NOTE: For prior parts in the Clear Banner series you can view an archive of it all here.
—
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 trip. 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 Syria. Nora, 16, has gone on January 23; her brother says she was manipulated by others and, in mid-March, she regrets her departure in Syria. Her brother went once to bring her back in February; 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 times. 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 children. 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 départure. 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 travel. 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 soil. 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 them. 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 Tounsi. 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 Morocco. 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 later. 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 Youtube. 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 killed. 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 2011.
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 radicalize. 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 conflict. David Thomson, RFI journalist and author of a book on French jihadists published in March 2014, 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