September 19, 2014 | Press Release

FDD Scholar Says ‘Strong Possibility’ Foreign Fighters Could Attack in Europe or United States

WASHINGTON – Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warned Friday that there is a “strong possibility” foreign fighters aligned with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda will return to the United States or Europe to commit an act of terror. 

“The beheadings of two American reporters and one British citizen in recent weeks have highlighted just how aggressively anti-Western the Islamic State is,” Joscelyn told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing. “The Islamic State almost certainly had the desire to strike in U.S. and Europe even prior to the bombings, but with the West becoming involved in the fight, the group may now make attacks abroad more of a priority.”

In his remarks before the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, Joscelyn said al-Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusrah, poses more of a near-term threat of launching catastrophic attacks in the West than its Islamic State counterparts. And, he said there is the possibility that the groups could come together against their common Western enemies.

Joscelyn said there is a “clear and present danger” that al-Qaeda will be able to successfully recruit new cells dedicated to attacking the West. 

“Most of the foreign fighters who travel from Europe to Syria will not become threats to their native or adopted home countries in the West,” Joscelyn said. “However, as the total number of foreign fighters increases, so does the probability that some of them will be repurposed for mass casualty attacks. Identifying the most ‘talented’ and dedicated jihadist recruits should be a top priority.”

Joscelyn said European and American officials must continue to pressure Turkey to disrupt the flow of foreign finances and share intelligence information. He called Turkey a “key chokepoint” for disrupting al-Qaeda’s international terrorist network.

And he said disillusioned foreign fighters who return to Europe or the United States could be good sources of intelligence regarding which jihadists may be targeting the West.

“The Islamic State may or may not currently have the operational capability to launch mass casualty attacks in the West,” he said. “But counterterrorism officials should constantly reassess their assumptions regarding the organization’s reach.”

Joscelyn is the senior editor of The Long War Journal, which has recently been cited by the New York Times, Washington Post and NPR. He has been described as “one of the most trusted authorities on the al-Qaeda network because of his encyclopedic knowledge of terrorist biographies.” His work is regularly featured in The Weekly Standard and he has recently appeared on CNN and Fox News Channel. In 2007, Joscelyn published a monograph titled Iran’s Proxy War Against America, which details Iran’s decades-long sponsorship of America’s terrorist enemies. In 2008, he completed an exhaustive review of the Guantanamo Bay detainee population, cataloging and analyzing thousands of pages of declassified documents.   

The full text of the written testimony can be found here: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/defenddemocracy/uploads/general/Joscelyn_WrittenTestimony_Sept19_2014.pdf

About the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)3 policy institute focusing on foreign policy and national security. Founded in 2001, FDD combines policy research, democracy and counterterrorism education, strategic communications and investigative journalism in support of its mission to promote pluralism, defend democratic values and fight the ideologies that drive terrorism. Visit our website at www.defenddemocracy.org and connect with us on TwitterFacebook and YouTube.

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Issues:

Al Qaeda