ISIS Recruiting More In Europe? Islamic State Is Targeting EU Countries, Europol Report Says

The Islamic State group has set its sights on recruiting and radicalizing refugees across Europe. The move is meant to further divide a continent politically and socially torn asunder by recent terrorist attacks and the flood of asylum-seekers from the war-rocked Middle East, a Europol report published Friday stated.

Titled “Changes In Modus Operandi Of Islamic State (IS) Revisited,” the report posits more attacks like the ones perpetrated in Belgium and France in 2015 and 2016 are “likely to take place in the near future” with the explicit intent of forcing European Union countries to alter policies towards Syrian refugees, believing such changes would further ostracize the Syrians and lead to fresh recruits.

Other terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra also continue to pose a grave threat to the EU.

“Given that it is in the interests of IS (Islamic State) to inflame the migration crisis to polarise the EU population and turn sections of it against those seeking asylum, there is a risk of some infiltration of refugee camps and other groups,” the report read according to The Guardian. “A real and imminent danger is the possibility of elements of the (Sunni Muslim) Syrian refugee diaspora becoming vulnerable to radicalisation once in Europe and being specifically targeted by Islamic extremist recruiters.”

Europol also suggested that actually defeating ISIS, or IS, in Syria and Iraq, could be a double-edged sword of sorts. As ISIS clings to Mosul in northern Iraq, even if it’s completely driven out of the region other “foreign fighters” may then head to Europe, thus increasing the potential security threat to the continent.

Since March 2011, roughly 11 million Syrians have fled their civil-war torn homeland and while most have settled in other Arab countries about 1 million have requested asylum in Europe. A report from the United Nations, citing numbers from September, estimated that 4.8 million have traveled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq, and another 6.6 million have scrambled around Turkey.

However, Germany, with 300,000 applying for asylum, and Sweden with 100,000, is the most desired European destination for the refugees.