The British news is currently dominated by two stories: the floods which have swamped much of England, and the UK national who carried out a suicide attack in Syria last week.
The consensus among Britain’s hydrologists is that failure (due to budget cuts) to carry out pre-emptive dredging is the main reason why so many rivers have burst their banks. Now Prime Minister David Cameron says that ‘money is no object’ in repairing the damage wrought by the floods.
Reports of a seemingly unstoppable tide of European jihadists heading for Syria prompted a similarly knee-jerk reaction in the UK, with Home Secretary Theresa May announcing that British Islamists fighting in Syria will be stripped of their nationality.
It is not clear how the government expects to identify the culprits beyond reasonable doubt, but the reasoning behind such tough measures is a fear of ‘blowback’ — the phenomenon whereby battle-hardened extremists return to their country of residence and carry out attacks there.
Saudi Arabia shares these fears and has issued a decree that anyone travelling abroad to fight will face up to 20 years in jail. Other Gulf states are likely to follow suit.
The Syrian conflict is unchartered waters where the ‘war on terror’ is concerned. This is the first time that 50 per cent of one side in a civil war is composed of jihadists, the majority belonging either to Al Nusra or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis).
Of these, a significant proportion have come from abroad — analysts say that numbers dwarf even the ‘foreign mujahideen’ who fought against the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s. As in Afghanistan, Saudis are the largest Arab contingent.
More surprisingly, thousands of Europeans have steadily made their way to the battlefields of Aleppo, Homs and Damascus. It is difficult to ascertain exact numbers but a source informed me that the number of British fighters alone is not 600, as official figures claim, but nearer 3,000. France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands each have similar numbers of nationals fighting in Syria. Unlike any previous conflict, the ‘Syrian jihad’ has also attracted European female combatants, numbering at least 100.
Paradoxically, the West and the mujahideen are on the same side, on the surface at least — as they were in Afghanistan. In Syria, the West has consistently said that President Bashar Al Assad ‘must go’.
That some western and Gulf countries have decided to criminalise jihadist activity clearly demonstrates that Al Qaida and groups of its ilk are now perceived as the most serious threat to their regional interests and domestic security. The future of President Al Assad has been shunted down the agenda.
Why are such large numbers of European Islamists heading for Syria? Certainly compelling images of suffering fellow Muslims relayed via conventional and social media have much to do with it — as was the case in Bosnia — but the fight against the Al Assad regime has largely been compromised by the jihadists who have set themselves against the Free Syria Army, and even the more moderate Islamists, on ideological grounds.
It is also because the Syrian battlefield is relatively accessible to would-be ‘martyrs’ living in the West; the jihadist infrastructure is well-organised and established, with a network of safe houses in Turkey (itself half in Europe and half in the Middle East) which channels fighters in and out of Syria, where rebel fighters control the border checkpoints.
Worldwide caliphate
According to extremist statements on the internet and social media platforms, the global jihadist movement sees the conflict in Syria as the gateway to what they long for — a worldwide caliphate which begins with Islamic emirates in the heart of the Middle East. The shift from fighting occupying powers (as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq) to fighting Arab dictators and engaging in a much wider, regional, sectarian battle is in line with this ambition, however far fetched it may seem.
For European jihadists, then, the focus for now seems to be the local opportunities offered by the ‘Syrian jihad’. Perhaps this is why French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, told a press conference recently that — unlike British policymakers — he does not think French jihadists in Syria ‘represent a danger at home’.
According to anecdotal evidence, some European jihadists are ‘commuting’ to Syria, fighting for a number of weeks before returning home to recruit more volunteers for the battle and returning with them.
Abdul Waheed Majeed, the 41-year-old British suicide bomber who recently detonated a truck outside the Aleppo prison where hundreds of rebel fighters were incarcerated was not radicalised in Syria, but in Crawley, West Sussex, where he was once a key member of Al Muhajiroun.
There is, of course, a long-term danger that European extremists who have been immersed in the violence and anti-western rhetoric of Al Qaida type groups, who share the hard-line vision of a ‘global caliphate’, and who have been trained in manufacturing bombs and suicide vests in Syria, will present a real danger to their country of domicile on their return.
Nevertheless, I believe the UK is wrong to pursue a policy which is clearly at odds with international law and basic human rights. Carrying out a punishment (stripping someone of their citizenship) without a fair trial or the opportunity for that person to mount any kind of defence is not the kind of exemplary justice the world has expected from Britain.
Even in Saudi Arabia, which is frequently castigated for its human rights record, the draconian sentences it hands out to jihadists are mitigated by the offer of rehabilitation.
Theresa May’s hasty response is born more of a desire to please the voters (especially those with a general antipathy towards Muslims) than the common sense the Tory party prides itself on. As with the floods, the British government might serve its security interests better if it tackled the causes of extremism rather than its effects.
Abdel Bari Atwan is the editor-in-chief of digital newspaper Rai al-Youm: http://www.raialyoum.com You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@abdelbariatwan
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