear he takes his responsibilities seriously. He opened the September 11 hearing by stating: “In this particular case, not only have I been asked to [ensure] a fair trial, but to sit in judgment in many instances of my own country and its actions. I get the weight of that decision. I get the weight of the impact of the decision that I’m making. Never underestimate the weight that I feel each and every day with the decisions that I make that impact the lives of people all over the world.”

  • Independent Adviser Calls for Overhaul of U.K. Counter-Extremism Strategy

    The U.K. government’s independent advisor on extremism is calling for a complete overhaul of the government’s strategy – recommending a new taskforce led by the Home Secretary. The U.K. Commission for Countering Extremism on Monday, 7 October, published its findings and recommendations in a new report, Challenging Hateful Extremism.

  • Independent Adviser Calls for Overhaul of U.K. Counter-Extremism Strategy

    The U.K. government’s independent advisor on extremism is calling for a complete overhaul of the government’s strategy – recommending a new taskforce led by the Home Secretary. The U.K. Commission for Countering Extremism on Monday, 7 October, published its findings and recommendations in a new report, Challenging Hateful Extremism.

  • A Hasty Departure Threatens to Help Assad and ISIS

    The hasty decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria “is a disturbing move that threatens to turn Kurdish forces, who have borne the brunt of containing Islamic State, towards the ambit of the despotic regime of President Assad. The U.S. decision will dismay allies, embolden ISIS, and give satisfaction to autocrats, not only Mr. Erdogan but also the regimes in Russia and Iran. Mr. Trump should think again. There is no substitute in foreign policy for giving a clear message to allies and adversaries. Mr. Trump’s precipitate withdrawal demoralizes the first and rewards the second,” says the London Times.

  • The United States Is Done Caring About Syria

    The Syria Study Group (SSG) is a bipartisan commission charged by Congress with “examining and making recommendations on the military and diplomatic strategy of the United States with respect to the conflict in Syria.” It published its report on 24 September. The report details five serious threats the conflict within Syria holds for U.S. national security: First, the self-declared Islamic State remains potent, well resourced, and ideologically committed to achieving its goals despite the pounding it has taken over the last five years. Second, Iran’s presence in Syria threatens a wider regional war, given the shadow war between the Israelis and Iranians in the seams of the conflict. Third, if U.S. foreign policy is destined to be shaped by great-power competition, then Russia is using Syria to build influence at the expense of the United States. Fourth, the violence that Bashar al-Assad and his supporters have unleashed on Syria has had far-reaching effects, including the political destabilization of Europe. The members of the study group recommend that the United States should reverse its plans for a military withdrawal in northeastern Syria and focus on stabilization efforts in that area – but Steven Cook writes that “At a level of abstraction, what the authors recommend is eminently reasonable. But given the political context in which they have been offered, most of them were dead before the report was published.” “America should not stand idly by,” the report’s authors urge, but as “they readily acknowledge, America will almost certainly do just that, perfectly reflecting the transition underway in U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East,” Cook writes.