Ten years ago, four homegrown militants, some of who trained in Pakistan, launched devastating terror attacks in London. Today, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is exploiting widely used social media platforms and eliminating the need for a would-be attacker to travel outside his home country. The group is exporting its message and tactics to anyone willing to listen and execute them in Britain and beyond.
"It's a somber time—a time of reflection. There is resilience and defiance mixed in with mourning and regret at what happened,” said Robin Simcox, Research Fellow at the London-based Henry Jackson Society.
In the early 2000s, some terrorism experts believed that Britain was winning the battle against the ideology that drives jihadist groups like Al Qaida. But now, according to Simcox, there is growing concern about a new chapter in British terror.
"Around 800 Brits have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq to join groups like the Islamic State,” said Simcox.
Britons fighting in foreign conflicts is not unheard of, according to Simcox. "This is something that's happened throughout Britain’s history if you look at places like Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan."
But the glaring difference is, “the scale now is really, really significant," said Simcox.
The International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR) estimated recently the global total of foreign fighters who’ve joined ISIL is more than 20,000. 11,000 are believed to have come from Muslim-majority countries.
“This makes the conflict in Syria and Iraq the largest mobilization of foreigner fighters in Muslim majority countries since 1945. It now surpasses the Afghanistan conflict in the 1980s, which is thought to have attracted up to 20,000 foreigners,” according to Peter R. Neumann, the ICSR Director.
The group suggests that more than 4,000 of these foreign fighters come from Western Europe. A little over half—approximately 2,500—are from Germany and France, Britain’s next-door neighbors. The threat is multifaceted—from fighters returning home, cells already here and lone wolves self-radicalized on the Internet.
And even though terrorist groups have targeted Western travelers for decades, the emergence of the Islamic State as perhaps the richest and most influential terror group in the world has raised the stakes for Britons, inside their borders and out.
On June 26, in a matter of hours on three continents, more than 90 people were killed in ISIL-related attacks in France, Kuwait, Somalia, and Tunisia. Most of the carnage took place on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia after an ISIL-connected gunman opened fire. 38 tourists were killed—30 of whom were British.
“It’s another wake up call,” said Mabrouka M’barek, a former member of Tunisia’s Parliament who believes the security apparatus hasn’t put in the effort to understand why young people are being attracted to ISIL.
“We really have to understand why these young people are being radicalized and how they can go from a break dancer or rapper to an ISIS killing machine,” said M’Barek.
Tunisia, it turns out, according to ICSR, is the world’s largest source of foreign fighters to ISIL with approximately 3,000, surpassing the number of fighters from much larger countries like Saudi Arabia (2,500) and Russia (1,500).
The tiny country, nestled in between Libya and Algeria in North Africa, is trying to rebuild and rebrand itself as a democracy after a fruit vendor self-immolated and ignited the Arab Spring in 2010. By contrast, the small country of Britain has been a global, economic and democratic powerhouse for centuries.
ISIL, sensing Tunisia’s vulnerability, so far this year has launched two devastating attacks targeting the country’s tourism industry. The first was March 18th. 20 people, mostly Europeans were killed. Two Britons were wounded. And ISIL, through its messaging, has made it clear it plans to take equal of advantage of Britain’s vulnerabilities, by urging self-directed attacks.
JJ Green is the National Security Correspondent at WTOP Radio in Washington, D.C. He’s also a security contributor on several television outlets and a frequent writer on the topic.
