Recent news articles have featured reports of domestic mujahideen — “British”, “Swedish”, Dutch”, etc. — who are stampeding from Western Europe to Syria in order to fight in the jihad against the regime of Bashar al-Assad (and, while they are at it, against Christians, Alawites, secular Muslims, and anyone else who is insufficiently Islamic).
One presumes that those who survive will eventually return “home”. What then?
Hermes has translated a German-language article from Radio Stimme Russlands about the internal European terrorist threat that may be posed by seasoned veterans of jihad who return from Syria, Libya, and other fronts in the still-raging Arab Spring:
The fifth column of Jihad in Europe
The Belgian police have once again taken measures to dismantle the recruitment network for the Syrian rebels. It became known that the recruiting personnel are widely active in the whole of the European Union, and that the mercenaries coming back to Europe are still ready to be deployed.
It appears that, despite having European passports, all of these “volunteers” come overwhelmingly from North African lands, the Middle East and Central Asia. The native European population is now very concerned about these radical Islamists coming “back home”: What might they all do at some point once they are back? Because these overwhelmingly young people often only know how to fight against infidels, and are not willing to learn anything else. It is in this environment that a well-organized structure of extremist cells has developed, Colonel Lew Korolkow, a veteran of Russian foreign intelligence and a crisis-management expert, said to the “Voice of Russia”.
“This is a well organized network which has been functioning smoothly already for ten years now, with its own recruitment centers that can be found in the urban areas, in which those ripe for being recruited live. At this point the vast diaspora from Islamic countries, whose representatives have settled all over Europe, is to be noted. They are mainly present in the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden, and to a lesser extent, in Norway. That means that this problem is encountered where the most favorable conditions are created for those ‘in great need’ and refugees are to be found”.
The European Union’s foreign policy has been for years worked in favor of the danger of domestic terrorism. And what is also contributing to this situation is the active involvement of the EU in issues that are taking place in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, Dmitri Danilov, head manager for European security at the Europa Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences explains.
“It is plain to see that in such a context, the risk of terrorism does not decrease but increases, and this tendency will continue. The more the countries of Europe get involved in the fight against international terrorism not only outside Europe, but also within their own borders, the greater the risk of terrorist attacks. But I would not directly link the activities of the European countries in the Arab world with the increasing terrorist threat. However there is a clear connection. The Europeans have tried from the beginning to portray the issue as if it were just about international terrorism, but soon it became very clear that international and domestic terrorism cannot be separated from one another.”
Some experts opine that the fourth generation of Muslim immigrants would now categorically say “NO” to European civilization, and would prepare for war.
This generation is a ticking time bomb in the middle of Europe: the fifth column of Jihad. However, the terms do not alter the causal relationships between the events of today and those of a potential near future.