Surge in English-speaking militants worries US, European officials
| Mark Hosenball |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Increased use of English in videos by religious extremists and a rising flow of recruits from Europe to fight in Syria and on other battlegrounds is disturbing US officials who fear some could return to Europe or come to the United States to plot attacks.
Only last week, a man who spoke English and Arabic and called himself Abu Ahmed al-Amriki (Arabic for ‘the American’) starred in a new video message posted on extremist websites and produced by al-Shabaab, the militant group based in Somalia.
A 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent and self-described al-Qaeda sympathiser, Mohamed Merah, who killed a Jewish Rabbi, three Jewish schoolchildren and three French Paratroopers, is seen in this March 21, 2012 image taken by French TV France 2. American and European security officials fear that an increase in English-speaking militants who participate in religious conflicts abroad will return to their respective countries and plot terror attacks against the civilian population
Abu Ahmed, whose face was blurred and whose real identity is not known, called on Muslims to give up their comfortable lives in the West and head for the front lines, in places like Somalia, Mali and Afghanistan, to wage Islamic holy war, according to an account by the Long War Journal, a counter-terrorism blog published by the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Although the fears of the West have sometimes proven overblown, this video and others highlight what senior US and European security officials say is a fresh increase in English-speaking recruits, including dozens of British citizens, travelling abroad to fight – most notably to Syria.
The United States and Europe want to see Assad defeated themselves. The concern, officials said, is that many English-speaking recruits are joining the most militant, anti-Western Syrian rebel factions.
Earlier in February, a person describing himself as an “American mujahid”, or holy warrior, posted the second of two video messages touting his involvement with rebels fighting the government of Syria, according to Flashpoint Global Partners, a New York-based consulting group which monitors militant websites.
“Bashar Assad, your days are numbered,” the fighter, who spoke in English with an American accent, declared, referring to Syria’s beleaguered president. “You should just quit now, while you can, and leave. You are going to die, no matter what. Where you go we will find you and kill you.”
Simultaneously, US officials said, English-language literature has blossomed online exhorting aspiring militants to violence wherever they are and providing them step-by-step instructions on how to use household materials to cause death and destruction.
“We’ve been monitoring (these developments) and yes, it’s concerning,” said Paul Browne, Deputy Commissioner and spokesman of the New York Police Department, which since the September 11, 2001, attacks has built aggressive counterterrorism operations.
The two videos’ authenticity could not be independently confirmed. While some deadly attacks – including the July 2005 London bombings – have been executed by European citizens trained overseas, other feared threats have often failed to materialise.
In recent days, al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has issued two slick English-language magazines for the would-be weekend holy warrior.
The tenth issue of “Inspire”, AQAP’s irregular but well-produced Internet magazine, contains what amounts to a list of westerners the group has targetted for death. They include novelist Salman Rushdie, Dutch politician Geert Wilders, and Terry Jones, the Quran-burning Florida preacher.
The second new publication, published by Inspire with equally slick production values, calls itself the “Lone Mujahid Pocketbook”. The guidebook, originally spotted by the Flashpoint monitoring group, asks readers: “Have u been lookin’ 4 a way to join the mujahideen in frontlines? Well, there’s no need to travel abroad, coz the frontline has come to you. Just read ‘n’ apply the contents of this guide.”
It goes on to offer how-to guides, complete with pictures and maps, for causing traffic accidents, staging “lethal ambushes”, “destroying buildings” by creating gas leaks and igniting them, and even “starting forest fires”.
Browne said the NYPD is also “tracking the actual and threatened violence accompanying demands” by militants for the release from a US prison of Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted for his role in New York-related plots in the early 1990s.
The latest Inspire issue contains a purported message from Rahman, known as the Blind Sheikh, complaining about insulting and isolating prison treatment.
The Internet messages targeted at potential English-speaking militants surfaced as European intelligence sources say they are monitoring steady traffic of young British citizens and residents to Syria to fight Assad’s government.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said dozens of fighters – and possibly as many as 60 or 70 – from Britain are believed to be in Syria.
It is unclear whether all are extremists. But many, the intelligence sources said, have joined up with Al-Nusra, a militant anti-Assad faction that the US government declared a terrorist organisation linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
