What Happens When Islamic State's Foreign Fighters Return?
Photograph via AP Photo, Photo Illustration by Businessweek.com
In 1982 an Egyptian engineer and Islamist named Muhammad abd-al-Salam Faraj wrote a religious pamphlet for his brothers. It was widely distributed that year after Faraj was convicted and executed for leading the plotters who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Faraj titled his pamphlet The Neglected Duty. That duty was to wage jihad.
Faraj debated whether the violent struggle should primarily be local or international. He believed jihadis have a duty to overthrow secular regimes in Arab and Muslim lands before striking against “non-believers” in other countries. In his pamphlet, Faraj framed his answer to the local vs. global debate this way: “To fight an enemy who is near is more important than to fight an enemy who is far.” The phrases “near enemy” and “far enemy” are still used by jihadi groups today as they debate what paths to take.
That issue amounts to far more than an ideological debate in the corridors of U.S. intelligence agencies and their counterparts in Europe. Record numbers of jihadis have been crossing international borders to volunteer with Islamic State and other groups in the fight against “near enemies” in Syria and Iraq. Security chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in Europe, say they are consumed daily with trying to track and stop them. Already, some have allegedly been involved in plotting or carrying out attacks against the “far enemy” in the West after returning home.
Only about 100 of the foreign fighters are believed to be from the U.S., but American intelligence officials estimate that about 15,000 foreign fighters have gone to the war zone, with some 2,000 originating in Western countries. An estimated 1,600 come from just three of the U.S.’s closest allies in Europe—the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Passport holders from those nations do not need visas to enter the U.S.
Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 operation, the deadliest terrorist attack in history, was led by a small cadre of jihadi volunteers like many of those leaving Europe for the fight today. They traveled east from Germany to Afghanistan 15 years ago, also determined to fight a near enemy in a Muslim country.
No one worried much about the spread of international terrorism when Osama bin Laden first arrived in Afghanistan in 1980 at the age of 23. After the fighting, bin Laden established bases in Afghanistan as a sort of hub for what he envisioned as a continuing struggle. Three additional jihadi generations, or waves, have followed, says Mohammed Hafez, who has studied them for years. He is chairman of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. The Afghan veterans returning to their home nations—or moving to Europe—inspired a second generation to attend camps that bin Laden established in Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew. Many in the second generation aimed to fight near enemies ruling over Muslim populations in the Caucasus or the Balkans.
No one worried much about the spread of international terrorism when Osama bin Laden first arrived in Afghanistan in 1980 at the age of 23. After the fighting, bin Laden established bases in Afghanistan as a sort of hub for what he envisioned as a continuing struggle. Three additional jihadi generations, or waves, have followed, says Mohammed Hafez, who has studied them for years. He is chairman of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. The Afghan veterans returning to their home nations—or moving to Europe—inspired a second generation to attend camps that bin Laden established in Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew. Many in the second generation aimed to fight near enemies ruling over Muslim populations in the Caucasus or the Balkans.
When a third, larger generation of global jihadis was drawn to Iraq to fight American forces after the U.S. invasion in 2003, Hafez worried about both the experience they gained and the extremism they exhibited. Some beheaded their enemies while others executed complex attacks against the world’s most professional military, conducted kidnappings and assassinations, and networked with experienced military operatives, smugglers, and other radicals. To Hafez, they seemed far more dangerous than their radical forefathers.
Still, Hafez retained a glimmer of hope when he studied the problem as the U.S. occupation of Iraq was winding down: It was unlikely that those volunteers would find a safe haven inside Iraq or neighboring states from which to plan and launch global operations—the way the first two jihadi generations had managed to do across a swath of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Now even that small hope has been extinguished. The fourth and current wave, drawn to the human catastrophe that unfolded during more than two years of civil war in Syria, has found its own safe haven as Islamic State carved out and declared a nation across two countries. “I could have never imagined then,” Hafez says, “that it would be this bad.” The group delivered a fresh reminder recently of its brutality when it announced the beheading of an American Muslim convert and aid worker named Abdul-Rahman Kassig, previously known as Peter.
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