Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has warned there is a chance of conflicts in the Middle East and Africa spilling over to Europe, and has called for a “comprehensive strategy” in combatting the threat.
Sisi voiced his concerns during a Tuesday’s meeting with French
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The president said there was “the risk of the spread of
radicalization in the Middle East and Africa, which will be
extended inevitably to Europe, especially the countries north of
the Mediterranean.” He urged a “comprehensive
strategy” by the international community to handle the
threat.
Still, Sisi would not want to see a foreign intervention in the
neighboring turbulent Libya, he warned earlier. And that’s
something Le Drian is campaigning for, saying that French troops
currently deployed in the Mali war could move northeast into
Libya to fight radicals there.
“The south [of Libya] is a sort of hub for terrorist groups
where they come to resupply— including with weapons - and
reorganize,” Le Drian said on Tuesday. “In the north,
the political and economic centers of the country are now at risk
from falling under jihadist control.”
Europe does have a reason to worry, according to geopolitical
analyst Eric Draitser.
“Not only are there large expatriate immigrant populations in
a variety of countries in Europe that come from that region, also
there’s just the obvious proximity between Libya, North Africa
and Southern Europe, which of course would be a highway to the
rest of Europe,” Draitser told RT.
Governments across Europe have been worried about citizens
travelling to fight with the so-called Islamic State (IS,
formerly ISIS or ISIL) and then possibly bringing their terrorist
skills back to Europe.
France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned on Sunday
that 930 France’s residents and citizens, including 60 women,
were either already fighting in Iraq and Syria or were planning
to go there.
READ MORE:Nearly
1,000 Frenchmen join jihad, dozens of women and kids 'stopped en
route'
Islamophobia and the rise of right-wing parties in Europe could
be blamed for the increasing numbers of Muslims there willing to
go join the Islamic State fighters, Mia Bloom from the Center for
Terrorism and Security Studies believes.
“One of the reasons that the European Muslim women who have
gone have posted on Facebook, Twitter and social media is that
they have said the increase of radical hate in Europe, right-wing
parties that have brought with them anti-immigrant feelings,
Islamophobia – that is one of the things that pushed them to live
in the Islamic Caliphate so that they could live unmolested in an
Islamic environment and they wouldn’t be marked for wearing the
hijab, they wouldn’t be spat on or treated badly,” Bloom
told RT.
READ
MORE:‘Anti-immigrant
policies and Islamophobia push Muslims to join ISIS’
And it’s not only Europe that’s vulnerable to the spillover of
the conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. In the US, the city
of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is said to have become a recruiting
ground for Islamic extremists. The city’s large Somali community
is being targeted.
“What we are seeing is that the community in Minneapolis,
which previously was being sent to Somalia to join Al-Shabaab has
now been routed to Syria to join the Islamic Caliphate,”
Bloom says.
She adds the recruiters cultivate the feelings of guilt in young
Muslims living in the West, accusing them of enjoying their
lives, while there are Muslims suffering in the Middle East.
The threat of the Middle East conflict spillover has been felt as
far as in Australia, which raised its terror threat level to
‘high’ from ‘medium’ last week, fearing Australian citizens
returning from Iraq and Syria after having fought with the
Islamic State forces.
"There are people with the intent and the capability to mount
attacks here in Australia," Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.