SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE REPORTING — While the West’s attention has moved away from the once cataclysmic threat of Islamic terrorism to focus on the perils posed by state actors – namely China and Russia – a recent spate of attacks across Europe has placed renewed focus on the terrorism threat.
“With war between Israel, Hamas and the polarization it causes in our society, with the upcoming holiday season, there is a huge risk of terrorist attacks in the European Union,” European Justice Commissioner Ylva Johansson said in an early December meeting of European Union and home affairs ministers.
The European Commission subsequently declared it would make $32.3 million accessible to member states for the protection of sites that are deemed under threat, including places of worship. Travel alerts have also been issued going into the holiday season in the wake of the recent murder of a tourist near the Eiffel Tower. Authorities say the suspect in the murder posted a series of tweets regarding the war in Gaza and reportedly told authorities that the conflict served as motivation to kill.
And that’s the tip of the iceberg.
German authorities have cautioned that the terrorist threat is serious, and were forced to shutter a Christmas market near Stuttgart for several hours in light of a credible threat. Prosecutors are also investigating two teenagers who were detained on suspicion of plotting a terrorist-inspired onslaught. And days after that announcement, authorities detained a man who they say threatened a public gathering.
In the U.K, government officials held an urgent meeting to address rising threats in November, and in the same month, authorities charged two women with terrorism after they reportedly carried pro-Hamas symbols during a London protest.
This followed the halting of the Euro 2024 qualifier soccer match in October, and more than 35,000 fans were forced into lockdown in the Belgian capital of Brussels as police pursued the gunman who killed two Swedish nationals and injured a third. The all-night search ended with police fatally shooting the suspect, a Tunisian living illegally in the country and known to authorities due to suspected involvement in human trafficking. Officials say he had pledged allegiance to ISIS in an online video.
“There has been such a pivot away from ‘the war on terrorism’ to the return of great power competition, that these (European) governments have neglected very pervasive, very insidious threats which dwell in their own backyards,” Casey Babb, an Ottawa-based security policy advisor and fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told The Cipher Brief.
The latest attack occurred just four days after a teacher was stabbed to death at a northern French high school. France subsequently raised its threat alert to its highest level and deployed seven thousand extra troops to the streets. The suspect, who also declared himself a follower of ISIS in an audio recording just before the deadly assault, was known to French intelligence officials, who had wiretapped his phone and interacted with the alleged extremist just a day before the onslaught.
President Emmanuel Macron said “all European states are vulnerable.”
“It’s what comes with being a democracy, a rule-of-law state where there are individuals who can decide at a given moment to commit the worst acts,” Macron told reporters.
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EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell cautioned recently that the 27-nation bloc was “on the edge of the abyss.”
Several attacks that authorities say were terminated or intercepted in Western Europe over the last few years, flew under the radar of significant media attention. Europol’s European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2023, published in June, states that in 2022, “28 completed, failed or foiled attacks were recorded in the EU.”
“I am concerned. With our latest report on terrorism and the status in the European Union, we see that a lot of youngsters, in fact, are influenced and recruited through the internet,” Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle told ABC News. “We see a lot of lone actors that believe that they have to go and commit a terrorist attack because they want to belong to a bigger family.”
Recent attacks serve as a searing reminder of the terrorist brutality by ISIS members that struck the two nations in 2015 and 2016 – collectively killing more than 130 people. The ISIS-inspired assaults in Belgium and France this month, come on the heels of ascending anger and months of protests after far-right activist Rasmus Paludan and later, Christian Iraqi Salwan Momika publicly burned copies of the Quran. Officials condemned the debasement but insisted they were permitted under freedom of speech.
At the same time, Stockholm has struggled to counter a rampant disinformation campaign erroneously alleging that Swedish authorities are kidnapping Muslim children. The government raised the terror alert to the second-highest level in August, amid growing threats by Islamic extremists.
“Burning the Quran or any religious text is considered highly offensive to many people and can indeed lead to increased tensions, protests, and sometimes even violence in certain contexts,” explained Mark Murtha, a Peer Reviewer for the Terrorism Research Initiative at Austria’s Leiden University and Committee Member of the Science and Technology Directorate in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “When incidents involving the burning of religious texts occur, they often generate outrage and condemnation from the affected communities and the broader international community. This can flare tensions amongst the Muslim community and result in violent outbursts or other unintended consequences for a community.”
Authorities also say that the uptick in Middle East tensions has ignited a surge in bomb threats and antisemitic hate crimes across Western Europe.
“Historically, when there is a deterioration of the security environment in Israel, whether that be clashes with terrorists or rioters from the West Bank, skirmishes with Hezbollah in the north, or battles with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there is an uptick in terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world,” said Babb. “Additionally, there has been a nearly unfathomable surge in antisemitic hate crimes throughout Europe. The U.K., for instance, has said there’s been a 1,353 percent increase in these types of crimes since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas.”
Stefano Betti, a French-based International Security and Criminal Policy Expert, warned that the situation in the Middle East has clearly acted “as a trigger for dormant cells and radicalized individuals to take action, both on their own initiative and in response to statements like those from Al Qaeda, which praised Hamas for its attack and encouraged further acts of violence against Jewish communities.”
“This reduction, though relative, in the vigilance against Islamic terrorism was also influenced by the rise of the supremacist terrorism threat,” he said. “This led governments and various international experts to believe that there was an excessive focus on Islamic terrorism at the expense of other looming threats. Finally, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia partially created the illusion that we had returned to a traditional 20th-century warfare logic.”
Betti said what happened in Israel on October 7, was an “eye-opener.”
“Islamic terrorism has forcefully returned to the stage, but it is no longer alone. It now shares the scene with many state and non-state actors, including organized criminal groups,” Betti said. “All of this makes the security threat landscape extremely complex and multifaceted.”
Tom Mockaitis, a Professor of History and a terrorism expert at DePaul University, also said Israel’s war against Hamas can serve to “inspire individuals to strike a blow in sympathy with Hamas.”
“There is also concern over an antisemitic backlash. There has been an increase in hate crimes perpetrated against Jews and Jewish institutions in Britain this fall,” said Mockaitis. “Mosques and Synagogues are on heightened alert in the U.S. and probably in Europe as well.”
So, what can be done?
“Firstly, there is a need to increase both the quantity and quality of information and intelligence sharing among states, said Betti. “The very recent EU regulation aimed at enhancing digital information exchange in terrorism cases while strengthening the role of Eurojust, is moving in the right direction. At the same time, it is essential to avoid compartmentalizing terrorism intelligence. This means breaking down the existing bureaucratic and institutional barriers and separating the collection and analysis of information on organized crime, for example, from that related to terrorist activities. Secondly, it is crucial to improve the protection of vulnerable or soft targets. In recent days, we have seen law enforcement forces in various countries deploying to protect various sensitive locations. These measures are certainly important; however, they are not sufficient.”
Betti notes that while it is impossible to protect all sensitive locations in a country, the key is protecting vulnerable sites – schools, religious sites, museums, and other places of public gathering – which requires training the operators of these sites to recognize and report so-called ‘weak signs’ as potential indicators of a terrorist interest in certain areas.
“This is a long-term effort that requires establishing strong partnerships between the public and private sectors but is unavoidable,” said Betti.
In a “Worldwide Caution” alert posted recently, the U.S. Department of State advised all U.S. citizens to exercise “increased caution” “due to increased tensions in various locations around the world” which exacerbate “the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests.”
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And terrorism experts warn that the U.S. is not immune to the growing threat of terrorism at home.
“The general public and local law enforcement in the U.S. have let their guard down, but that is inevitable,” said Mockaitis. “Far-right terrorism currently poses a greater threat in the U.S. and some European countries than Islamist Extremism.”
Murtha believes that Israel’s war against Hamas “will embolden other terrorist organizations to lash out and engage in violent encounters against those opposed to their religious or organizational tenets.”
“When Israeli and even U.S. intelligence agencies were caught off guard by the Hamas invasion into Israel, one might wonder how prepared the U.S. and other European countries are from something similar occurring in their respective countries,” he said. “Many in the West have been focused on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and have taken their eyes off other potential terrorist adversaries. The entire terror threat is domestic, international, transnational, and multi-dimensional and not easy to follow or investigate. If the U.S. and other countries do not pay proper attention and carry out their due diligence to investigate these terrorist groups, increased terrorist activities and incidents will occur. With what has recently occurred in Israel, it should also be a wakeup call to the U.S. and other countries.’
FBI Director Christopher Wray agrees that the possibility of a terrorist attack has increased due to the war in the Middle East.
“In this heightened environment, there’s no question we’re seeing an increase in reported threats,” Wray noted at the International Police Chiefs Association in San Diego recently. “And we’ve got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own.”
According to Babb, to “counter these threats and prevent anything from materializing [Washington] will need to ramp up surveillance, reallocate certain resources and assets, and utilize the power of their national security and law enforcement community across the country.”
“What they should not do, which could make things worse,” said Babb, “is back down and allow certain Islamist narratives and rhetoric to persist and take root without consequences, or to overly indulge Palestinian grievances, despite how valid some might be, at a time when the focus should be on defeating terrorism.”
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