Europe’s quandary: Fighting a war on Isis within its borders

When the United States declared war on al-Qaeda after the September 11th attacks, American leaders took the fight to the militant group’s hide-outs in Afghanistan.

But for Europe’s leaders, who now consider themselves at war with the Islamic State after large-scale terrorist attacks at home, the challenge is more complicated: the enemy’s hide-outs are ghettoised parts of Paris, Brussels and other European cities that amount to mini-failed states inside their own borders.

While France and Britain have joined the US in bombing Islamic State, also known as Isis and its Arabic acronym Daesh, Europe has faced a much harder time understanding and dealing with its own citizens who have abetted the Islamic State’s ascent.

These are mostly third-generation Muslims who have become radicalised in poor communities left to develop outside the national culture.

Internal strategies

Those communities are incubators that figure prominently in the Islamic State’s two attacks on Paris since January 2015, and the triple bombing on Tuesday in Brussels.

Resolving the problem, political analysts say, does not require simply more intelligence co-operation and shared lists of people suspected of being radicals and fighters returning from Syria.

European governments must also develop internal strategies to deal with the threat at home – the deep social problems of racism and radicalism, along with the security dilemma, which raises concerns about surveillance, justice and civil liberties.

“You can bomb Raqqa, and you may consider that to be war, but you’re not going to bomb Molenbeek or Schaerbeek or St Denis, unless you’re ready for civil war,” said François Heisbourg, president of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

French president François Hollande and his prime minister, Manuel Valls, have repeatedly described Europe’s fight against the Islamic State as war; Heisbourg called that an “extremely dangerous” use of the word. Even more, Heisbourg argued, “talking of war dignifies Daesh [Isis], which wants to be seen as having a state and an army of warriors.”

For angry, poor and isolated young Muslims in Europe, “to be seen as the downtrodden victims of western colonialism and iniquity, fighting the holy war against the arrayed legions of the crusaders,” is precisely what Isis advertises.

The dual nature of the European struggle against Isis separates it from the American “global war on terrorism” and deeply complicates it, argued Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute.

“We need a dual response,” he said, more bellicose on Islamic State abroad but less bellicose at home, emphasising longer-term social work in isolated and disenfranchised communities.

The objective, he said, is to counter radical voices who often provide paths into meaning for young men who have been petty criminals. Most of the European terrorist suspects were known to the local police.

Other identity

“There is a realisation that this is not a war you can bomb or shoot your way out of, but you have to deal with individuals who are radicalised at home, to examine the reasons that they are exploring this other identity,” said Pantucci.

Important pockets of the disenfranchised and isolated are embedded in most European countries, he said: Bradford in England, heavily Kashmiri and home to the London subway bombers of July 7th, 2005; largely Muslim east Birmingham, where organised crime and radicalism spring from the same roots; and the heavily immigrant suburbs or banlieues of France's big cities.

Belgium, already divided by language and with a plethora of local and state federalisms and police forces, provides a special example.

More so than elsewhere, Belgium allowed the self-ghettoisation, or self-isolation, of ethnic communities in the name of multiculturalism and day-to-day peace.

For that, Europe has few easy answers, especially as Islamic State seeks to manipulate European fears of terrorism and migration. – (New York Times service)