[ISIS Islamic State]Reuters ISIS is using its foreign fighters and safe haven in Iraq and Syria to execute a terror campaign within Europe. _ISIS’s March 22 Brussels attacks support a larger strategy to punish, destabilize, and polarize the West. ISIS will likely continue to attempt attacks in France and Belgium in 2016, using its large Francophone foreign fighter population and local supporters. _ _ISIS’s support networks in southern Europe may enable ISIS’s operatives to launch operations in other parts of the continent, including Austria, Germany, Spain, and Italy. _ _ISIS may also increasingly target Westerners in Turkey in order to punish members of the anti-ISIS coalition and undermine the Turkish economy, as part of its stated objective to seize Constantinople. Current efforts to address these threats through law enforcement, surgical strikes on ISIS’s leadership, and linear attrition of ISIS’s terrain and resources are necessary but not sufficient to destroy the ISIS threat to Europe. _ _The anti-ISIS coalition must deprive ISIS of its primary source of strength, its territorial control as a caliphate in Iraq, Syria, and now Libya._ ISIS’s suicide bombings in Brussels demonstrate that the jihadist threat to Europe is outpacing domestic and international law enforcement efforts. ISIS is successfully using its safe haven in Iraq and Syria to train as many as 600 foreign fighters for external attacks. ISIS’s fighters benefit from extensive support networks across the European continent. The logistical requirements for facilitating European foreign fighter travel into Iraq and Syria can also export those fighters from ISIS’s safe havens back to Europe. Reports following the November 2015 Paris attacks and the recent Brussels attacks indicate European governments have incomplete, fragmented intelligence on the identity and communications of ISIS’s members in Europe. ISIS likely retains attack cells and logistical networks within Europe that will enable it to launch additional spectacular attacks, with support from the organization’s leadership within Iraq and Syria. ISW last published its ISIS’s Campaign in Europe map on December 2015. The graphic below updates that visualization to depict all attacks inspired or coordinated by ISIS in Europe from January 2014 to present. This group includes attempted and successful attacks in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Turkey. [ISIS foreign fighters ISW 3/27/16]Reuters The graphic also marks locations where ISIS-linked individuals have been arrested in that timeframe. Locations with more than two arrest events are depicted with opaque circles with varying sizes depending on the number of events. Events that occurred at an unspecified location within a country are marked on that country’s capitol. The graphic also highlights where ISIS has directed public threats or recruitment calls. Individuals inspired by and responsive to ISIS are active across Europe, particularly in France, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom. ISIS-linked attacks and arrests in Europe are distinct from ISIS’s activity in Turkey, which reflects spillover from ISIS's campaigns in Iraq and Syria as well as ISIS's campaign to attack the West. NOW WATCH: IAN BREMMER: Greece is headed for a humanitarian disaster
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