http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/europe-jihadist-isis-syria-qaeda-terror-france-germany.htmlOne Abu Shaheed, a French jihadist interviewed by the weekly Paris-Match in March, claims that there are “at least” 500 recruits from France alone fighting with ISIS, which is merely one of the jihadist factions in Syria.
Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, used published estimates from European intelligence services to put the total number of European recruits fighting in Syria at fewer than 2,000.
In addition to individual French fighters in other ISIS units, Abu Shaheed said that there are five or six purely French-speaking brigades or katiba, consisting of French and Belgian fighters. He went on to explain that the formation of French-speaking brigades is a necessity, since the French and Belgian recruits ordinarily do not speak enough Arabic to be integrated into Arabic-speaking units. The recruits are known essentially to consist of second- and third-generation descendants of Arab immigrants and Muslim converts.
Both Bergner and Mustafa K. come from the Lohberg neighborhood in the town of Dinslaken in western Germany. Indeed, according to the German public broadcaster WDR, no less than seven young men from Lohberg have gone to perform jihad in Syria, where they together form the so-called Lohberg Brigade. Such a high number of recruits from one small neighborhood, which was not previously known as an incubator of Islamic extremism, casts doubt on German intelligence's relatively modest estimate of around 300 recruits from Germany engaged in jihad in Syria.
Europe to Eurabia!
