SitRep: A New Europe, Flooded With ISIS Recruits

European threat picture growing. European intelligence services have been knocked back on their heels after the attacks in Brussels that killed 31 and injured about 300 more this week, and are scrambling to understand the size of the Islamist terrorist networks active in their cities.

One of the key outstanding questions is, who is the man in the white jacket? Grainy CCTV footage from the Brussels airport shows a man in a white jacket walking alongside two men thought to be the suicide bombers. FP’s Elias Groll and Dan De Luce write that the mysterious figure points to a larger network linking the attack in Belgium with November’s slaughter in Paris. “The network has deep roots in Muslim neighborhoods in Belgium as well as the Islamic State’s bastion in eastern Syria. But events this week underscored how Belgian and other Western authorities are still struggling to get a handle on the full extent of the group’s tentacles in Europe, amid fears that another attack may be launched before security services can roll up the group’s cell.”

More suspects. The latest reports Thursday reveal that Belgian authorities are looking for a second attacker who may have taken part in the subway bombing and may still be at large. What’s more, the main suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, appeared in court in Brussels on Thursday morning. His lawyer said Abdeslam is not fighting extradition to France, which wants to put him up on terrorism charges for the Nov. 13 rampage in Paris that left 130 dead.

Pool of recruits. The Islamic State has long fished in the deep waters of Europe’s street gangs and small-time criminals, pulling in scores of troubled young men and women from predominantly poor Muslim neighborhoods. “Some recruits have scant knowledge of Islam but, attracted by the group’s violent ideology, they become skilled and eager accomplices in carrying out acts of extraordinary cruelty.”

Intelligence officials from Europe and Iraq are now saying that the Islamic State has trained at least 400 people to participate in terrorist attacks on the continent. Many of the units are helmed by French-speaking terrorists with North African backgrounds who have gained battlefield experience in Syria and Libya. An Iraqi intelligence official said a new cell from the terrorist group’s external action wing has already crossed the Turkish border, bound for Europe. The ringleader of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, reportedly claimed to have traveled back to Europe with some 90 foreign fighters, but the claim hasn’t been confirmed.

Mosul on my mind. Iraqi officials made the dramatic announcement Thursday that the fight for the ISIS-held city of Mosul has begun, interrupting Iraqi television broadcasts to show patriotic clips and wave the Iraqi flag. Big, if true. But there’s little indication that the recapture of several villages near Makhmour, about 50 miles south of Mosul, represents the start of the long and likely bloody campaign to retake the city from the terrorist organization, which has held it since June, 2014.

For starters, reports indicate that there are only about 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi forces in place at a new Iraqi operations center near Makhmour, far short of the 12 brigades, or 24,000 troops, widely estimated to be needed to even begin the Mosul operation. The move comes less than a week after a U.S. Marine on a previously undisclosed mission was killed when two Katyusha rockets launched by Islamic State fighters slammed into the outpost where he was based in the country’s north. As many as 200 Marines have been posted at the firebase.

Brussels traffic. Watch this stunning graphic of what happened to flight patterns coming into Brussels just before — and after — Monday’s terrorist attack

Thanks for clicking on through this morning as we work through another week of SitRep. As always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national  security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Syria

The commander of Russian ground forces in Syria says that Russian special operations forces are still active in the country despite the pullback of some forces announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Tass reports. Colonel General Alexander Dvornikov said the commandos are on doing reconnaissance on targets for the remaining Russian warplanes in Syria, helping to direct airstrikes, training Syrian forces and “fulfilling other special tasks.”

The Assad regime has managed to claw its way within seven miles of the ancient city of Palmyra, which is still being held by the Islamic State. Russian planes have backed up Assad’s ground forces with a barrage of airstrikes, which locals say are indiscriminate and have killed many civilians. The recently agreed-to cessation of hostilities does not cover offensives against the Islamic State or the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Since ISIS captured Palmyra in May of 2015, the jihadist group has destroyed and looted archaeological sites and artifacts from the city, murdered a prominent archaeologist working there, and terrorized the local population.

The Syrian opposition’s top negotiator for the international peace talks in Geneva has made some eyebrow-raising claims about the presence of North Korean troops in the middle of Syria’s civil war. The Asaad Al-Zoubi says Pyongyang has dispatched two units named Chalma-1 and Chalma-2 to Syria to fight on behalf of the Assad regime. Syria has relatively close relations with North Korea, despite its global isolation, but evidence for the presence of North Korean troops in Syria is thus far sorely lacking.

Russia

A BBC investigative report claims that a Russian “troll factory” faked a video which purports to show an American soldier shooting a Koran with a Saiga 410K semi-automatic shotgun. The video shows a man in desert camouflage speaking accented English. It was originally posted to a gun forum and then quickly circulated by accounts and on forums associated with professional Russian trolls — people paid to write anti-Western, pro-Russian comments on social media. The BBC believes it may have located the man in the video through geotagged instagram pics near a troll factory firm in St. Petersburg.

Russia says it doubled the number of submarine combat patrols last year, according to Vice Admiral Alexander Fedotenkov, deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian navy. The Diplomat notes that Fedotenkov’s claims jive with comments made by NATO Allied Maritime Command chief Vice Admiral Clive Johnstone last month noting that Russian submarine activity had recently reached Cold War levels.

China

The open source sleuths at IHS Jane’s have spotted the presence of new anti-ship missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea. Images posted to the Chinese microblog Weibo appear to show YJ-62 anti-ship cruise missile deployed to the disputed island, which has also been claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. Over the course of the past few months, China has deployed a number of military assets to islands in the South China Sea, including fighter jets and surface-to-air missile batteries on Woody Island and high frequency radars on Cuarteron Reef. The U.S. has criticized China for its alleged “militarization” of the South China Sea.

China continues work on its first overseas base on the shores of the tiny African country of Djibouti, and Beijing is in full-on PR mode. China’s talking points stress that the base and a railway connecting it to Ethiopia are all about developing trade links and not about expanding Chinese military power. But the message isn’t sitting well in countries like India, where officials fear the Djibouti base could be part of a naval encirclement in the Indian Ocean. As FP’s Paul McLeary pointed out last month, the facility also sits pretty close to a key U.S. drone base.

Afghanistan

The Taliban is still struggling to quell dissent against the leadership of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, Afghanistan’s Tolo News reports. Fighters loyal to a dissident Taliban faction in Badghis province, led by former Taliban bigwig Mullah Rasoul, have been fighting members of the group loyal to Mansoor, who took over the Afghan Taliban after it was revealed last year that founder Mullah Mohammed Omar had been dead for two years. Mullah Rasoul’s faction claims that Mansour, with help from Pakistani intelligence, have been waging war against dissident Taliban, killing and imprisoning them.

Advanced research

The intelligence community’s advanced research shop, IARPA, is looking to build a system that can remotely detect all manner of nasty and dangerous chemicals hanging around U.S. facilities. And its name is everything you hoped it would be. The Molecular Analyzer for Efficient Gas-phase Low-power Interrogation, or MAEGLIN would look for harmful substances like chemical weapons, radioactive materials, drugs, toxins, and pollutants by periodically sampling the air and analyzing its contents at different sites.

Air Force

The Air Force is mulling a new missile to protect American fighter jets against the latest crop of Russian and Chinese air-to-air weapons. Flight Global reports that Lockheed Martin has been talking up its Small Advanced Capabilities Missile, or, SACM concept. The SACM would protect jets like the F-22 and F-35 by seeking out and destroying incoming PL-12  and Vympel RVV-BD air-to-air missiles, made by China and Russia, respectively. Lockheed says it could produce the defensive missiles in a year and a half to two and a half years, if given the go-ahead by the Air Force.

Gitmo

The Obama administration’s point man for shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility testified before Congress Wednesday that some prisoners released from the facility have taken up the fight against the U.S. and killed Americans. Paul Lewis, Department of Defense Special Envoy for Guantanamo Detention Closure, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that, “unfortunately, there have been Americans that have died because of Gitmo detainees.” Lewis didn’t offer specifics on which detainees had reengaged in combat or where, but previous reporting on the 2011 attacks on the U.S. consulate Benghazi indicate that Abu Sufian bin Qumu participated in the siege, which killed four Americans.

Rumble on the Potomac

The Pentagon and State Department are fighting each other for greater control over where and when U.S. foreign military aid gets spent, Politico reports. The Pentagon has managed to wrest control over more and more of the budget in recent years, amid complaints over the sluggish approval process at the State Department. But critics, including top State Department leadership and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), counter that shift in the balance of power between the two departments is leading to an unhealthy “militarization” of U.S. foreign policy and one that could privilege military expediency over human rights interests.

Drones

The Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine has a fascinating piece on the RQ-170, the secretive batwing-shaped stealth drone, informally referred to as “the beast of Kandahar.” The magazine reports that the U.S. has used the RQ-170 to follow insurgents crossing the Afghan border into Pakistan. The piece dives deep into the technological background of the RQ-170, used in the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, and speculates on other likely missions that stealth drone may have engaged in.

And finally…

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has published a new report from top naval analyst Ron O’Rourke. “Navy Lasers, Railgun, and Hypervelocity Projectile: Background and Issues for Congress” updated CRS’s continuing series on the Navy’s next generation of sci-fi weapons over the last edition, issued in November of 2015.

With Adam Rawnsley

Photo credit: CARL COURT/Getty Images