Year in Review: The Terror Threat Spreads Islamic State morphed from an uncertain menace into one of the biggest security challenges since the Cold War
http://www.wsj.com/articles/year-in-review-the-terror-threat-spreads-1450659152
The terrorist threat posed by Islamic State morphed from an uncertain menace confined largely to the Middle East into one of the biggest global security challenges since the end of the Cold War.
For the first time the militant group launched major terror attacks from its strongholds against distant targets, including the deadliest-ever on French soil. A couple killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in the worst attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001; the wife had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
Islamic State consistently urged sympathizers to strike the West, but until recently the group devoted its energy to seizing territory in Syria and Iraq for a so-called caliphate to be ruled according to its puritanical version of Islam.
“It was clear the group was calling for attacks,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a counterterrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London. “But it wasn’t clear there was anything strategic to it. It was more about throwing sand in our eyes.”
That changed with a string of lethal attacks directed at some of the group’s main enemies, including Turkey, Hezbollah and possibly Russia as well as the West.
France was first hit in January, when militants splitting their allegiances between al Qaeda and the new generation of jihadists killed 17 people, including cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo newspaper and shoppers at a kosher grocery store. More than two dozen people, mainly European tourists, were killed on a beach in Tunisia in June. Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate claimed the downing of a Russian airliner in October, with 224 dead. Bombs went off in Beirut and Ankara, killing many more.
Last month in Paris, gunmen wearing suicide vests ripped through cafes, a rock concert and a soccer stadium, killing 130 people and injuring hundreds. The coordinated attack exposed glaring gaps in Europe’s security.
Most of the carnage was unleashed by Frenchmen who had fought for Islamic State in Syria, then come home. Their presumed ringleader was a Belgian operative who also orchestrated an attack in Belgium that was foiled in January.
At least two of the bombers entered Europe by mingling with the mass of refugees fleeing Syria. Several had moved across Europe undetected by both the French and Belgian authorities.
The attacks also fueled a debate over President Barack Obama’s military strategy and his administration’s plan to continue accepting Syrian refugees. Congress moved to tighten travel restrictions, while Homeland Security is working on expanding scrutiny of social-media posts as part of its visa-application process.
—Matthew Dalton
Strategies in Syria and Iraq questioned
Despite mounting challenges to Islamic State, the size of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria diminished only marginally—and at huge costs to its enemies.
The group lost the Kurdish Syrian city of Kobani in January then Tikrit, north of Baghdad, two months later. Late in the year, allied fighters were able to rout Islamic State from the Iraqi oil refinery town of Beiji and the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sinjar.
But with each loss, Islamic State displayed formidable strength, holding off overwhelming numbers of attackers for weeks. It inflicted disproportionate casualties on its enemies and never yielded ground without facing a barrage of coalition missiles.
Islamic State stunned observers when it seized the Iraqi provincial capital of Ramadi and the historic Syrian ruins of Palmyra in May.
The U.S. estimates that American and allied airstrikes during a 16-month military campaign killed more than 20,000 Islamic State fighters and helped erode the group’s hold on territory. Yet U.S. officials also estimate the extremist group’s recruitment of foreign fighters doubled in that time period, allowing it to establish a presence in some 30 countries.
Its expanding influence drew more countries to the fight, complicating an already bewildering battlefield.
Russia cited the threat of homegrown Islamic extremism when itintervened in Syria in late September with aerial bombings to defend its ally, President Bashar al-Assad. Those airstrikes, which U.S. officials said mostly targeted relatively moderate rebel groups including those backed by the U.S., thrust American and Russian forces into an uncomfortable proximity.
Turkey decided to defend its borders by attacking Islamic State head-on over the summer. It also shot down a Russian warplane that it said had violated Turkish airspace, complicating diplomatic efforts to align the U.S.-led and Russian operations.
This month, Saudi Arabia announced plans for a coalition of 34 mostly Sunni Muslim countries to take on the group. But its rivals in Shiite-dominated Iran, whose proxies have ranked among the few effective fighters against Islamic State, were conspicuously left out.
Facing their own threats, France ramped up its bombing campaign, the U.K. parliament voted to expand its airstrikes from Iraq into Syria, and U.S. defense officials pushed ever closer toward a return to ground-level combat in Iraq, with the deployment of more special-operations forces.
—Matt Bradley
ENLARGE Waves of migrants overwhelm Europe
One of the greatest mass migrations since World War II swept across Europe, shattering ideals of open borders and touching off a debate over European values.
European Union leaders, consumed early in the year with the Ukraine conflict and the bailout of Greece, moved slowly to respond as tens of thousands of people poured across the Mediterranean. Over the summer, the flow reached previously unimaginable levels, as hundreds of thousands sailed from Turkey to Greece and then overland to the top destinations of Germany and Sweden.
A drowned 3-year-old boy who washed ashore in Turkey and an abandoned truck in Austria with 71 dead bodies inside underscored the scale of the migrants’ desperation.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to let in thousands of people stranded in Hungary despite EU asylum rules—turning her into a hero for refugees but a bane for critics who said she was encouraging more to attempt the dangerous journey.
With a majority of Germans now calling for a ceiling on the number of refugees, her leadership appears at its most fragile since she took office 10 years ago.
The human tide highlighted a divide in Europe. Several Western governments, led by Germany, welcomed refugees; most of those in the east, led by Hungary, said the new, mainly Muslim arrivals represented a threat to the European way of life. By year’s end even Ms. Merkel was promising to reduce the number of arrivals.
The influx also threw up roadblocks across Europe’s open-border travel area, with some countries reinstating controls in a scramble to identify all of the people arriving daily in vans, trains and on foot.
—Anton Troianovski
ENLARGE Russia unleashes new dynamic in Mideast
Call it a comeback, Kremlin style: Russian President Vladimir Putin began the year as a near-pariah, with his country struggling under Western sanctions following the annexation of Crimea and the ensuing fighting in Ukraine.
But in the fall, Mr. Putin cast himself as an essential global player after he launched airstrikes in Syria, Russia’s first war outside the bounds of the former Soviet Union.
“Better to fight them there than wait for them here,” he said in a United Nations speech.
The Russian leader portrays his campaign in Syria as the world’s best hope for defeating Islamic State, but his endgame isn’t clear.
He has—for the time being—ruled out sending ground troops to Syria.
His call for a grand alliance to fight Islamic State appeared to gain traction after the Paris terror attacks, then to slow, not least because of strategic and tactical differences.
Russia remains under Western sanctions over its intervention in Ukraine. And while Mr. Putin is getting his share of photo opportunities with world leaders, rapprochement has been limited at best.
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