New laws make it easier to seize passports. Suspected fighters are plucked from planes. Authorities block finances and shut down radical mosques.
In cyberspace, Silicon Valley firms are wiping extremist content from Web sites, such as video of the recent beheading of two US journalists, and Western intelligence agencies are exploring new technologies to identify returning fighters at the border.
Governments from France to Indonesia have launched urgent drives to cut off one of the Islamic State (IS) group’s biggest sources of strength: foreign fighters. At the heart of the drive is mounting concern that the organization is training the next generation of international terrorists.
Photo: AFP
Those fears have gained urgency from the group’s horrific methods: A British militant is suspected of beheading two US journalists, and a Frenchman who fought with the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is accused in a deadly attack on a Jewish museum in Belgium.
With each video that ricochets around social networks, the militants gain new recruits.
“If neglected, I am certain that after a month they will reach Europe and, after another month, America,” Saudi King Abdullah said on Friday last week, calling for a strong international response to the onslaught in Syria nd Iraq.
After a video emerged online of the killing of a US journalist last month, tech companies drafted plans to scrub the Web of such content and implemented them this week after a second beheading, a Silicon Valley insider said on Wednesday. YouTube and Twitter accounts are among those shut down unusually quickly. According to terms of service, violent content is cause for suspension.
Islamic State militants who have migrated to Diaspora, a decentralized social network, are in many cases greeted with banners saying they are unwelcome. However, they will find newly sophisticated ways to get a message out, Jamie Bartlett of the Demos think tank said.
Britain has taken a particularly active role in censoring content deemed to break the country’s strict rules against extremist propaganda. UK officials recently revealed they have been granted “super flagger” status on sites such as YouTube, meaning their requests to remove videos with grisly content or that encourage terrorism are fast-tracked.
Over the past four years, an Internet-focused counterterror unit of London’s Metropolitan Police instigated the removal of 45,000 pieces of content, the force said last week. However, Islamic State militants have just as quickly found other, more decentralized platforms.
In the US, officials are trying to identify potential jihadists by comparing travel patterns with those of people who have already joined the fight, a counterterrorism official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss intelligence matters.
A French law to seize passports is being fast-tracked through parliament, and the government is ramping up arrests of increasingly young teenagers making plans for jihad.
That can mean last-minute arrests at the airport, as happened to a 16-year-old girl and her alleged recruiter trying to pass through security in Nice on Saturday last week, and to a man at Australia’s Melbourne Airport who was pulled off a flight last week carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash and the Islamic State group’s black-and-white flag in his luggage.
Britain proposed laws on Monday to let police seize the passports of those suspected of having traveled abroad to fight, while the Netherlands is making it easier to strip people of Dutch nationality and go after Internet providers that spread propaganda.
In Bosnia, authorities carried out a major antiterror sweep on Wednesday. They detained 16 people suspected of fighting in Syria and Iraq, and recruiting Balkan men to join Islamic militants there.
Anti-jihadist efforts are being ramped up in traditionally Muslim countries as well: Indonesia is breaking up meetings of Islamic State supporters and seizing T-shirts and other items promoting the group, and Tunisia is shutting down mosques and suspected financiers.
For the radicals who have already reached Syria, the focus of European spy agencies is on trying to identify them when they return. That can mean scouring social media sites for photos of foreign fighters or electronic intercepts for hints of terrorist activity abroad.
Officials are considering the deployment of more advanced techniques like voice recognition to identify suspected jihadists at border control by matching their conversations to those heard on militants’ videos, former British counterterrorism chief Bob Quick said earlier this year.
There is huge interest in “being able to identify these people at the border,” he said.
The concern is that returning fighters will launch attacks at home. Australia draws on lessons from Afghanistan a decade ago, saying of the 25 citizens who returned to Australia after fighting against Western interests there, two-thirds became involved in terrorist activities back home.
“The Australians and their supporters who have joined terrorist groups in the Middle East are a serious and growing threat to our security,” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told parliament on Monday. “People who kill without compunction in other countries are hardly likely to be law-abiding citizens should they return to Australia.”
A compilation of government estimates shows more than 2,000 people with European passports have fought or are fighting in Syria and Iraq — with most looking to join the Islamic State group.
However, measures taken so far to keep Europeans from leaving have had no noticeable effect, Norwegian security service PST spokesman Trond Hugubakken said.
“Preventive talks close to their departure doesn’t seem to have any effect,” he said. “It has an effect on some individuals, but if that’s permanent or just delaying their traveling is hard to tell.”
Britain, home to an estimated 400 fighters in Syria and now Iraq, had been emphasizing outreach to universities, religious centers and prisons. On Monday, the government said it hoped to bolster laws to block returning fighters from re-entering the UK and strengthen monitoring if they do.
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