[MAGHAREBIA] Syria is no longer about the battle between an old regime and the dream of a new one. The country is now the world's first large-scale laboratory for growing terrorists.
Al-Qaeda and its arch-rival, the "Islamic State" (ISIS), exploited the Syrian war to form an army of multinational jacket wallahs. They now constitute the biggest global threat to peace and security.
Returning jihadists pose an unprecedented challenge for security services in some 80 countries. This new generation of suicide bombers trained in Syria and Iraq, and gained combat experience. They leave the fronts skilled in multiple weapons and explosives.
And many are heading home to the southern side of the Mediterranean.
These fighters were involved in war crimes of the utmost ugliness and horror, many of which were witnessed by the whole world via videos and images circulated on social media and jihadist websites.
Some 8,000 of them are from the Maghreb - 3,000 Tunisians, 2,500 Libyans, 1,200 Moroccans, 1,000 Algerians, and a handful of Mauritanians - according to the Moroccan Centre for Strategic Studies (CMES).
Since the start of the year, Moroccan security authorities have dismantled several networks specialised in recruitment of volunteers. Some 30 alleged terror recruiters — and a roughly equal number of jihadists returned from foreign fronts — sit in prison awaiting trial.
Moroccan Member of Parliament Adil Chikitou has already sounded the alarm to fellow politicians.
"Managing the problem of returnees from Syria requires a multidimensional strategy," he tells Magharebia. "This issue is very difficult, given the large number of these young people."
"Moreover, they are not ordinary youth because they have become familiar with weapons, bloody scenes and severed heads," he says, adding: "They are real ticking time bombs."
Chikitou warns that these returning jihadists will find it difficult to transition to ordinary lives.
"They can at any moment become nostalgic for those scenes in which they thought themselves to be heroes, and be overcome with the thirst for blood and murder, which will motivate them to commit atrocities," the MP says.
Not all returnees are the same. The state should deal with each category according to its specifics, he suggests.
"Some young people felt sympathy and solidarity with the Syrian people," he explains. "Most of them decided to return because of frustration and disappointment, shocked by the reality over there."
With this category, dialogue and guidance could yield results.
But other fighters joined the Islamic State (Formerly ISIS) because of ideological convictions that have nothing to do with empathy for the Syrian people.
"This second type is very dangerous, and there is little hope that they will review their beliefs. Chikitou says. The threat, he adds, is compounded by the "expansionist ambitions and plans of the terrorist Islamic State".
Yet another group focuses on attracting young people, playing a role in their recruitment and financing their journey to the fronts. Chikitou calls on Moroccan security authorities to "deal firmly and in a tougher way with this breed, because they work to drag youth toward perverted trends".
Since the start of the year, Moroccan security authorities have dismantled several networks specialised in recruitment of volunteers. Some 30 alleged terror recruiters — and a roughly equal number of jihadists returned from foreign fronts — sit in prison awaiting trial.
Elders of the Salafist Jihadist movement in Morocco are trying to prevent the flow of young people to Syria, Iraq, Libya and other foreign battles.
Prominent Moroccan salafist ...also known as Wahhabis, salafists are against innovation in religion or in anything else. They eat the same things every meal of every day and all their children are named Abdullah. Not all salafists are takfiris, but all takfiris are salafists. They are fond of praying five times a day and killing infidels... cheikh Omar Haddouchi issued a fatwa last year to the young people of Morocco and Tunisia, urging them not to travel to Syria because of the emotional and financial damage to the loved ones left behind.
Haddouchi on July 1st posted a tweet that condemned al-Baghdadi, without naming the head of the Islamic State, he said that anyone who pledged allegiance to a stranger in a strange place without consulting Umma, should not be trusted.
"Those who pledged such allegiance should be killed," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant
#1
The country is now the world's first large-scale laboratory for growing terrorists.
#2
Im beginning to suspect that the only real fix for this is crop-dusting the region liberally with cobalt60. Basically makes the region a dead zone for 20 years, and uninhabitable for over 100 years. Only after 140 years would there be no relative risk.
#3
The solution is to carpet bomb every airport, train station and sea port in the region and then pump lots of weapons into the region so the fanatics can kill each other off.
The others will become so sick of the carnage they will disavow all of that nonsense and in about another 1200 years you might find a few rational survivors of the self inflicted genocide.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
07/12/2014 13:49 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
