BIRMINGHAM, England — European countries pressed ahead on Tuesday with efforts to deter the growing numbers of their Salafi and Deobandi citizens seeking to join radical Islamic movements in Iraq and Syria, as some experts warned that the United States-led military campaign against the Islamic State increased the risk that the groups would turn their attention to attacking Western targets.

France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, promoting legislation to address the problem, said on Tuesday that the number of French citizens who had traveled to fight in the region, or planned to travel there, had grown 74 percent this year, to about 1,000. About 350 French citizens are currently on the ground there, he estimated, including 60 women.

His British counterpart, Home Secretary Theresa May, told her party conference here on Tuesday that she wanted new powers to prevent those suspected of Islamic radicalism from using social media, while pressing for legislation, already announced, to give the police the power to seize passports at the border from Britons suspected of traveling to join Islamic radicals. She said that a future Conservative government would ban extremist groups and further restrict the movement and access to the Internet of those suspected of having radical intentions or of proselytizing extremist views.

Already this year, Ms. May said, she has stripped the passports of 25 Britons who had traveled or planned to travel to Syria, and the police have arrested more than 100 people for “offenses relating to terrorism in Syria.”

She said that “at least 500 Salafi and Deobandi British nationals” had gone to Syria and Iraq, although that appeared to be a number that officials have used for months. “Most of those British fighters are likely to return” home, she said, raising the potential, at least, for further domestic terrorism.

Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London, said the potential for new violence in Europe had increased.

The concerns “are not bigger because the number of jihadis are increasing — which has been happening for months — but because it’s clearer that with the Western intervention, the attention of the jihadis is increasingly turning to the West,” he said. “Most of the jihadi groups were not interested in attacking the West, but now it has become a priority for them. It is because of the changing nature of the conflict, and it is probably happening quicker than what everyone expected.”

Further, Mr. Neumann said, having a Western enemy is serving to unite rival groups like the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. “Western involvement has excited people, and the ‘Islam versus the West’ does create excitement, not only in Europe but also in places like Tunisia where recruitment is up because of that,” he said.

Britain carried out its first airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq on Tuesday, the defense ministry said. Five Arab states, as well as Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, have also signed on to the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, which has assembled thousands of radical fighters and seized territory in Iraq and Syria.

Ms. May said that the authorities needed to begin at home. “The first thing we must do is discourage young British Muslims from traveling to Syria and Iraq in the first place,” she said, but that is hardly easy, and such efforts do not seem to be working well, especially after the group, also known as ISIS, declared itself a caliphate.

Even now, the British police are trying to track down a 15-year-old girl from Bristol who they believe traveled to Istanbul with a 17-year-old girl from London with the intention of entering Syria to join the Islamic State. An assistant chief constable, Louisa Rolfe, said there were indications that the Bristol girl might have been “radicalized.”

There would be no penalties for the girls, but for adults, Ms. May said, it is illegal to fight for terrorist groups.

Belgium has been a prime recruiting area for jihadists. In Antwerp on Tuesday, the trial continued of 46 members of Sharia4Belgium, a radical Muslim organization accused of recruiting volunteers to fight in Syria. Of the group, nine are believed to be dead and 29 are in Syria, according to the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, which called the case “the most important terrorist trial that Belgium has ever witnessed.”

At least 300 Belgians have left for Syria, Ms. May said, along with 400 Germans. About 800 Russians are believed to be fighting in the region, along with 60 Australians, and at least 80 Swedes, 50 Norwegians and 70 Danes, according to estimates from various centers that study the topic. There are also fighters from Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

Already, according to Mr. Neumann, about 40 percent of the 30,000 Islamic State fighters are foreign, though many of them are non-European. About 20 percent of the Nusra Front’s 10,000 fighters are foreign.

In France, Mr. Cazeneuve told Le Journal du Dimanche that 36 French citizens had died in the region, and that some returning jihadists boast about what they have done and “say they are ready to leave again.” He said that at least 70 people had been prevented from leaving after the authorities received about 350 alerts about possible jihadists, including 80 minors and 150 women.

On Tuesday, speaking to the police and security officials, Mr. Cazeneuve backed legislation, expected to pass the French Senate, to allow the government to block citizens from traveling abroad who are suspected of being involved in terrorism or of wanting to join groups like the Islamic State. That would include, according to the version of the law that passed the National Assembly, “heading to an area where terrorist groups operate and in circumstances likely to lead him or her to jeopardize public security upon his or her return to France.”

The legislation also would target Internet providers that do not block websites that promote terrorism or radicalization.

Both Ms. May and Mr. Cazeneuve spoke of working with Muslim communities to defeat the temptation of radicalization and to understand how they could help needy civilians in Iraq and Syria without traveling there.

First, Mr. Cazeneuve said, France must “stop people from leaving because those who leave and come back, they come back after having seen executions, beheadings, crucifixions.”

“They’ve lost their bearings, they are extraordinarily violent and represent a real potential of risk for the country when they come back,” he said.

Those who return, he said, “must immediately be reported,” and France is working with Turkey, Britain and other European allies to identify returning fighters, including the use of a new alert for “foreign fighters” in the European Union’s border control computer system.

But the concentration on deterrence also presents strong risks of violations of civil liberties and individual rights. The Conservatives’ coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, defended their opposition to some of Ms. May’s measures, saying that they would “continue to oppose the Tories’ obsessive intrusion into people’s lives.”

Dominic Grieve, a Conservative legislator and former attorney general, spoke on Tuesday of a “delicate balance.” He said on the BBC that “any restriction on freedom of expression of individuals outside the criminal law is something that has to be approached with very great caution.” He warned that “measures which may be perceived as draconian, restricting other people’s liberties,” may simply “fuel resentment” instead of solving the problem.

Another Conservative legislator, Dominic Raab, said that there was already a lot of legislation to prosecute extremist groups. “I think you need to be very wary about criminalizing thoughts and views,” he said.

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/world/europe/isis-europe-muslim-radicalization.html?_r=0

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