Syrian rebels attend a training session in Maaret Ikhwan, near Idlib. It is estimated there are up tp 200 Australians in Syria, many of whom have gone to fight the regime.Source: AP
CLAIMS by Washington yesterday that President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria may have used chemical weapons against rebel forces has increased pressure on the West to intervene more directly in that bloody civil war.
But there is another type of Western intervention in the Syrian conflict that is causing deep disquiet, including in Australia.
The war in Syria has energised young Western radicals and idealists to travel overseas to take up the struggle against the Syrian government. Australians have emerged as major players in this. They are fighting for an outcome Australia and its Western allies support: the overthrow of Assad's odious regime.
But Canberra does not see these Australians as brave crusaders for a just cause. Instead, our government fears some of these foreign fighters will return as hardened jihadists who could pose a terror threat to their fellow Australians.
Intelligence agencies estimate that between 150 and 200 Australian citizens are fighting in Syria. This compares with only handful of civilians who fought in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
Of greatest concern is that a sizeable number of these self-selected warriors are suspected of fighting not with the moderate mainstream rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, but with the extremist elements of Syria's rebel movement, including the al-Qa'ida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, which soon will be formally designated a terror group by Australia.
The topic has gained only modest media attention, partly because it's almost four years since the last major terror plot was uncovered in Australia, and the media caravan has moved on.
But inside Australia's national security agencies, the issue is being viewed with grave concern. It is seen as a potential game changer in counter-terrorism in this country because it promises to nourish a new breed of Australian jihadists.
"The reason for the concern is the knowledge, skills and experience that they get fighting in an armed conflict," Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Peter Drennan tells Inquirer. "The use of firearms, their potential to learn how to build improvised explosive devices or use rocket-launchers: the list goes on.
"But equally these people are hardened by combat, which is a very different dimension to someone who has aspirations to commit terror offences but has not been tested in the heat of battle. We now have people who potentially know how to make bombs, use firearms and have been tested in the heat of battle - it is a real game changer."
Britain and Europe are also grappling with the Syrian issue. On Wednesday, EU counter-terrorism chief Gilles de Kerchove said about 500 Europeans were in Syria fighting with the rebels. "Not all of them are radical when they leave, but most likely many of them will be radicalised there, will be trained," he said.
Last month, The Netherlands raised its terror alert to "substantial", citing fears that people returning from Syria could plot attacks, while Belgian police raided 48 homes last week to crack down on networks recruiting fighters for Syria.
It is illegal for Australians to travel to Syria and fight for any side in the civil war, but the real concern in Canberra is that the composition of the rebel movement is changing, with extremist splinter groups increasing their influence in the conflict. This has coincided with an increase in the number of Australians who are going to fight.
"In recent months we have seen that the number of Australians going to Syria has increased," Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus tells Inquirer. "We are concerned about (these) Australians being radicalised in extremist doctrines while participating in the conflict in Syria and returning home with skills that terrorists could use."
As The Australian revealed this month, the number of citizens travelling to fight in Syria is believed to have doubled in the past six months. A large proportion of these are dual-nationality Lebanese Australians, who are drawn to the conflict for a variety of reasons, most commonly entering Syria via northern Lebanon.
"Lebanon connections have been a feature of Australian jihadism for over a decade, so the Syrian conflict has greater relevance for Australia than insurgencies elsewhere, such as Mali or Chechnya," says Andrew Zammit, from the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Melbourne's Monash University. "Many Lebanese Sunnis are trying to fight the (Alawite) Assad regime because they see them as oppressing the people they identify with."
Not all Australians heading for Syria seek to become fighters, says the AFP's Drennan. "When you are looking at the reasons, there are some who are going there to provide humanitarian support; some who are going there for family reasons to help or protect their family; some who are going there to fight with the Free Syrian army; and some, a much smaller group, potentially going to fight with the government forces," he says.
"But the ones who really cause concern are the ones fighting for al-Qa'ida affiliates such as al-Nusra - they are the ones that cause us significant concern."
The emergence of extremist groups such as al-Nusra alongside the FSA has become more pronounced during the past 12 months of the two-year civil war, with Foreign Minister Bob Carr estimating last month that al-Nusra had about 5000 fighters, about 5 per cent of the FSA's total fighting force.
"When the Syrian uprising began in March 2011, the presence of jihadists in the protests was minimal at best," says Aaron Zelin, from the Washington Institute.
"Fighters associated with al-Qa-ida's world view quietly entered the fight in the fall of 2011 (and) announced themselves in January 2012 under the bannner of al-Nusra and (have become) one of the key fighting forces against the Bashar al-Assad regime."
This has greatly complicated the West's efforts to assist the rebel movement, and inside the Gillard government some estimates put the number of Australians fighting with al-Nusra as high as 100.
Authorities admit that it is difficult to know precisely how many Australians have gone to Syria or what they do there. These fighters do not publicly admit they are travelling there to take up arms because it's a crime in Australia, punishable by jail.
So far four Australians have been killed in the conflict and only one, Yusuf Toprakkaya, killed by a sniper in December, has been confirmed as going there to fight.
"People aren't making visa applications to say they are going to fight," says Drennan. "You don't have to go direct; they can go to a number of countries before they get to Syria."
This lack of clarity leaves security agencies vulnerable to the accusation that they are over-egging the problem.
But the history of jihadism in Australia suggests there is good reason to be concerned about the dangers of people returning to Australia after fighting for Islamic causes abroad.
Each of the four main terror plots foiled here has had some connection with people who returned after receiving training with extremist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Somalia.
"I think Australia's security concerns are justified, based on our past history and on the experience of other countries, such as Britain," says Monash University's Zammit. "In the late 1990s, early 2000s, you had some aspiring Australian jihadists travelling to Afghanistan and Pakistan and some of those people subsequently turned up in several terror plots - you had Jack Roche in 2000 and Faheem Lodhi, who conspired with Willie Brigitte in 2003.
"Then in 2005 you had the two (Operation) Pendennis cells (in Melbourne and Sydney), which contained either someone who trained in an al-Qa'ida camp in Afghanistan or a Lashkar-e-Toiba camp in Pakistan."
With the 2009 plot to bomb the Holsworthy army base, there were also connections with the insurgency in Somalia and the extremist movement al-Shabab.
The potential influence of travelling to Islamic hot spots has been highlighted by revelations that one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, recently visited Chechnya, although he did not engage in fighting. A recent study by Norwegian researcher Thomas Hegghammer found that about one in nine Westerners who trained or fought in a jihadist conflict ended up being involved in terror plots against the West.
"The data points to a veteran effect that makes returnees significantly more effective operatives," he wrote in the February edition of American Political Science Review.
If Hegghammer's thesis is accurate, and we assume that only 100 Australians are involved in active fighting in Syria, then ASIO faces the prospect of more than 10 Australians being radicalised enough by their Syrian experience to consider terror plots at home.
While such estimates are little more than intelligent guesswork, they have energised the government, with the Attorney-General having ordered the release of public fact sheets on Syria that explicitly warn Australians against going to fight, fund, train or recruit in relation to the Syrian conflict.
"Doing so could result in heavy fines or a maximum penalty for an individual of 10 years prison," the fact sheet says.
A handful of citizens suspected of fighting in Syria have returned to Australia but the number of returnees is expected to increase sharply in the next 18 months. Most of those who come back will not pose a threat to domestic security, but the challenge for security agencies will be to decide which returnees need to be monitored and which do not.
"What do we do with these people when they come back?" asks the AFP's Drennan. "If we can't prosecute them for what they have done, the options are limited to the possible use of control orders to ensure these people don't get involved in terrorism here."
Drennan is also concerned that returned fighters can become mentors to others who have not travelled to Syria. "They also bring back with them an allure to people back onshore who are similarly inclined. They could become a rallying cause and reach out to a range of followers and guide them, mentor them, radicalise them."
In January, Julia Gillard said Australia's national security priorities were evolving in a way where more traditional threats would shape thinking, ending an era in which "non-state actors", such as terrorist groups, posed the greatest risk. "We are transitioning from one decade, the decade of 9/11, to a post-9/11 era," the Prime Minister said when releasing her national security policy.
"Since the galvanising events of September 11 and Bali, our partners and Australia have secured some significant successes. Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qa'ida's senior leadership is fractured. Jemaah Islamiah has been decimated in our region.
"Here at home, numerous terrorist plots have been thwarted, and 23 convictions have resulted from the prosecution of those who planned such attacks."
Gillard was not saying the terror threat in Australia was over, but that it was unlikely to play such a central role in our thinking.
Yet this month's Boston bombings, and the thwarted Canadian terror plot to blow up a train, have reminded the West of the ongoing threat posed by homegrown Islamic extremists.
If the fears of Canberra's security agencies prove accurate and the Syrian conflict continues to serve as a honeypot for Australian fighters, then the risk of homegrown jihadists will remain a disturbing feature of the post-9/11 era.