[VOX] A wave of would-be returnees could rekindle terrorism on the continent.With the surprise withdrawal of US forces in Syria and the subsequent ‐ and immediate ‐ commencement of Turkish military operations against Syrian Kurdish forces, chaos has ensued. Kurdish forces are claiming that hundreds of ISIS prisoners have escaped at the Ain Issa detention facility while fighting raged nearby, while two officials told the New York Times that the US military had failed to secure 60 or so high-value detainees before its forces departed.
President Donald Trump, however, has assured Americans that his new approach would not prove a threat to the US homeland, saying, "They’re going to be escaping to Europe."
Europeans, to be sure, will not find this reassuring. Given the thousands of Europeans who went to fight for the Islamic State and the problems Europe has had with jihadist terrorism in general, they should be alarmed by the US abandonment of the Syrian Kurds and the possible escape of large numbers of ISIS prisoners. The good news is that the potential threat illustrates the counterterrorism progress made in the years since 9/11, but the end of the US role in Syria is clearly bad news.
Europe has a painful record when it comes to jihadist terrorism, suffering repeated mass casualty attacks in the post-9/11 era, including an ISIS-orchestrated set of strikes in Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people. European states, however, have made strides on this front, bolstering intelligence collection and sharing, toughening up their laws, and otherwise improving counterterrorism measures. The latest crisis in Syria highlights the need for Europe to continue its aggressive counterterrorism policies, improve how it handles terrorists in jail, and develop a more coherent set of policies to handle suspected terrorist detainees.