EU takes counter-terrorism campaign to the frontlines

The European External Action Service sends terrorism experts to countries with a history of radicalism.

The EU has deployed eight security and intelligence experts to its missions in the Middle East, North Africa and Nigeria to boost its counter-terrorism efforts and take the fight to countries where many radicals are recruited.

In the last four months, the European External Action Service has sent former intelligence, military and police officers with experience in conflict zones and “disarmament, demobilization and reintegration” processes — according to the job description — to serve as attachés in Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey. One more is due to begin an assignment in Egypt.

“These are people who have a background in security and police, and can develop good contacts in the security world in the countries of the Mediterranean rim,” Gilles de Kerchove, the EU counter-terrorism coordinator, told POLITICO.

The European Union first decided to deploy its own counter-terrorism attachés after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in February, when 17 people died at the satirical magazine and a hostage-taking in a Jewish grocery. The initiative has gained in urgency since the November 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility.

“The attacks have certainly accelerated the cooperation process with these countries,” said an official from the EEAS.

Individual EU countries tend to have strong intelligence ties with specific partners in the Middle East and Africa — Kerchove cited Morocco’s record of cooperation in counter-terrorism with the United States, Spain and France, which security officials say helped the French to track down Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks, who was killed in a shootout with police on November 18.

But the attacks in France, and the high threat level in many parts of Europe, has made it clear in Brussels that bilateral cooperation in the hands of member states is not enough and the problem requires multi-dimensional diplomacy at EU level.

In Nigeria, the EU counter-terrorism attaché oversees de-radicalization programs in prisons with former members of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. In Jordan, there is an anti-radicalization program for mosques, as well as training for counter-terrorism agents.

“Our background helps us to interact with our local counterpart. As a soldier I have greater access to the military of the country I am operating in than a normal diplomat would have,” one of the security attachés, speaking on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO. “We speak the same language, we share a military education and code.”

The EU’s new counter-terrorism attachés, whose performance so far is likely to be discussed at a meeting of EU foreign ministers Monday, are tasked with reporting back to the EU delegations and the EEAS on domestic policy in the fields of counter-terrorism, violent radicalization, organized crime, migration and corruption, and to help some of the host countries build up their own counter-terrorism capacity, using financial aid from the EU.

In Tunisia, for example — home to an estimated 3,000 “foreign fighters” who have joined the ranks of groups like ISIL in Iraq and Syria — the EU has signed a deal that would allocate more than €23 million to modernize the security services, including border management and counter-terrorism.

“In Tunisia, we will do aviation security, airports, borders with Libya, prevention of radicalization, restructuring of the interior ministry and intelligence services, appointment of a national security advisor,” said de Kerchove. The new attaché’s role will be to watch over these programs and “act as a go-between with Brussels.”

The EU launched a series of measures to cooperate with third countries on countering the foreign-fighter phenomenon since 2013, allocating $10 million for a program to combat this problem and Islamist radicalization in the Sahel-Maghreb region.

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Since February 2015, the EU has been working with the United Nations on national and regional counter-terrorism and foreign fighter workshops in the Middle East and North Africa, also providing technical assistance to help local criminal justice officials investigate and prosecute foreign fighters,

“Counter-terrorism is a rather new field for the EU,” said one European official. “When you look at the numbers of foreign fighters they have in these countries, there are a lot of reasons to work with them. These countries are very much like us, very much threatened by the foreign fighters, by Daesh (ISIL) and the other terrorist groups and the crisis in Syria.”

Discussions are also under way to explore cooperation with key EU agencies such as Europol, which coordinates information on terrorism and organized crime, Eurojust, which has established contact with officials — often local prosecutors — in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon to provide judicial assistance, and the European Police College (CEPOL), which is setting up a project to provide counter-terrorism training in the target countries.

The Eurojust project will “make it easy to exchange both police and intelligence data on terror suspects, prove the evidence gathered, and consider where to prosecute,” said an official from the European Commission.

At a moment when EU countries have faced criticism for failing to coordinate their intelligence efforts sufficiently to reduce the risk of attacks, officials were at pains to portray it as a two-way street in terms of expertise and learning, pointing to Morocco’s experience in combating radicalization and integrating former radicalized prisoners back into society.

“We are looking at building a partnership, because these countries have a lot of experience in fighting terrorism and we do as well, and it is important for us to work together because the threat is the same threat and people travel all over,” a second European official said.