Page 35 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

DENIS ČALETA, SARA PERKOVIĆ: EXTREMISM AND RADICALIZATION IN THE EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT – SECURITY CHALLENGES
OF RETURN FOREIGN FIGHTERS

list of forbidden organizations. From 2014 the Islamic State was included in this list, which
meant that if anyone was caught sharing any promotional materials of the group, they could
be prosecuted, including any symbols or raising money for them through social media. Other
than promotion, the German authorities also made surveillance stronger for specific groups
of people: “After the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, the German police
decided to use the same tool for the identification of people on the basis of demographic and
socio-economic criteria taken from the profile of terrorists from 9/11” (OSCE, p 64). Besides
this, Germany created the Gemeinsames Terrorismusabwehrzentrum (GTAZ), a common cen-
tre for the coordination of counter-terrorism.

Germany had great problems with its citizens who travelled to Syria and Iraq because of the
war conflict. “According to findings of the German security authorities, more than 960 indi-
viduals have left the country to travel to Syria or Iraq out of Islamist motivation, although the
actual number could be higher. The number of departures per quarter has fallen since the third
quarter of 2015 and has generally been dropping since late 2014. The peak was in mid-2014,
with almost 100 departures a month (Heinke and Raudszu, 2018, p 43). Heinke and Raudszus
added that most of the foreign fighters who have travelled from Germany are men (79%), aged
13-62; most are between 22 and 25. Further, they said that the women who left were younger
than the men, and this means that the number of minors who left for Syria and Iraq was greater
among women than men. In the German example it is an interesting fact that a large number
of German citizens left to go to Syria and Iraq to fight in the conflict, but against the Islamic
State. Germany has a large Kurdish community, and it is thought that the largest number of
recruits were from Germany, especially in the fight for the city of Kobanî. “We know of 204
residents that have left Germany to fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, 69 of
whom are German citizens” (Heinke and Raudszus, 2018, p 48).

The German public has been quite alarmed at the thought of foreign fighters returning. In the
last few years Germany has accepted a large number of refugees who have asked for asy-
lum. Because of this the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and her Government have
received much criticism, due to the concerns of the public that there would be many more
terrorist attacks. Cases such as that of the young Tunisian who came to Germany as a refugee,
asking for asylum, and later carried out a terrorist attack in 2015 which killed 12 and injured
56 people in Berlin, intensified not only the way of treating refugees and asylum seekers,
but also the way of looking at returning foreign fighters, especially when the responsibility
for this terrorist attack was admitted by the Islamic State. Germany was faced with a large
number of foreign fighters who had left for Syria and Iraq: “Germany’s domestic intelligence
service, the BfV, estimates that since 2013 more than 1,050 Islamists have left the country
for Iraq and Syria. The BfV has found that about a third of those German Islamists have now
returned to Germany, with another 200 thought to have been killed in Syria and Iraq. Of
those who have returned, more than 110 played an “active part” in the fighting and remain
“the subject of police and judicial inquiries”, the BfV said in a statement” (Peel at al., 2019,
e-source). To be more precise, “more than 1,050 Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have left
Germany for Syria and Iraq of whom, to date, 350 have returned and 200 have died. Addi-
tionally, at least 42 FTFs, a high number of women and a minimum of 59 children identified
as German dual-citizens are currently detained, the vast majority in Syria and northern Iraq”
(Roithamaier, 2019, e-source).

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