Mitch Silber, the former Director of Intelligence Analysis for NYPD, attributes Europe’s homegrown terrorist threat to Europe’s repeated failure to integrate immigrant communities and provide them with economic opportunities, leaving them vulnerable to radical indoctrination. To combat this threat, Europe needs to implement a comprehensive information sharing mechanism immediately, says Silber, a member of The Cipher Brief Network.
The Cipher Brief: Where do you see the terrorist threat in Europe headed in the next six months or a year?
Mitch Silber: The terrorist threat to Europe is the greatest it has been since 9/11 and potentially at an all time high. The key contributing factors to this situation include the deterioration of state authority and the resulting ongoing civil wars across the Mediterranean Sea, which have enabled the creation of terrorist safe havens in both Syria and Libya. Unprecedented refugee outflows from both Syria and Libya to Europe, into which terrorists have been able to embed themselves, as well as poorly integrated previous waves of second and third generation immigrants from North Africa and South Asia who are receptive to Islamic State and Al Qaeda recruitment efforts, have also contributed to this threat. Given the ongoing nature of each of these factors, it is unlikely that the terrorist threat to Western Europe will abate any time soon.
The Cipher Brief: How do you view the “homegrown” threat in Europe? How is it different from that in the U.S.?
MS: Europe has a homegrown terrorism threat that vastly surpasses that of the United States. This phenomenon did not arise overnight – it can actually be traced back to the failure of Western European states to integrate guest workers and immigrant communities who came to rebuild Europe after World War II. The cultural and social history in Europe has lacked the acceptance of former colonial subjects as equal nationals, and European countries have offered limited economic opportunities for these "guest" populations. Living in homogenous areas on the outskirts of major Western cities, the children and grandchildren of these immigrants have never felt fully part of the national projects in Germany, France, the UK, Belgium, and other European states. As a result, they have been vulnerable to the sophisticated and tailor-made online social media efforts of the Islamic State, which tells these second and third generation populations that they do not belong in Europe, but rather in the Caliphate created by the Islamic State, and that secular, Western Europe is their enemy and is responsible for their misfortune.
The ease of travel to and from terrorist safe havens in Syria and Libya provides opportunities for these disaffected young European Muslims to receive paramilitary training, ideological indoctrination, and operational support to carry out attacks in Europe on behalf of the Islamic State and even al Qaeda to a lesser degree. The attacks in Paris last November were a perfect example of this scenario and all too easily could happen again in the UK, France, Germany, or other European states.
The United States' homegrown problem exists but at a much lesser scale than the European problem. First, the United States does not have anything even resembling the poorly integrated isolated neighborhoods on the outskirts of major European cities in kind or in scope. The only exception might be Minnesota's poorly integrated Somali population in Minneapolis. However, the economic status of immigrants that the United States has allowed to enter the country from South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East have been at a much higher professional level and much smaller scale, thus reducing the disenchantment among second and third generation children of these immigrants. Moreover, the U.S. is much better at and has a history of integrating all types of new immigrants into American society with access to the "American dream." As a result, the pool of young individuals in the United States who would be attracted to Islamic State and Al Qaeda propaganda and recruitment is far less per capita than in Europe.
Moreover, travel to and from the war zones, where American "wannabe" terrorists would need to travel for sophisticated training and ideological indoctrination, is much harder given the distance from the U.S. to those war zones and the challenges these individuals would face at the border explaining their travel. To put this in context, the Director of National Intelligence recently testified that approximately 7,000 Westerners have traveled to Syria and Iraq from Europe. Estimates of Americans who have traveled there are approximately 150 people.
TCB: What advice would you give European governments dealing with the ISIS threat, particularly in the wake of the Paris attacks?
MS: Europe is facing both internal and external challenges that complicate the ISIS threat. There are those British, German, French, and Belgian citizens within their borders who want to act, inspired by ISIS, regardless of whether they have traveled. And there is also this phenomenon of the foreign fighters, where European citizens travel to these zones of conflict and come back into Europe trained, radicalized, and operationally ready to act.
On the domestic front, EU governments need to accelerate a two-pronged strategy. First, they must advance and fund social programs that provide hope, skills, and incentive for these vulnerable second and third generation residents to participate as full citizens in their countries of birth. Second, EU governments need to devote increased funding to domestic intelligence programs to identify and disrupt homegrown radicals who are on a pathway to violence at early stages.
For the external threat, a situation exists where the EU lacks a comprehensive EU intelligence sharing mechanism. This needs to be addressed immediately. Otherwise, the ability for "foreign fighters" to return to Europe, taking advantage of this mismatch in responsibilities and capabilities among perimeter states, like Greece and other states with more significant counterterrorism intelligence, will continue to Europe's great disadvantage.
The Cipher Brief: How can American law enforcement and intelligence professionals more effectively cooperate with their European counterparts?
MS: American law enforcement and intelligence professionals can best cooperate with their European counterparts in several ways. First, both European and U.S. security officials need to set up robust mechanisms for sharing intelligence. In many cases, the greatest ISIS and al Qaeda related terrorism threats to the U.S. emanate from the EU and the U.S. Visa Waiver program that allows Brits, Germans, Frenchmen, and others to travel to the U.S. with no prior documentation. One of my greatest concerns has always been that groups of European "cleanskins," who have traveled and trained in a war zone, are able to come to the U.S. unbeknownst to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence. As a result, shared intelligence is vital. Adjustments in the U.S. waiver program, recently instituted to flag Europeans who may have traveled to Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and other conflict areas, was long over due.
Also, American law enforcement and intelligence professionals ought to spend more time in Europe, specifically in the areas where populations have not integrated, to better understand from local officials how the radicalization process is evolving. Trends in Europe often preview trends that occur in the U.S.
The Cipher Brief: In your view, what’s the biggest difference between the European and American approach to counterterrorism? What can Europe learn from the U.S. and vice versa?
MS: American and European counterterrorism approaches differ based on philosophy as well as tools available to each respective side. American law enforcement and intelligence have the ability to utilize human intelligence (HUMINT) both online and in the field to a degree not afforded most EU states, in part because of Nazi era legacies and human rights concerns. American counterterrorism approaches have no issues with utilizing human sources to penetrate budding terrorist conspiracies (provided they meet certain legal thresholds) in order to determine whether individuals who have expressed intent to commit terrorist acts would actually do so once provided the capability (by law enforcement). The American legal system makes these interventions a very effective way to infiltrate and disrupt terrorist conspiracies in their earliest stages.
Moreover, the ability to prosecute individuals for "providing material support" to terrorists (including the wannabe terrorists themselves) is yet another legal tool, which allows the American system to disrupt plots and efforts to aid terrorists abroad that may only have been "aspirational" rather than operational. This is yet another tool that European counterterrorism officials do not have in their armamentarium.
Lastly, European counterterrorism officials are overwhelmed and resources constrained. The absolute number of individuals who are considered to be potential terrorist threats in countries like the UK, France, Germany, and Belgium are impossible to be monitored consistently and thus, the likelihood that someone at the bottom of the list, or someone who was re-prioritized might turn to violence unbeknownst to security officials is very high. In fact, that is exactly what happened in the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher Supermarket attacks in Paris early last year.
