Syria conflict sees sharp rise in European fighters

COPENHAGEN: A new wave of Europeans is heading to Syria, their ranks soaring in the past six months as tales of easy living and glorious martyrdom draw them to the rebellion against Bashar Assad.
The Western Europe-based rebels, mostly young men, are being recruited by new networks that arrange travel and comfortable lodging in the heart of rebel territory.
The 11 western European countries with the biggest contingents in Syria are estimated to have some 1,200-1,700 people among rebel forces, according to government and analyst figures compiled by The Associated Press. That compares to estimates of 600-800 from those countries in late spring.
The surge has occurred particularly in France, Germany, Belgium and Sweden. It reflects the increasing ease of travel to Syria’s front lines and enthusiastic sales pitches by the first wave of European volunteers.
A 21-year-old Dane became interested in Syria during a prison term in Denmark for assault and robbery, mainly through online rebel videos. He made two trips into Syria that totaled a little more than one month. He drove trucks carrying relief supplies and transported people, he said, but never fought. Nevertheless, he posted photographs online of himself with heavy weapons.
“It is my duty to travel down there. This is a Muslim cause,” said the young man, a Muslim convert who did not want to be identified for fear of pursuit by authorities.
On his third trip this year, he said, he was stopped at passport control in Istanbul and sent back to Denmark. No reason was given, but he believes his time with the opposition put him on the intelligence community’s radar. He described being questioned multiple times by Danish intelligence agents, including at the Copenhagen airport after returning from Syria for the first time.
Recruitment drives targeting people like the Dane are growing in intensity. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, one of two main Al-Qaeda linked groups fighting in Syria, is producing a video featuring a battalion of British fighters “who will be talking to other British Muslims to try and motivate, inspire and recruit them,” said Shiraz Maher, a researcher at the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization. In France, authorities in recent weeks say they have dismantled two networks of former fighters who have returned from Syria to recruit.
France remains haunted by the case of Mohammed Merah, a French youth of Algerian descent who trained in Pakistan and returned to southern France to attack a Jewish school and kill seven people in 2012. The French government has since outlawed training in terrorism camps abroad.
The United States has also sounded the alarm about young Americans headed to Syria. But distance and expense have kept the numbers from the US far lower: about 20 American citizens, according to the ICSR.
The Europeans have the added potential of being able to raise money in places far wealthier than Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya, where many of the other foreign rebels have their roots and fighting background.
“I talk to fathers and mothers of young people who have left my city. It’s all well-organized. The air tickets are paid for,” said Hans Bonte, mayor of Vilvoorde, a city of 41,000 in Flemish-speaking Belgium that has seen at least 22 young people leave for Syria, including the most recent group in early November.
Bonte said Belgians who are leaving are younger now — teenagers instead of men in their late 20s, and adolescent girls are beginning to appear among the lists of the missing. “It’s a process of following others (who) are trying to convince people to go over there. They are telling stories that it’s fun over there ... they are living in a villa with a pool.”
One Vilvoorde mother, whose older son had already left for Syria, was sleeping on her front steps to keep her 15-year-old from slipping out to follow his brother, Bonte said. One night this fall, the boy pushed his mother aside — threatening to kill her if she stopped him from joining the fight in Syria — and stepped into a waiting car. She has heard from neither son since.