Covid may have helped blunt any immediate threat, but we shouldn’t be complacent about the on-going menace of ISIS around the world especially here in Europe, according to Liam Duffy, a speaker and trainer in counter-terrorism based in London.
“There is no reason that lulls should be interpreted as a waning threat,” he says. Quite the reverse in fact.
“In the wake of America’s withdrawal from the region, much has been made of the danger of Afghanistan once again becoming a terrorist safe haven threatening the West. Such concerns are certainly legitimate. Whenever they have controlled territory, jihadists have made the West pay: from the archipelago of training camps in Afghanistan which churned out the “Magnificent 19” hijackers, to the commandos dispatched from the Isis caliphate to gun down revellers and commuters in Paris and Brussels.
The more urgent concern, however, should be on Europe, and how the jihadist movement reconstitutes itself inside the continents borders after the Islamic State. The principal concern for security services has been the threat posed by Isis returnees, and with good reason. There is nothing new about Europeans travelling to jihadist conflict zones, but more travelled to Syria and Iraq for jihad than every previous jihadist insurgency combined. Not all made it home, but many did or will in future.”
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