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Active Measures – Spring 2019 – Page 2 ACTIVE MEASURES ACTIVE MEASURES Spring 2019 – Volume IV Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Germany: An Assessment of the Threat and Policy Options Tobias Brandt 4 Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations’ Exploitation of the Sonoran Desert and the Tohono O’odham Nation Alejandro Ahumada 20 Upsetting the Balance of Deterrence: The Vulnerabilities Leading to Potential War Between Israel and Hezbollah Michael Frigon 35 Motivations of an Ideologue: A Case Study of Cuban Spy Ana Belen Montes Lance Moore 46 Active Measures – Spring 2019 – Page 2 ACTIVE MEASURES Spring 2019 – Volume IV Founding Editors Daniel Acheson – Michael Webber Editor-in-Chief Geoffrey Seroka Contributing Editors Ryan Hauser – Helen Lamm – James Rice – Kelly Zug Active Measures is a not-for-profit scholarly journal published and administered by students of The Institute of World Politics. The views presented in Active Measures are those of the authors alone and are not the views of the United States government, the Institute of World Politics, or any other entity. All essays published herein are property of their respective authors and are used with permission. All rights reserved. Design ©2013 The Institute of World Politics. All rights reserved. “Active Measures Man” ©2012 Mark Beauchamp. Used with Permission. All rights reserved. Inquiries should be directed to [email protected] or: Active Measures, c/o The Institute of World Politics 1521 16th Street NW Washington, D.C. 2003 Active Measures – Spring 2019 – Page 3 Tobias Brandt Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Germany: An Assessment of the Threat and Strategy Options Tobias Brandt In the wake of the Arab Spring, nearly one thousand German citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq to join Islamist terrorist groups. About a third of these are now back in the Federal Republic. Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) present a tremendous challenge for the German authorities, as many of them are combat experienced, can radicalize others, and recruit them to conduct attacks. Officials have mainly aimed at speedy incarceration proceedings in order to avoid public pressure and contain the immediate security risk. This only postpones the threat because prison sentences are typically short and, therefore, do not represent a long-term solution. To prevent returning FTFs from conducting attacks in Germany and undermining the social fabric, the country should tailor its approach for each case and reassert the legitimacy and relevance of the state using the legal system. Germany must further strengthen its intelligence and surveillance capabilities, improve border controls, and enhance its deradicalization and reintegration programs. Finally, to avoid falling into a “counter- terrorism fatigue,” Germany must develop a National Counter-Terrorism Strategy to address all dimensions of the challenge of Islamist terrorism. According to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, by 2018, a total of 41,490 citizens from 80 countries became affiliated with the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS).1 As of July 2018, 7,366 (20%) of these Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have returned to their 1 Joana Cook and Gina Vale, “From Daesh to ‘Diaspora’: Tracing the Women and Minors of Islamic State,” International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, July 23, 2018: 3, accessed November 5, 2018, https://icsr.info/wp- content/uploads/2018/07/ICSR-Report-From-Daesh-to- %E2%80%98Diaspora%E2%80%99-Tracing-the-Women-and-Minors-of- Islamic-State.pdf. Active Measures – Spring 2019 – Page 4 Tobias Brandt countries or are currently in repatriation processes.2 Germany, for its part, has seen a total of 960 citizens leave for Syria and Iraq to join Islamist terrorist groups, about a third of whom (303) are now back in the Federal Republic.3 Returning FTFs present a serious problem for German law enforcement and national security officials because a significant number of them (at least 80) have experienced armed combat or, at a minimum, undergone some type of military training.4 Thomas Hegghammer has found that the presence of returning FTFs, who are more effective than “non-veterans,” increases the effectiveness of attacks in the West.5 While research shows that, historically, relatively few returning FTFs have posed a direct threat, those that did, were “responsible for some of the most lethal terrorist attacks carried out over the past three decades.”6 For example, the group of operatives that attacked Paris in November 2015, killing 129 people, was comprised of nine individuals, seven of whom were returning FTFs who had been sent to Europe by IS to conduct a large-scale attack.7 A 2 Joana Cook, “From Daesh to ‘Diaspora,’” 3. 3 Ibid., 16, 17. 4 Daniel Heinke, “German Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq: The Updated Data and Its Implications,” CTC Sentinel 10, no. 3 (March 2017): 17, accessed November 4, 2018, https://ctc.usma.edu/app/uploads/2017/03/CTC- Sentinel_Vol10Iss330.pdf; Thomas Renard and Rik Coolsaet (ed.), “Returnees: Who Are They, Why Are They (Not) Coming Back and How Should We Deal with Them? Assessing Policies on Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands,” Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations Publications, February 6, 2018: 44, accessed November 7, 2018, http://www.egmontinstitute.be/content/uploads/2018/02/egmont.paper s.101_online_v1-3.pdf?type=pdf. 5 Thomas Hegghammer, “Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists’ Choice between Domestic and Foreign Fighting,” American Political Science Review 107, no.1 (February 2013): 11, accessed November 6, 2018, http://hegghammer.com/_files/Hegghammer_- _Should_I_stay_or_should_I_go.pdf. 6 “The Challenge of Returning and Relocating Foreign Terrorist Fighters: Research Perspectives,” United Nations Security Council, Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) Trends Report, April 11, 2018: 3, accessed October 31, 2018, https://www.un.org/sc/ctc/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/CTED-Trends-Report-March-2018.pdf. 7 Kim Cragin, “The November 2015 Paris Attacks: The Impact of Foreign Fighter Returnees,” Orbis 61, no. 2, (Spring 2017): 218, accessed November Active Measures – Spring 2019 – Page 5 Tobias Brandt lesser-acknowledged threat posed by returning FTFs is that they are also able to recruit others to conduct attacks locally.8 Germany faces the challenge of determining who these returnees are, what specific risk they pose, and, most importantly, what action to take to protect the public from potential harm.9 Germany’s Approach So Far It must be said that Germany has not yet found an adequate way to address the problem of returning FTFs. While progress has been made since 2016, especially by limiting the number of refugees arriving in the country, Germany has improved neither the centralization nor the structure of its security architecture significantly enough. Thus, authorities remain overwhelmed due to the high number of cases.10 As in most other European countries, the German government unofficially prefers that foreign fighters would not return, without formally preventing them from returning.11 Generally, when FTFs return, they go to provisional detention to await trial. If convicted and put in prison, different detention regimes are applied, from isolation to dispersal among other detainees.12 But at a closer look, the situation is much more precarious. Thus far, the German government has failed to design and maintain a coherent approach to the multifaceted challenge that FTFs represent. Most officials aim for speedy incarceration proceedings in order to avoid public pressure and contain the immediate 1, 2018, https://www.fpri.org/article/2017/03/november-2015-paris- attacks-impact-foreign-fighter-returnees/. 8 Cragin, “2015 Paris Attacks,” 221. 9 “Challenge of Returning,” United Nations, 11. 10 Guido Steinberg, “Islamist Terrorism in Germany: Threats, Responses, and the Need for a Strategy,” American Institute for Contemporary German Studies Policy Report 66, December 20, 2017: 18, accessed November 1, 2018, https://www.aicgs.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/PR-66-DAAD- Steinberg-Terrorism.pdf. 11 Thomas Renard, “Returnees: Who Are They,” 4. 12 Ibid. Active Measures – Spring 2019 – Page 6 Tobias Brandt security risk.13 On average, verdicts tend to impose sentences of “three to four years for the active support of the Islamic State rather than on more concrete charges of murder.”14 Critics of this approach have argued that this will likely only delay the threat for a relatively short period of time until detainees are released.15 Even more significantly, while the prosecuting authority does open a criminal investigation in every case of a returning FTF, evidence rules under German criminal law often mean that a returnee is not convicted of a criminal offense at all.16 Accordingly, most of the men and women who have returned from the war zones in Syria and Iraq, are at large.17 For instance, out of the 80 individuals who left Hamburg for IS, 25 have returned – but only one is in custody.18 In many cases, there is simply no evidence that the departed were, in fact, members of or supported a terrorist group.19 In 2016, five terrorist attacks hit Germany, and seven more were foiled. This figure includes the first successful mass casualty attack on December 19, 2016, wherein Anis Amri, a Tunisian refugee, drove a truck into a popular Christmas market in Berlin, killing twelve and wounding nearly a hundred civilians.20 Amri had been known to the authorities for more than a year but was eventually categorized as a minor threat by the Federal Criminal Police (“Bundeskriminalamt,” 13 Eva Entenmann, “Why ‘Amnesty’ Should Not Be Considered for Returning Foreign Fighters: A Response to Wells and Gurski,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague Publications, January 20, 2017, accessed November 6, 2018, https://icct.nl/publication/why-amnesty- should-not-be-considered-for-returning-foreign-fighters-a-response-to-wells- and-gurski/. 14 Daniel Heinke, “German Foreign Fighters,” 20.
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