Europol Director Rob Wainwright today warned that the European Union is facing a growing threat of Islamist fighters returning from Syria, and says that as many as 5,000 Europeans are still fighting in Syria.
This has been a long-standing concern, as those fighters will eventually return home with ties to international jihadist movements, and an eye toward attacks in the Western world.
Wainright warned Europe faces a “capability gap” in dealing with the returning Islamists, and that the risk of sleeper cells was more than at any time since 9/11.
Europeans have flocked to Syria, mostly to join ISIS, in numbers unprecedented, and ISIS and the other groups have been able to absorb them with relative ease. Some 1,000 jihadists head to Syria and Iraq from around the world during any given month now, as the US-led war makes it even easier for ISIS to recruit from abroad.
Yeah, and what are they going to do about it?
They'll enhance secret electronic surveillance and police crackdowns on peace groups and antiwar activists.
If there is any truth whatsoever to the news, then we should be asking ourselves how this is even possible – people born and raised in western society literally give up their families, indeed their lives in order to fight their own countries, their own people? How is that possible? With our state-of-the-art publicity techniques, we can´t even keep our own citizens from running away to join our enemies, only to kill their own citizens? ISIS and al Qaida offer more attractive, why? How is that possible? Our leaders would like us to believe that they are doing it for the seven virgins…. Our Establishment hides from the questions it needs to ask itself, as always.
Perhaps if the MSM – any media for that matter – started by asking the right questions and then didn't let the questions go unanswered… The first questions to be asked should be "WHY?". Every time one of the warmongers steps in front of a microphone, they should be asked "WHY?" – every time. Eventually, the question "WHY?" will be on everyone's mind and perhaps then one of the warmongers will flinch and the truth will slip out which will make it easier to ask the harder questions – and harder for TPTB to not answer.
TPTB need to be forced to answer our questions – before elections, preferably.
If those 5000 are 'Europeans' then I'm a Martian. They're as 'European' as those two Hebdo shooters were 'French'.
How many Europeans were fighting in Iraq during the invasion and occupation?