The Spectre of Return

"The phenomenon of Canadians participating in extremist activities abroad is a serious one, and Syria has become a significant destination for such individuals."
Tahera Mufti, Canadian Security Intelligence Service spokeswoman

"Our prediction is that foreign fighter recruitment will continue, albeit at a slower pace. The winter months will impose harsher conditions and may deter potential recruits from joining. Even so, in the absence of a peaceful resolution, the basic attraction of going to Syria will remain."
International Centre for the Study of Radicalization

A British think-tank has come out with figures relating to the number of foreigners who have responded to the call to jihad among Sunni Muslims, prepared to do battle with their Shia counterparts, each sect adamant that the other is not representative of true Islamic values, and each dedicated to the slaughter of the other. Some might respond by stating the opinion that better they kill one another than their usually perceived targets of Western, democratic, Christian, Judaic infidels.

On the other hand, their victims also sweep into the general cauldron of death, innocent civilians, Muslims who have no interest in Islamist conquest imperatives, who wish only to practise their faith as they see it, without rancour toward others. And, in actual fact, although sectarian violence does pit both jihadi groups of psychopaths who believe their faith calls upon them to spill blood for the greater glory of Allah, it is largely the non-combatants who are sacrificed, including women and children.

The tradition of violent jihad within Islam, expressing what is considered to be an extreme, the fanatic element within the religion, has a long heritage, and an unbroken one from the first stirrings of Islam in the mind of the Prophet Mohammed, down through the succeeding ages, to the present time. At present, there has been a political-ideological renaissance of violent jihad, the 'struggle' for Islamist supremacy, one that has captured the attentive imagination and faith of young men of Muslim and Arab extraction.

The concerns among Western intelligence and security sources is doublefold; that young Muslim men who have migrated with their families as immigrants or refugees to Europe and North America, Australia and elsewhere, have turned their faces toward the virulent strain of violent Islam, a volatile social-political movement that has created an unbridgeable chasm between Islam and the West. And that they may turn against the West that has given them harbour.

The predictable reaction to this phenomenon where there seems to be no end in sight, as the clash between east and west builds to a gradual climax, has created an overall atmosphere of fear and distrust. One which Muslim clerics claim is unfairly directed toward Islam. It is a creation of their own making, the imams, ayatollahs and Islamist scholars who enjoin the faithful to active jihad, but which they sneeringly name "Islamophobia", when the West reacts.

In a laudable spirit of generous inclusiveness, never imagining a future fraught with problems over introducing an indomitable spirit of ungenerous conquest to the equation of plurality, the reality of harbouring a truly dangerous element of integration refusal and adamant entitlement of indigenous cultural-social destruction has assailed the West. A war against Islam, as Muslims declare furiously? Hardly. Rather a hideous conflict in values, norms and social-religious constructs that ideological Islam has confronted non-Muslim states with.

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalization has concluded in their study that foreign fighters from 74 countries, including Canada, have joined the armed opposition in a war against the Shia Baathist Alawite regime of Syria's President Bashar al Assad. (Canada passed legislation making travel overseas to engage in terrorist activities illegal.) The numbers have been doubled since April to an estimated total of eleven thousand. Canada's contribution to this force of jihadist fighters is held to be around one hundred.

Even though the estimates were based on 1,500 sources of information, the study hedges its bets giving a wide latitude of possible numbers for each of the countries cited. For Canada the numbers participating range from a paltry nine to a possible one hundred. The Government of Canada itself holds its security-related data close to its chest; "dozens", they admit to, of the numbers of Canadians having left the country to fight in Syria.

It is the very sectarian nature of the battle that has captivated the interest of, and motivated foreign fighters to become part of the conflict, pitting Sunni armed opposition groups against the Shi'ites responding to the appeal to support a Shia-led government. For their part, they join the fray, coming from Iraq, Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Iran primarily.

Again, the primary concern for western governments is the inevitable return of those who have left to fight in Syria, and the internal security threat their presence will represent. They will bring back with them skills in paramilitary training and their combat experience, building on the extremist ideological values, and the invaluable contacts they will have made on the international scene, with others they have fought alongside and whose values they share.

Canada, like some other countries, outlawed the Al Nusrah Front, as a terrorist group -- for killing civilians and their malignancy against minorities, along with the devotion to establishing an Islamist caliphate. The number of Western Europeans fighting in Syria tripled to 1,900 according to the study, surpassing by far the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s after the invasion of Afghanistan. The mujahideen trained by Pakistan and the CIA little imagined then that al-Qaeda would be born of that crucible.

Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Lebanon and Libya have supplied by a huge margin the largest contingent of Sunni fighters who have travelled to join the battle in Syria against the Shia regime. And by extension, the regime of its sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Iranian Republican Guard Corps, and including its proxy Shia 'martyrdom' militia established in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

France, Britain and Germany are highlighted by the study as the source of the greatest numbers of foreign fighters, representing about 18% of the total that have streamed into Syria. Even so, foreign fighters total a mere ten percent of the opposition forces, the complete total estimated at one hundred thousand declaring themselves prepared for counter-martyrdom to achieve a final victory over the unspeakably vile pretenders in Islam.