Click the following link for a safe PDF copy: al-Qā’idah in the Islamic Maghrib — “Indeed, Your Enemy Is the One Cut Off- Blessings and Support for the Raid of Paris”
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Click the following link for a safe PDF copy: Khālid Abū al ‘Abbās (Mukhtār bin Muḥammad Bilmukhtār) — “Blessing and Support”
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Click the following link for a safe PDF copy: Wilāyah Dagestān of Imārat al-Qawqāz — “Regarding the Heroic Retaliatory Attack Against Charlie Hebdo”
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NOTE: For prior parts in the Clear Banner series you can view an archive of it all here.
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Update on the French Volunteers in Syria
By Stéphane Mantoux
The phenomenon of French jihad in Syria began to get media exposure in 2013, two years after the beginning of the revolution, the civil war, and the intervention of foreign fighters alongside insurgents. For France, the magnitude of the phenomenon is unprecedented, far exceeding the Iraqi or Afghan experience. Departures are accelerating since the summer of 2013 and did not appear to have been hampered by the conflict between the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN). Persons involved in jihad have some commonalities, including radicalization via the Internet and social networks, but typical profile does not really exist for French jihadists: they are actually quite varied. With few exceptions, departures are not carried out by organized networks or veterans of radical Islam in France: they are often individual, spontaneous and so for the most unpredictable. The issue of the return of the French jihadists concerned authorities, and a first attempted attack on French soil has probably been thwarted in February 2014, being the fact this time of members of the baptized “Cannes-Torcy” cell. Faced with this painful problem, calls from families and concerns inside the population, the French government proposed, April 23, 2014, a plan to fight against departures in Syria that has not convinced many experts, answering probably to a need for communication on the subject. This is an update of my first article that will discusses the evolution of recruitment in France from February until early June 2014 : the building of a “family jihad“, the acceleration of recruitment with the formation of a French brigade in JN and probably within ISIS, and attempts by the French government to send signals more or less suitable for jihadists.
Family Jihad: women, children, but also girls in Syria
A new trend is linked to jihad in Syria phenomenon: the departure of girls. Anissa, 22, was converted under the influence of a friend of his school in Bordeaux. She married a young Muslim presented by an imam met on Skype and left a farewell letter to his mother. Dozens of French are affected by this phenomenon: Ly, 19, a student from Senegal, left with her baby of 15 months. She is accompanied by a schoolgirl, 17, of Epinay, who stole the credit card from her father to finance the trip1. At the same time, at the end of February 2014, a 14 year-old girl from Grenoble was arrested at the airport Lyon-Saint-Exupéry as she was about to fly to Istanbul. Placed in a home, she fled before being caught again the next day. This is the third minor at least trying to reach Syria in January 2014 after a 15 year old girl who managed to make it to Syria2. Nora, 16, has gone on January 23; her brother says she was manipulated by others and, in mid-March, she regrets her departure in Syria3. Her brother went once to bring her back in February4; he went to the Turkish border, he succeeded in a second attempt in April 2014 to go to Syria and to see his sister two times5. At the end of March, Barbara Marie Rigolaud, a French 35-year-old from Nanterre, was arrested by the PYD (Kurdish party that controls areas in north-northeast Syria) near Aleppo. She had joined JN after having belonged to ISIS. She arrived in Syria in May 2013 with her husband and four children6. Also in March 2014 the mother of Assia, the girl of 23 months led by his father since October 2013 in Syria, launched numerous calls for help. Sahra, a 17-year-old from Lézignan-Corbières (Aude, southwestern France), would have run away and joined Syria since March 11. She would be shipped to Marignane in a flight to Turkey. On March 14, she confirmed to her brother that she is in the Aleppo region. Sahra, who practiced Islam for at least one year, had apparently prepared her départure7. Along the same lines, a young schoolgirl, 16, with the dual French and Algerian nationalities, living in Troyes, is reported in Syria by his parents on April 8, 2014, radicalized only in few months. She would have received as Sahra a sum of money in cash by an intermediary to pay her travel8. She was stopped in Germany before she could reach Syria.
Ongoing recruitment in early 2014
France Info interviews in February 2014, two French who have gone to fight in Syria, Abu Chaak, 24, and Abu Dahuk, 26. They say they are from the Paris region, fighting in the Aleppo region and belong to ISIS. Dahuk is among the first French arrived in Syria at the beginning of 2013 ; he plans not to return to France to carry out attacks but to die as a “martyr” on Syrian soil9. In March, Seif al-Qalam, a young man of 27 who also comes from the Paris region, who fought for ISIS before joining JN (he arrived on site in July 2013 with his wife and children), claiming that the latter group includes a brigade composed entirely of French (a hundred men?) which he is part. That would be the French who have imposed this solution for reasons of linguistic understanding. These men want to fight in Syria and did take the fight to France if it had operations against them10. Mid-February, Bilel, a man with a degree in economics and volunteer firefighter in Grenoble, was killed in fighting in Homs. He had gone to Syria in July 2013 with his brother and several others French volunteers for jihad ; he was clearly radicalized after a breakup. There, he joined JN and takes the « nom de guerre » of Abu Al-Siddiq Tounsi11. 22 March 2014 a French national, Sylvain Decker, was arrested by Moroccan police in Rabat. He was part of a network of recruitment for jihad, particularly in Syria, who worked in both Spain and Morocco12. A draft of a terrorist attack due to a veteran Syrian Jihad is probably foiled in south-eastern France. The DCRI had discovered on 17 February 2014 900 grams of explosives in a building near Cannes, drop point for a member of the Cannes-Torcy cell arrested a few days earlier. The young man, Ibrahim B., had gone to Syria in September 2012, with two others, thus escaping the dragnet of the DCRI for the cell. Abdelkader T., one of the companions of Ibrahim, was arrested in Italy January 16, 2014. Ibrahim B. would have returned the same time in France, having fought as others in JN. On 11 February, he was arrested in the building where the explosives were discovered later13. At the end of April 2014 a young man in his twenties, claiming to be a former French soldier in a regiment of infantry paratroopers, is seen in a video posted on Youtube14. On April 30, the Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve indicates that 285 French are currently in Syria, and is concerned about an increase of 75% of the total in a few months. One hundred jihadists have returned to France and 5 were killed15. The next day, a 37 year old Algerian, regular resident in France, was expelled on suspicion of recruiting in France for jihad in Syria. He was arrested by Turkey on board a bus taking a group of French to Syria. He was close to two other men living in Savoie, like him, known to have participated in routing volunteers to Afghanistan and sentenced in February 201116.
The plan of the French government: a communication operation?
April 23, 2014, the French government unveiled a plan to fight against the departure of young people in Syria, including an attempt to ensure early detection of potential candidates for jihad. Finally, the plan provides a hotline of crisis for parents welcomed by professionals, and consider the reintroduction of the authorization to leave the country for minors (measure eventually discarded). Human intelligence and cyber security will be leveraged to identify individuals likely to radicalize17. However, for Wassim Nasr, a journalist specializing in jihadists, these measures come ten years too late. He does not believe in the effectiveness of the alert platform for parents. He also calls to treat the phenomenon as a criminal problem; and indeed, the profiles are varied, too many to be reduced to this assumption, especially since as he points out, all candidates initially do not necessarily have to return to France to carry out attacks. The problem is political, and linked to the position of the French State in Syrian conflict18. David Thomson, RFI journalist and author of a book on French jihadists published in March 201419, confirms that the profiles are very different. If the initial motivations are just as varied, jihad in Syria is unprecedented in modern history, for France, because of the access to the battlefield and the easy use of social networks. He explains how the first contingent of twenty French arrived from late 2011 and 2012, carried an air call via social networks and led to the mass influx that we see in particular in the past year. It also confirms that there is a brigade of French in JN. The link of the jihadists to social networks and different ways from those of previous jihad are the difficulty of preventing the phenomenon and even following it when the jihadists are returning on French soil. The only red line not to cross, according to him, is the threat of attacks on the national territory. At that time, the government intervenes, but prefers to otherwise monitor these social networks, or forums, because they are also intelligence sources. Besides the net of jihadists, who go through many social networks, is almost impossible to control. The only positive effect he sees in the government’s plan is the creation of a plan for parents, but a
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Hide These Jihadists That I Can’t See: The French Volunteers In Syria
By Stéphane Mantoux
Thanks to Timothy Holman and Yves Trotignon for their help in writing this article.
This article was originally published in French for Alliance Geostrategique and cross-posted at Historicoblog. Alliance Geostrategique and Stéphane Mantoux, the author of the article and the one who translated it to English, has given permission to Jihadology to exclusively publish the English translation.
The case of French who left to fight in Syria poses a particular problem. It really became visible (through the media, in particular) in 2013, when the number of volunteers began growing substantially. Like other European contingents, jihad in Syria is the largest movement of its kind since the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. However, based on the total population of France or even the Muslim population of the relevant age group, the movement is not a groundswell or a massive exodus[1] and it can also be noted that it has accelerated since the summer of 2013 , which worries the authorities, and some experts, about the return of jihadists. But I must say that so far, the information was very sparse. The Minister of Interior, Manuel Valls, has made a number of statements going back to May 2013, about the French figures involved in jihad in Syria and most recently in January 2014 saying that a total of 700 in all, involved in one way or another, since 2011. Figures are difficult to verify, but it seems credible and at the least not that exaggerated. The latest study of ICSR, a British institute specializing on the issue of foreign jihadists, dated from December 17, 2013, placed the maximum estimate for France at 413 individuals[2]. Israelis believe that the last figure given by Manuel Valls and F. Hollande is overestimated[3]. Yet what we can know from clearly identified cases shows that the French example does not differ fundamentally from other European contingents of volunteers, except some minor differences[4]. Recruitment, rather wide for the age and motivation at the beginning, seems to have been mainly young men, 20-35 years, more determined and more radical in their choices in the field. It involves both people known for their earlier commitment and often monitored, but also many men or teenagers who have succumbed to the radical message, including issued on the web, without the phenomenon is limited to marginalized people socially. Like all other contingents , the majority of French volunteers joined the two jihadist groups, al-Nusra front (official branch of al-Qaeda in Syria since November 2013) and ISIS, exposed since 3rd January, 2014 to the assaults of other rebel formations, including the al- Nusra Front itself. The starting zones are fairly well identified: the big cities (which again corresponds to other countries), Paris, Toulouse, Nice, Strasbourg, and Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing, with a majority of departures spontaneous or organized solo, without they necessarily resort to organized networks, the only exception being the southeast (which is a notable difference this time with other states, such as Belgium, where more structured networks involved in the routing or radicalization of the volunteers). The French jihadists are also, once there, quite present on social networks, for the purposes of recruitment, propaganda or to keep in touch with families, as discussed at the end of this article.
An early advertisement for a diverse recruitment (2012-summer 2013)
In France, from the second half of 2012 the press started to worry about the issue of jihadi candidates to go to Syria. However, from the month of May 2012, 3 young men were arrested at the airport in Saint-Etienne as they prepared to leave for Turkey … with holsters, walkie-talkies and night vision goggles[5]. Le Figaro mentions “a few tens of departure” in October 2012 and mentions Dr. Jacques Beres, who treated several French in a rebel hospital in Aleppo, a city that insurgents have been fighting for since 2012[6]. Some also do not hide their admiration for Mohamed Merah. The same newspaper had also spoken in spring 2012 of 6 French arrested by Lebanese security at Beirut airport, and an apparent attempt to enter Syria. However, the domestic intelligence services began to sound the alarm as early as spring 2011.
Information and news articles became more numerous in the spring and summer of 2013, a moment where research specialists started warning about a significant increase in the departure of European volunteers, including French to Syria, which would later be confirmed throughout the year[7]. Not only the French volunteers, like the others, benefit from the fact that access to Syrian territory is much easier than for other lands of jihad in the past, but in addition, they can count, sometimes, on the remains of organized networks for previous jihads, as those who had operated to Iraq between 2004 and 2006[8]. From the spring of 2013 and the emergence of the first specific examples of French volunteers, the reasons for leaving are very different. Djamel Amer Al-Khedoud, 50, from Marseille and has since become a prisoner of the regime, went to defend the Sunnis of Syria, a motivation which derives from the notion of the “defensive jihad,” which is the reason for many foreign volunteers, especially in the period from 2011-2012. Instead, Abdel Rahman Ayachi, a Franco-Syrian 33 years-old, joined Suqur al -Sham (a member of the Islamic Front in November 2013), since expressly designed for the installation of an Islamic caliphate and the strict and rigorous application of Sharia. He was in charge of a group of 600 combatants[9]. Ayachi was killed in June 2013: he had benefited from military training in the Belgian reserve, he took advantage of it, probably, on the Syrian battlefield[10]. Raphael Gendron, a French 38 years-old, was also part of Suqur al -Sham and was killed April 14, 2013. Residing in Brussels, he was close to radical circles in France that provided a number of volunteers for the Syrian jihad.
Raphael Gendron was well known to the French services. Repeatedly condemned by the Belgian justice system, he was arrested by the Italian authorities in late 2009 with Bassam Ayachi, a Franco-Syrian imam living in Belgium and famous, too, for his radical opinions. They wanted to organize a chain of recruitment to al-Qaeda cells in southern Italy. After being released, they returned to Belgium where they continued to lead the Assabyle Islamic Center. Gendron engaged in active propaganda on its website. In a very different case, the young French jihadist that is 17 years-old, from Sartrouville, was arrested by Greek police on May 25, 2013, while trying to go into Syria[11]. He had told his parents of his departure on May 16, after buying his ticket to Athens and taking a passport. The family called the police, who managed to join the Greek authorities. The young man was arrested on a bus in the north, as he headed to Turkey.
In June 2013, a French diplomat noted the figure of 270 Frenchmen who left to fight in Syria[12]. A month later, a French jihadist present in Syria released a video call to his countrymen and President F. Hollande, asking him to convert to Islam[13]. The man, who calls himself Abu Abdelrahman, announced his conversion in Islam three years before, and have French parents that are atheists. He asked the French to join the jihad. His half-brother Jean-Daniel Pons, 22 years-old, from Toulouse, was killed on August 11th 2013. He had been coached by his older brother, Nicolas, 30 years-old, who is speaking on the video. Nicolas, who has a BEP (a French degree), had fallen into petty crime before converting in 2009 and proselytizing. His brother Jean-Daniel had moved to Toulouse in 2011 to begin a BTS (an another French degree, in advanced studies), after living with their father in Guyana; he became a convert, too. They both went to Syria in March 2013[14]. They went to Syria via Spain and Turkey, telling their relatives they were going to Thailand, before revealing the truth in April[15]. The mother of the two young people, retired from the army, had reported the worrying trend of her sons to the authorities in the month of April. A few days later, a 47 year-old man, from Belfort, was arrested by the DCRI living in Toulouse, he came to visit his family, and had links with both youngsters of
