Fighting terrorism in EU needs stronger border security and refugees’ integration

Nov. 23, 2015 - PRLog -- French prosecutors have announced the death of Abdel-Hamid Abu Oud, the alleged ringleader of the Paris terror attacks, during the raid in Saint-Denis on 18 November 2015.

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the member of the extremist group had played a decisive role in the Paris attacks on November 13 and was involved in four of the six terror plots that French intelligence services had foiled.

However, the situation remains tense in France – a state of emergency has been extended for three months.

According to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, instead of bombings and mass executions the extremists could resort to larger attacks using other weapons.

“We must not rule anything out. I say it with all the responsibility. But we know and bear in mind that there is also a risk of chemical or bacteriological attacks,” the politician said during a session of the lower house of the national Parliament.

Commenting on the tragic events in France, Anthony Glees, Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and Director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS), compared them with the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo.

“It seems similar to the Charlie Hebdo attack of 7 January 2015, in that there was a core group of fighters supported by a wider group of accomplices. Currently there is a manhunt for these; one seems to have gone to Germany, others to Belgium. It was self-evidently coordinated – eight attacks within a time frame that had been carefully computed by the perpetrators to cause maximum confusion. We believe the eight included one person with a Syrian passport who entered the EU via Greece but others who were French. They will have been recruited to the IS cause, taken to Syria or Iraq to become IS fighters and then specially trained to execute this atrocity and infiltrated back into France. None of this could have taken place without careful coordination and management and clear and direct lines of communication between the ‘commandos’ in Paris and those they were obeying,” he said in an interview with “PenzaNews” agency.

The expert did not rule out potential connection of what happened with the migration crisis in the European Union.

“The policy of opening Germany’s doors to migrants from Arab North Africa, the Middle East and beyond, without careful registration and vetting, in the states who were the border into the Schengen area, of those wanting to come in to Europe lay not just Germany, and not just the Schengen area open to abuse but every one of the 28 EU states,” the professor noted.

According to him, this tragedy could entail significant political consequences.

“If someone claiming to be an asylum seeker, someone whom Angela Merkel will have welcomed without proper registration into Germany, should prove to have been a member of this jihadist terror group, I think Angela Merkel’s political position will become untenable. Many of her supporters think her policy vis-a-vis ‘asylum seekers’ of whom 50% are economic migrants and not people in fear of their lives, was a disaster for Germany, for Europe and for NATO. Equally I think Francois Hollande will not be re-electable when his term runs out,” the analyst explained.

In his opinion, the steps towards a safer Europe must include securing borders both within the EU and between the member states, and re-introducing border controls.

“The Lisbon Treaty made national security a matter for the member nations, not the EU overall and member states should cease trying to Europeanize their security problems. Equally there must be a development of modern and technically advanced interception and surveillance mechanisms; more data will have to be collected and some people will have to be monitored very closely indeed,” Anthony Glees said.

In turn, Rohan Gunaratna, Professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, stated that Paris is a turning point in the global fight against the IS.

“Paris was a slaughter by the IS to drive fear but it had the opposite effect. The French decided to strike back both against the IS core area and to hunt IS operatives and supporters in Europe. Until Paris, governments worldwide believed that the IS focus will be to build a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. The IS ambition is to create a caliphate worldwide,” the expert noted.

According to him, terrorists will try to attack France and other Western countries further.

“The IS will strike against its enemies by enlisting its cells in target countries, cells in neighboring countries, and by dispatching its own operatives from the core area. This terrorist organization has divided the world into three blocs of countries: those countries actively targeting the IS, those countries supporting the targeting countries and those countries that are neutral countries. France is in the first category. It has declared war against the IS so it will be a favored target of the IS,” Rohan Gunaratna added.

Asked about the potential connection between acts of terrorism and a migration crisis in the EU, he stressed that in the absence of reliable programs some migrants can be recruited by the Islamic State.

“The diaspora and migrant communities of Europe and Canada are not well integrated. They live in the West but they are driven by the developments in their homelands. Until they are integrated they can be radicalized and militarized by extremist and terrorist propaganda. If they are joined by new migrants fleeing from conflict arenas, the threat to Europe will grow. As such it is paramount to settle the new migrants away from the ethnic and religious enclaves and pockets of European societies,” the analyst said.

Full text news agency "PenzaNews":http://penzanews.ru/en/opinion/60065-2015