Europe has emerged as a key battleground for Daesh
Daniel Byman
ing ground to rivals, they often try to attract recruits and funds through spectacular violence.
The Daesh builds its image on success, and if it is failing militarily in Iraq and Syria it will need to win victories elsewhere. Days before the attacks in Brussels, a Daesh-linked suicide bomber killed four people and wounded dozens in Istanbul. The group has also claimed responsibility for attacks in Lebanon and in Egypt. It has established “provinces” of varying degrees of strength on the Sinai Peninsula and in Yemen and other Muslim countries.
But Europe is an especially important theater. Attacks in Paris or Brussels — or, perhaps, eventually in London, which Daesh leaders regularly threaten — enable the group’s leaders to claim they are taking the fight to their enemies.
More than 5,000 Europeans have gone to fight in Syria, and France and Belgium contribute a disproportionate number of these fighters. Some returnees try to link up with locals, and the cycle of violence is becoming self-sustaining. The first volunteers were motivated primarily by adventure or out of a sense of defending their community, but now friends are recruiting friends.
European security services are overwhelmed. Terrorists are free to cross Europe’s open borders, but security relationships are often far more confined. European security services often do not share lists of suspects and they do not have a common system for transliterating Arabic names. Even when they make progress, arrests and manhunts can lead to spikes in attacks, as other terrorists seek revenge or speed up their timetables because they feel the net is closing in. After the latest bombings, attention to terrorism will grow, as will the resources at security services’ disposal, but cooperation is likely to remain a problem.
The technical glitches can perhaps be solved, but Europe also faces another difficulty: Muslim integration. Across the Continent, Muslims often feel alienated from the broader population. Trust in the police and security services is particularly low. In the United States, many plots are disrupted because the American Muslim community reports them to the police and the FBI; such trust is lacking in Europe.
The rise of far-right, xenophobic political forces, like the National Front in France or Alternative for Germany, will do little to improve relations between European Muslims and their governments. As chauvinistic voices become louder and societies less welcoming, Muslim communities feel more under siege.
Pushing back Daesh in the Middle East is necessary for long-term success, but in the short term we should expect Daesh to strike where it can. Unfortunately, the Western response in Iraq and Syria is much more promising than efforts to stop terrorism in Europe. Bombing the Daesh’s leaders and forces in Iraq and Syria and building up a credible opposition there remain vital, but what is necessary to defeat — or, more realistically, weaken — the Daesh and its supporters in Europe is even less straightforward and harder to achieve.