European jihadists form ISIS brigades in Syria

Recent reports in the European press and evidence from social media implicate European jihadists fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in atrocities committed in the vicinity of Aleppo, in northern Syria. The reports, moreover, suggest that European jihadists in Syria are more numerous than official statistics indicate. Indeed, they point to the existence of entire French-speaking and German-speaking brigades in the Aleppo region.

One 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. It has lately been involved in an internecine conflict with other such factions, including Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria. In a recent study, 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. The study estimated the total number of French recruits fighting with all the factions, not only ISIS, at between 200 and 400.

Referring to the French jihadists, Abu Shaheed told Paris-Match, “There are lots and lots of them. The place is covered with French [recruits]. I couldn’t even count them all.” 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.

Abu Shaheed belongs to one such French-speaking unit in the Aleppo suburb of Hraytan. He claims that prior to the withdrawal of ISIS from Hraytan in mid-February, some 200 French or French-speaking fighters had been based there. Hraytan’s European colony came to broad public attention when video emerged in late March of French-speaking jihadists providing running commentary as they gleefully dragged seven or eight bodies to a mass grave using a pickup truck. “In the past, we towed jet skis, motorcycles and quad bikes,” the driver of the pickup says with a wry smile, “now we tow murtads [apostates] and kuffar [unbelievers], those who fight against us and fight against Islam.”