The jihadist footprint. Chattanooga. Im thinking about the hatchet attack in new york. Think about the beheading in oklahoma. Very strange cases very difficult to categorize but clearly some inkling of jihadist ideology there that there are a lot of other issues Like Mental Health with personality disorders and so on. One could argue in this is that the hypothetical level that a lot of these individuals in europe find it much easier to go in the direction of syria and iraq. For one reason or another they dont find that outlet that they might basically let their anger in the radicalization out. The final point and i will wrap it up here in the most interesting part is the q a part for sure is a different approach from the governments point of view on the two sides of the ocean. On both sides particularly on the european side there has been a strengthening of the harder part of a counterterrorism spectrum. Legislation have been on both sides of the ocean but particularly some parts of the the efforts have been made so the europeans felt they needed to tighten some screws and being a bit harder on the traditional counterterrorism side of things on the u. S. Perspective where there is a Legal Framework that is generally speaking much than European Countries somewhat lacking on the u. S. Side is the counter violent extremism. Which is increasingly seen not just in your not just in europe not just in your off United States is crucially important. And i apologize for the shameless pitch. We have been focusing on disasters and we should report when we launched last june about the status of counter violent extremism in america and basic way what we argued is that the United States lags behind most European Countries when it comes to ever every since. There is a strategy but its poorly implemented and severely underfunded. And it is clear this is something that was said in testimony before congress by a variety of top Law Enforcement officials recently we cannot in the United States arrest our way out of these problems. And there are cases in which its very difficult to operate with a traditional Law Enforcement tools which are certainly effective, dont get me wrong but in some cases are inadequate and thinking about the increasing number of minors that are involved in mobilizing. Sometimes its difficult to use from a legal and ethical point of view traditional Law Enforcement tactics. Theres there is a lack of evidence in many cases. Im thinking about the case of returning foreign fighters. Its sometimes very difficult to bring charges against people who come back from syria where its clear from an intelligence point of view that person went to syria and did not go there to go sightseeing. Nonetheless bringing charges in a court of law is much more difficult and we have seen cases obviously where its very difficult. One case is very interesting in california who went to fight in syria with isis with alnusra but there was no evidence to charge him was that he came back to the states with no e basically was approached by an fbi sting operation and was convinced to join alqaeda and he was arrested for that. We have somebody who was not arrested because of what he did fighting in syria but what he was planning on doing which was going to pakistan to join alqaeda. In that case it worked out great worked but its clear in some cases there is a problem with evidence returning foreign fighters. The advocates are not the silver bullet. It doesnt work in all cases but is obviously something that the United States needs to be strengthened and theres a lot of talk about it in constructive dialogue with the administration about it but more tangible resources should be put to use. I was asleep at that. Thank you lorenzo in one of the things i hope you pick up on if is not in your comments are the q a the returning foreign fighter from him as an issue and i think the public numbers are approximately 40 returning to the United States and how does europe handle the scale and scope of the numbers are greater can you turn of them around to be part of it counternarrative . Also they should be criminally prosecuted but i would be curious how europe is addressing this and if there are any lessons the u. S. Can glean from that. To you. Tonight thank you frank and thank you lorenzo. Im happy to be here. The response talking about this is my team and i discovered two and a half years ago that they were going to syria and not only were they doing that they went there and they maintained their on line social media profiles. They maintained facebook profiles twitter account instagram and it became possible to follow them which we found exciting and interesting because they were almost posting diaries from a battlefield grade we started broadening that and we do have a database containing 700 on line social media profiles of fighters inside of iraq. We have communiques with 100 of them and we have done fieldwork on the border with syria so we have a pretty Good Conference of idea and what im saying now is greatly to a large extent based on what we learn from this. This is a phenomenon that did seeds and surpasses everything we have seen before and in the case of europe which represents perhaps 20 of the overall foreign fighter population in iraq approximately four to 5000 people. Whats particularly interesting is that smaller European Countries are disproportionately affected. Of course the largest European Countries are producing the greatest numbers but particularly the smaller countries that are have we effect that countries like elgin denmark. There are 32 points i want to talk about. The first is motivation and the second is the idea of on line increment and i want to hit on what frank was asking about and how they have been dealt with. There is no monolithic foreign fighters at least not in western europe and not the most of the people we have looked at. There are number of different motivations and they have changed over time. Its perfectly fair to say that the people who went to iraq in 2012 in early 2013 were not necessarily committed extremists. They all had a very strong sunni muslim identity. They went there because they feared what was going on in syria was genocide of the sunni population of syria carried out by conspiracy led by bush are all assigned with i ran and hezbollah. They were being told on the internet that is being muslim means anything to you at all youd have to come and defend their brothers and sisters because the arabs are not helping. We are on our own. There was a principle or kerman narrative in the early of the conflict and if you look at the literature on foreign fighters you will see throughout history and different ideological movements the defense begins the existential threat has been a great mobilizer. They narrative shifted with the rise of the socalled Islamic State and the second peak of recruitment happened about a year ago in the summer of 2014 when Islamic State declared its caliphate and had a string of military successes which most of the people were interested in building a caliphate. They are thinking it is coming now, it is real. We have to go there and be part of it. That second waive of recruits arguably was more extreme in orientation and intent than the first waive of recruits that i described before. Of course in addition to that what we have also seen it since last year since about august the start of the western air campaign we have also seen a reemergence of the west verses islam narrative that have not been as dominant even a year ago when we were doing fieldwork meeting with fighters. You almost have to remind them that we were also they were hating the United States and its western allies which was a myotonic experience of someone has been interns interviewing these people for 10 or 15 years. Especially for europeans geographical proximity makes it easier for people to travel however i should also point out in this is topical considering whats been happening over the past few days it has been very easy for them to cross the border to turkey and to syria. I can tell you we were doing fieldwork that in april 2014 every taxi driver can tell you where the foreign fighters were staying, where they were praying. The uniform shops where you walk in and they ask what group are you you with an you say eyes as he gives you the isis uniform. All of this was happening totally in the open. Was almost inconceivable the authorities were not knowing about this and perfectly plausible that they were not wanting to crack down. Out of fear that there may be a retaliation against them. My fear is the infrastructure of these groups is so embedded within that country that it becomes very hard to do something about this in a substandard way. My second point is on line recruitment. On line recruitment is something that is featured nelly isis as a social media but in our experience as far as western europeans are concerned its not the m. Most important one. Whats new about what isis is doing on line . Its not the videos. We have had videos for many years. Also we have had from a high cut and our iraq alqaeda and iraq 10 years ago. What is new is not orchestrated by isa central. Its something that is more organic and comes more from the bottom up. What is new and that is a fact that is often neglected and forgotten and not appreciated is that it is possible now for one of these fighters in places like europe to talk to actual fighters on the ground and the battle zones. From our observation that the most powerful aspect of the isis social media campaign. Remember all a khomeini that guy from alabama who is going to somalia and the giant alshabaab and for 45 years ago there was a lot of excitement because it was possible to tweak the sky in somalia and he would tweak that. What you now have our 600 seven, 800 talking to people in paris london and brussels every day and its their output not isis centrals output that gets people the most excited. Its easy to see why. The bottom line is those personal clinic patients from fighters they get personal to want to be a recruit. On the one hand they create identification. Imagine you are a muslim and a deprived suburb of paris and you know he dont have a lot of opportunities in french societies. You look at these pictures of fighters with guns amongst brothers being heroes in that new society. You look at these pictures and what do you see . You see yourself. You see somebody like yourself. You see someone who is a hero in that society who is incredibly successful empowered and admired yet who six months ago someone exactly like you with no prospects in European Society with no hope and probably a life of petty crime edit them. And that is incredibly powerful moment when people see these pictures and start identifying and are able to communicate with these people. It makes it personal because it creates personal ties. We know from social Movement Theory that activism requires a lot of personal ties. His one of the risque more endangers endeavor the more ties you need to have in order to get the commitment and loyalty and create the social obligation. Speaking to a fighter enables exactly that. If you speak to a fighter on the battlefield for a month every day you develop a relationship. You develop trust rating makes time for you and you feel honored by the fact that he makes the much time for you and the ask you now you have took him over. Its completely different from watching a video where an anonymous person says i want you to come over. They explained for example if it was all about the internet that would make sense at all. The internet is everywhere. The distribution of cases would be equal or even across countries that we do see a lot of recruitment from relatively small towns not because the internet. Thats because you are upset people who play football is play football with each other and went to school with each other. The e. U. Have one or two of them going over staying in touch with the people. Com and successfully bringing over the rest. That is being replicated and everywhere in europe you find the same pattern. Its still about peertopeer networks which are powered by the internet but it is not the internet that is reckless. To american viewers american players. My final point is really important that we get this right when i gave you the numbers at the beginning i should say these are not members for people currently on the ground. These are figures for everyone who has gone over the past two and half years. 10 of these people are dead raid they have died in battle. 25 to 40 of the numbers for each of these european patches that i talked about, 25 to 40 depending on the country have already returned to their european home country. The current foreign fighter population of britain for example is not 700. 700 is the figure for the last four and a half years. On the ground at iraq are probably right now between 200 and 220 but 250 have already returned to the country. The question is of course what to do with them. In our observation and again its important by our empirical issues there are three principle groups and to call them the three bs. There are those who are disturbed. There are people who are not as fairly fully ideologically motivated by those who have been brutalized and traumatized by the conflict and western ideas even if they are not part of the terrorist network ideologically and then there are the socalled dangerous. Those are the people who are coming back established with military training equipped with military Training International networks and perhaps the motivation to carry out attacks in the west and depending what you believe the percentage for that are perhaps 10 to 25 . The third group are the socalled disillusioned hand here it is important to keep in mind what i said at the beginning that a lot of people thought they were joining a different kind. A lot of people have become disillusioned because of how the conflict has turned out. A lot of people also went there long before the Islamic State was established and these people right now are probably dominating among the people who have returned to European Countries. For these people there need to be options other than going to prison for 20, 30, 40 or so i have always been in my colleagues and i have always been very forthright in pushing European Countries to establish reIntegration Programs for people who are generally disillusioned to believe they made a mistake who have not committed major crimes. Its something that can be very tough but allows for the reintegration of people back into their societies. You have these three different groups disillusioned, disturbed and dangerous. I think right now by far the Largest Group isnt that the fourth group which i call the undecideds. A lot of people have returned and is not clear at all what kinds of things they would do in the long term. This shouldnt surprise us. This thread and this is my final remark, this threat will play out over long period of time. If afghanistan in the 1980s is the correct analogy then you have to accept that this will be a threat as president obama said that will be with us for probably the generation to come. It can be traced back to the 1980s in afghanistan have happened over a decade after the end of the conflict. I think there will be stuff happening in a decades time it goes back to what is happening right now in iraq. Osama bin ladin started his career as a foreign fighter that at the end of the afghanistan conflict he had not decided if it will become an international terrorists. It took him a few years to figure out a pretty tried to with the saudi government. He offered his services in 1990. He is not exactly figured out the game plan for the next 10 or 20 years in 1989. So i think it is the same for a lot of the foreign fighters who have returned to their home countries. They havent decided what they are going to do but they are keeping their options open. The final remark is a huge problem for a lot of European Countries given all of what i have said now is precisely what lorenzo pointed out namely capacity. A lot of these smaller European Countries are completely overwhelmed by the numbers of people who have gone by the numbers of people who have come back and they need the reIntegration Programs and they are the strongest advocates because they say its not going to do the trick because they cannot go but the necessary capacity to deal with this so cve is not about being nice to terrorists. Its actually essential in order to enable security authorities to do their job and to do it right. Thank you. A lot of food for thought there and a lot of items you raise that i think worked some good discussion among the panel. I will save my questions because i have quite a few along those lines were afterwards but hernando maybe you can take us in a case study look at spain a little bit and what those implications may or may not mean more broadly for europe in for europe and for United States and other so thank you. Thank you very much indeed frank. I will provide but also a few comments complementing those who have already made first of all thank you very much for having me here today. On behalf of myself and also on behalf of of the institution. Today i appreciate the opportunity to congratulate the George Washington university for having you and you for leading this new program on extremism here. The year before the war started in syria, that is the year 2010 the number of muslims in the world was estimated at 1,600,000,000 or you would say 1. 6 billion you say here in the u. S. Around 20 million were living in western europe. That means 1. 25 . And yet im using the data provided by the Previous Institute earlier this year so they can be outdated but for you to get a reference now there are 40,000 individuals, nationals in western europe who made the trip or tried to make the trip from their countries to syria and iraq. That means on the one hand on the other hand that means europeans are at