In the aftermath of any terrorist attack, including the atrocities that rocked Brussels this week, the question on everyone’s mind is always: Is there more to come? European officials are especially concerned about that question in light of a new report that says the Islamic State has at least 400 trained fighters waiting to attack countries throughout the region. According to the Associated Press, these fighters have orders to choose targets based on their potential for “maximum carnage.”
In other words, while Obama and Merkel and all the other liberal world leaders have been pressuring their citizens to embrace the flood of Syrian refugees, ISIS has been steadily training and deploying terrorists who can fit right in with the immigration river. Who woulda thunk it?
ISIS themselves, in claiming responsibility for the attacks in Belgium, let the world know that they had sent a “secret cell of soldiers” to Brussels for this operation. These units are not comprised of hastily-trained radicals, either. ISIS has been taking their time to turn these ideologues into potent fighters with training in surveillance, battleground strategies, and, of course, explosives.
“The difference is that in 2014, some of these IS fighters were only being given a couple weeks of training,” an anonymous European security official told the AP. “Now the strategy has changed. Special units have been set up. The training is longer. And the objective appears to no longer be killing as many people as possible but rather to have as many terror operations as possible, so the enemy is forced to spend more money or more in manpower. It’s more about the rhythm of terror operations now.”
And all of this is being done right under the nose of our collective intelligence agencies. These agencies know who the enemy is, where they are coming from, and how they operate. Yet even after arresting Salah Abdesalem, they couldn’t stop this plot in Brussels from unfolding. In fact, some have speculated that the arrest only inspired the terrorists to step up the timeframe.
What’s more dangerous than the training aspect is that these cells have been given an extraordinary degree of autonomy. They don’t have to wait for orders to come in from ISIS headquarters in Raqqa; they make their own decisions about when and where to strike. Not only does this make it more difficult for law enforcement to intercept communication, it shows us that chopping the head off the snake won’t be enough. This is a growing hydra. We have to kill the idea itself. That’s no easy mission when our leaders can’t even bear to say our enemy’s name.
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