Magda Fahsi
Hundreds of young Europeans, some of them as young as 15, have joined the Syrian rebels in their fight against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. They seem to have been recruited mainly by radical groups, prompting worries among national authorities and measures to try to stop them.
A survey by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College, London, found that up to 600 individuals from 14 European countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain and Germany have taken part in the conflict since it began in 2011.
The largest contingent, the study found, came from the U.K., with estimates of fighters running between 28 and 134. Some of these British-born fighters are said to have joined the fight with Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s most militant al-Qaeda group.
According to the lead researcher, Professor Peter Neumann, the figures for Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland, with about 200 fighters between them, make these countries the most significant source of rebel fighters based on their populations. The Netherlands believes that three of its citizens were killed in combat.
In Belgium, reports in the media confirm the increasing number of young Belgians who have traveled in recent months to join the Syrian rebels. One MP recently declared that the country had become a hub for recruiting young people to send to Syria to enlist in fighting gangs.
Alienated youngsters
Among the 80 or so Belgians that went to fight in Syria, some are Muslims; others have only very recently converted to Islam. A few are students; others are unemployed, struggling to find their place in Belgian society and probably looking for something that would give them a sense of belonging. In at least one instance, an organization that distributes free meals has been trying to recruit the homeless as well.
The press has been reporting that two youngsters from mixed marriages, including a Belgian-Congolese individual apparently struggling to define his identity, and who recently converted to Islam. Last week, another young student was reported to have left home to go to Syria and join the rebels there, a 15-year-old from Antwerp, in northern Belgium.
“It’s a case of indoctrination. These organizations target youngsters. Their leaders indoctrinate them. They are youths, sensitive youths that have an identity crisis,” the headmistress of the school commented.
In other words, the Syrian conflict seems to attract young Belgians feeling marginalized — in search of an identity and a meaning to their lives — and maybe motivated by friendship and solidarity. A recent survey carried out by a daily newspaper of several hundred young Muslims found that many don’t feel accepted by Belgian society. Although 93 percent of those questioned are Belgian nationals, only a small minority consider themselves to be Belgian.
The British report confirmed that neither political motivations, nor jihadist ideology were among the primary reasons for the people to go to Syria. They quote the atrocities of war as being the main motivation:
“The most commonly cited reasons for joining rebel forces are the horrific images of the conflict, stories about atrocities committed by government forces and the perceived lack of support from Western and Arab countries,” according to the ICSR report.
Yet, the Belgian authorities have been focusing on what they call the risk of radicalization. Last week, the police raided 48 homes nationwide and detained six men implicated in a jihadist recruitment drive for the insurgency in Syria. The investigation focuses on a group known as Sharia4Belgium; although it has officially been dismantled, it turns out that it still has a big influence behind the scenes.
“The prosecutor’s office regards it as important to attack the structures and the groups that allow young Belgians to go to Syria,” an official statement said, adding that the main concern was youths who had jihadist ideologies rather than those who wanted to help create a democratic Syria. The investigation showed that recruitment was carried out by directly contacting youths in the street and inviting them to private meeting places.
Jihadist rebels
The Belgian Interior Ministry, who is extremely worried about the situation, has created a task force to look into the issue: It includes members of the counter-terrorism unit, the intelligence services, the judicial authorities, the crisis center and the police. The task force will meet on a weekly basis and aims to ensure an efficient and increased coordination between the different departments involved. It will also examine how the youths can be brought back to Belgium and how to prevent even more youngsters from joining the Syrian war.
Some mayors have suggested that young Belgians seeking to fight in Syria have their ID cards confiscated, preventing them from traveling. The measure is already in place in Germany and is being considered in the Netherlands.
This would imply, though, that authorities know who is at risk of going, but the youngsters often leave without telling anyone. Others favor better checks at the airport to prevent young people from leaving the country. This has proved to be a controversial proposal, because there is no legal basis: Young people leaving the country don’t need to be accompanied and they don’t even require an authorization from their parents.
Foreign Affairs Minister Didier Reynders favors issuing a decree to impute criminal charges against Belgian nationals who wish to fight in other countries. Such legislation will deter their intentions, he estimates.
Interior Minister Joëlle Milquet considers that the new law on terrorism adopted earlier this year, sanctioning those who recruit and train terrorists, should be sufficient. But is this really a case of anti-terrorism or rather of alienated, marginalized young people who go off to fight for totally different reasons?
A paradox
This leaves the Belgian authorities and other European governments in a strange paradox: They have been defending the cause of the rebels in Tunis, Egypt, Libya and did not hesitate to intervene whenever they thought it was justified.
They have been among the most vocal supporters of Syria’s rebels; they never miss an opportunity to claim that President al-Assad is a dictator and that he should go. Some of these governments even defended the idea of arming the rebels.
But when some of their citizens join these same rebels, they are treated as terrorists or terrorists to be. And these same governments that have been defending the cause of the rebels are suddenly forced to openly admit that at least some of them are actually jihadists.
European countries have, once again, chosen an entirely repressive security approach to deal with young people going to fight in Syria, when all seems to confirm that this is more about discriminated youngsters in search of an identity, about people who are underprivileged or marginalized and feel alienated in European societies.
Instead of considering them as terrorists, the authorities may be well advised to work on the reasons why some students as young as 15 suddenly feel the need to run the risk of being killed in a foreign country.