FBI Director James Comey warned last Friday about the prospect of a “future 9/11” caused by increased flow of foreign fighters into Syria. Speaking on the third anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death, Comey cited concerns about these individuals potentially returning back to their respective homelands as radicalised ‘home-grown’ terrorists. In the words of the FBI Director: “All of us with a memory of the 1980s and 1990s saw the line drawn from Afghanistan ... to September 11. We see Syria as that, but an order of magnitude worse” because of the larger number of foreign fighters.
Although conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia have been of longer duration than Syria, none of those have mobilised as many foreigners. According to Comey, dozens of US citizens have joined the fighting in the country in the last few months alone, with many other nationalities too.
Comey thus joins a chorus of prominent international voices who have, in recent weeks, expressed growing alarm about Syria. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, for instance, last month described the situation in the country as an “unmitigated disaster”. Moreover, UK Director of the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism, Charles Farr, recently asserted that the threat from United Kingdom nationals travelling to participate in the Syrian conflict is the “biggest challenge” to UK security services since 9/11.
The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at Kings College London estimated last December that as many as 11,000 foreign fighters overall may have fought in Syria since the conflict began there, from more than 70 countries. Persons from Middle Eastern countries represent the majority of those foreign fighters — estimated to be around 70 per cent. This underlines the extent to which the Syrian conflict has mobilised Muslims across the world. The five countries with the largest numbers of foreign fighters in Syria, as of last December, were: Jordan (the single biggest contributor with up to 2,089 fighters in Syria), Saudi Arabia (as many as 1,016), Tunisia (up to 970), Lebanon (as many as 890) and Libya (up to 556).
As Comey highlighted, the central concern here is that many of these individuals, who include potentially as many as 2,000 from Western Europe, will return from Syria battle-hardened with significantly greater terrorist capability and resolve. ICSR estimated, as of last December, that the breakup of foreign fighters in Syria from non-Middle Eastern countries included: Russia (up to 423), France (as many as 412), UK (up to 366), Germany (as many as 240), Belgium (as many as 296), Australia (up to 205), Chechnya (as many as 186), the Netherlands (up to 152), Canada (as many as 100) and the US (up to 60).
And given that the relatively large number of these fighters makes them collectively difficult to track with precision, further home-grown attacks appear increasingly likely. While this offers propaganda value for Al Qaida, such individuals often lack thorough indoctrination of the network’s core messages, even though some, including last year’s London and Boston terrorists, appear to have been partially motivated or inspired by them.
Some three years on from Bin Laden’s assassination, this reflects, in part, the significant depletion of Al Qaida’s central organisation, which is unlikely to be able to provide operational support for home-grown terrorists. It also means that these foreign fighters, while highly dangerous, do not individually represent the same level of threat to international interests as larger cells and terrorist groups and are thus less likely to be able to perform major, spectacular attacks acting alone.
Thus, while Bin Laden’s successor, Ayman Al Zawahiri, has sought to seize upon home-grown terrorism, and indeed the chaos in Syria, for propaganda purposes, this cannot disguise the central Al Qaida organisation’s declining fortunes. Al Zawahiri lacks Bin Laden’s personal authority within the terrorist network and the core has also been weakened by the assassination of numerous other senior terrorist leaders.
De-centralised and dispersed
A fundamental challenge for Al Zawahiri is that while the central Al Qaida leadership appears to still remain located largely in Pakistani tribal areas and borderlands, the wider network has become increasingly de-centralised and dispersed. The problems this can cause were underlined last month in Syria when a jihadist group called Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) accused Al Qaida of having “deviated from the correct path” and “divided the Mujahideen in every place”. The origin of the dispute probably lies in an edict from Al Zawahiri to ISIS to confine its activities to Iraq after it was accused of abuses of civilians and rival rebels in Syria. Al Zawahiri has instead recognised the Jabhat Al Nusra Front as the official Al Qaida affiliate in Syria and called for jihadist unity behind it.
Accompanying this dispersion and de-centralisation has been the shifting focus of Al Qaida groups and franchises whose attention is more on ‘local’ national or regional issues, rather than the broader international designs of Bin Laden. In part, this also reflects the greater difficulty of attacking key international targets, many of whose defences have become significantly hardened since 9/11.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, for instance, building new security architectures in many countries. This has included a significant stress on enhanced aviation and wider transportation security and border screening.
There has also been evolution in the geographical focal points of Al Qaida activity with terrorist nodes of growing importance, for instance, in key African and Middle Eastern countries, such as Yemen, where political upheaval since Bin Laden’s death has allowed terrorists and other insurgents to secure greater foothold. And reflecting this changed risk pattern, US forces are re-deploying as a result.
Series of attacks
For instance, the CIA has expanded its staff members in Yemen and also enhanced its air bases in the Gulf from which it can launch drone strikes into the country. Only last month, Washington launched a massive series of drone attacks which, according to the Yemeni government, killed at least two dozen militants, including foreign fighters, in an Al Qaida training camp in the remote areas of Abyan and Shabwa.
Washington first used armed drones to pick off Al Qaida operatives in Yemen in 2002 and there have been more than 100 reported since then, according to the New America Foundation. The foundation estimates that these strikes have killed between 700 and 1,000 people, including at least 81 civilians.
Meanwhile in Africa, US forces have also scaled up facilities in numerous states, including Kenya, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic (CAR). This is intended to allow for greater aerial surveillance and drone strikes, plus sites for military hardware storage. Washington is particularly concerned at the way in which Islamic extremist groups in West Africa, North Africa, Sahel, CAR and the Horn of Africa have gained stronger footholds in recent years. And reflecting the increased priority of Africa in US policy, US Secretary of State John Kerry just concluded a week-long trip to the continent with security and counter-terrorism as his top priorities.
In a speech on May 2, Kerry emphasised that conflict and security remain pivotal challenges to Africa’s stability and development and that the continent is now at an inflection point. He has recommitted US support to tackle these grand challenges, including $100 million (Dh367 million) to support African Union and French forces in the CAR and financial and logistical support for African Union-led efforts in Somalia against the Al Qaida-linked Al Shabab organisation.
Taken overall, while the core of Al Qaida has been diminished since Bin Laden’s demise, much of the wider terrorist network remains potent, albeit more focused on local grievances than grander international ambitions. However, danger may be growing from home-grown threats fuelled by battle-hardened, radicalised individuals returning from foreign theatres of war, especially Syria, with greater terrorist resolve and capabilities.
Andrew Hammond is a former UK government special adviser and associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
