Page 23 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

2 Extremism and Radicalization in the

European Environment – Security

Challenges of Return Foreign Fighters

Denis Čaleta, Sara Perković

1 Introduction

In this section, the main focus will be on those foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) who were part
of the war conflicts in Syria and Iraq and who were part of the organization called the Islamic
State (IS, also known as ISIS). But who are these foreign fighters? David Malet describes
foreign fighters as “non-citizens of conflict states who join insurgencies during the civil con-
flict. I build on this formulation and describe a foreign fighter as an agent who (1) has joined,
and operates within the confines of, an insurgency, (2) lacks citizenship of the conflict state
or kinship links to its warring factions, (3) lacks affiliation to an official military organiza-
tion, and (4) is unpaid” (Hegghammer, 2013, p 57). Returning foreign fighters have been well
recognized as a potential problem: “As regards the problem of departures, the biggest concern
of intelligence and security services and the police were the process of return of EU citizens
to their home countries. There are legitimate fears that the return of radicalized individuals
with the knowledge of how to use weapons and with traumas from crisis areas could create a
serious security risk related to terrorist threats” (Čaleta, 2016, p 18).

The research of this paper will be based on several specific European countries, even though
the issue of FTFs has been detected more widely, across all European countries. The many
FTFs who have returned from the Islamic State have led to increasing questions about them
posing a threat to Europe. The problem of returning FTFs is in the idea that they did not leave
their radicalized ideas in the conflict zone, but are returning with a will or a plan to develop
terrorist activities. They are returning brave, after seeing many violent situations, and with a
broad military knowledge. Other than terrorist activities, a further danger of returning FTFs
is that they could radicalize others and make them want to join terrorist organizations in the
future. This analysis will look into whether FTFs pose a real danger to European security,
knowing that the potential threat is always possible.

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