Syrian refugees do not pose a terrorist threat
When Stephen Harper rebuffed calls to allow more Syrian refugees to settle in Canada, he raised the spectre of Islamic State fighters taking advantage of Canadians’ generosity to carry out terrorist attacks on their soil. It’s certainly possible that taking in more of the desperate Syrians fleeing both state violence and jihadist attacks could allow a few bad guys to sneak in among the masses. But the chances of it substantially elevating the risk to Canadians aren’t very high.
American counterterrorism officials and analysts — including director of national intelligence James Clapper — have warned that militant groups may seek to use the refugee system to enter western countries.
There is evidence of the Islamic State operating in some refugee camps. And it has become extraordinarily difficult to identify Syrians with terrorist links among millions of other refugee claimants: with the country torn apart by four years of fighting and no reliable government partner to share information, intelligence from Syria is sketchy at best.
But if the Islamic State wanted to launch an attack in Canada, trying to manipulate the refugee process would be a highly ineffective way of doing it. Most candidates for resettlement from refugee camps are referred to Canada by the United Nations refugee agency, which identifies legitimate refugees with the greatest needs. These typically include vulnerable groups such as women and children, those with medical needs and survivors of violence and torture. Those who qualify are then considered by Canadian immigration officials, who conduct additional screening on security, medical and other grounds. It would be a lengthy and onerous process for any prospective terrorist, especially compared to jumping on a migrant boat to Europe.
Testifying before a Congressional Homeland Security Committee hearing this summer, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a security analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that for these reasons, exploiting the refugee system would not be a “primary concern” for the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.
Instead, he said they would be more likely to use online radicalization to inspire someone already in the U.S. or Canada to launch an attack.
Indeed, the number of refugees involved in terrorist plots since Sept. 11 has been minimal, while the perpetrators of the Islamic State-inspired attacks that killed two Canadian soldiers last October were both Canadian-born. Canada would be better served by beefing up its efforts to detect and counter online radicalization.
Meanwhile, millions of refugees from Syria remain in neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where their sheer numbers are putting immense strain on the local economies and infrastructure. Many are in refugee camps, where dangerous distractions beckon to bored youngsters who don’t have school or work, and desperately poor families consider hiring out their sons to terrorist recruiters or selling their daughters as child brides.
Still more refugees are living in local communities, often in poverty and substandard housing, and drawing scorn from native citizens who resent the upheaval they have caused.
These conditions are ideal for driving marginalized, frustrated young men and women to take up the Islamic State cause. If Canada wants to help, it should do everything it can to bring them to a safe place before they become desperate enough to turn to violence and hatred.
The risk of refugees from Syria carrying out acts of terrorism in Canada isn’t high enough to justify the costs of allowing millions of families to languish in hopelessness. Humanitarian concerns aside, delaying the resettlement of Syrian refugees with no money, no jobs, no prospects and nowhere to go will only exacerbate the instability in an already volatile region.
Canada’s best security option is to make it harder for the Islamic State to gain more followers who will launch their hateful attacks in the Middle East — or inspire Canadians to launch them at home — because they have nothing left to lose.
If the Islamic State wanted to launch an attack in Canada, trying to manipulate the refugee process would be a highly ineffective way of doing it