Page 24 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

SECTION I: EXTREMISM, RADICALIZATION AND CYBER THREATS AS AN IMPORTANT
SECURITY FACTORS FOR COUNTERING TERRORISM PROCESSES

2 Foreign Fighters as a Security Threat

When we speak of the return of FTFs from the perspective of the governments of the states
they are returning to, it is not wrong to say that there are almost no countries that are willingly
letting foreign fighters back in. Some countries have asked for the annulment of citizenship
for FTFs (Canada, Australia), while others have shown more moderate approach in deal-
ing with them. Governments have a fundamental responsibility to provide security for their
citizens. Fear of the FTFs’ return is something that has forced local and state governments,
judiciaries, and others in the decision-making process to seek mechanisms on how to deal
with them.

While both governments and citizens of countries fear the return of foreign fighters, research
shows that FTFs are not prone to carrying out terrorist attacks on their return. “My data in-
dicate that only one in nine foreign fighters returns because of an order to carry out an attack
on Western societies” (Hegghammer, 2013, p 7). Besides this, “it is important to realize that
not all foreign fighters represent the same level of danger” (Bos et al., 2018, p 12). At least
initially, those who have travelled to Syria are less likely to see themselves as domestic terror-
ists than those IS sympathizers who stayed at home. They generally appear to have a stronger
desire to join something new than to destroy something old.

As a result, returnees have, so far, proved a more manageable problem than was initially an-
ticipated (Barret, 2017, p 14). There have always been a handful of foreign fighters in every
conflict who engage in militant activity when they return, and the events in Paris, Brussels
and elsewhere demonstrate that some of these will certainly be mass casualty attacks. How-
ever, there are unlikely to be mass numbers of foreign fighters who launch major attacks. If
there were, the hundreds of thousands of returnees from Syria would have already made the
attempts (Renard and Coolsaet, 2018, p 17). This is something that is confirmed in Europol’s
annual EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT, 2018), which states that jihadi
attacks are primarily committed by “local” terrorists who have been radicalized in their own
states without travelling to join a terrorist organization, and that they often do not have a direct
link with the Islamic State or any jihadi organization. Of course, “recent attacks in Europe
have, for the main part, been committed by lone individuals who have not been to a conflict
zone – but who may have been inspired by terrorist propaganda and/or the extremist narrative,
as well as by other successful attacks worldwide” (TE-SAT, 2018, p 27).

The Radicalization Awareness Network (RAN, 2017) explains how, in general, FTFs are not
likely to commit terrorist attacks when returning to their own countries. However, they also
mention that when we speak of returning fighters, we are talking about two generations of
fighters. The first generation is composed of those who joined the conflict for humanitarian
reasons to fight the Assad regime. These people are less violent; when talking about the dif-
ferences between returning foreign fighters, these are the people who do not have the intention
to commit any crimes. The second generation of returners is more ideologically inclined, and
it is possible that they arrive with violent motives to harm EU citizens. Hegghammer states
that “My tentative data indicate that militants usually do not leave intending to return for a
domestic attack, but a small minority acquire that motivation along the way and become more
effective operatives on their return” (Hegghammer, 2013, p 1). Finally, foreign fighters may
not want to carry out attacks back in their home countries for the simple reason that such at-
tacks could endanger their family and friends (Byman and Shapiro, 2014, p 21).

24