Spy services struggle to track growing ranks of extremists

The deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo drives home the daunting challenge facing Western intelligence agencies trying to track homegrown Islamist extremists, a task made more difficult with large numbers of jihadists returning from Syria.

The swelling ranks of homegrown militants in Europe and the United States pose a mounting problem for governments, even as Western security services expand their policing powers, share intelligence and embrace far-reaching electronic surveillance, experts and officials say.

“The threat these individuals pose to Americans here at home is being fueled by the conflict in Syria and Iraq and is proving particularly difficult to disrupt,” Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the US National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), told lawmakers last year.

The grisly assault in Paris that left 12 dead was preceded by attacks in Canada and Australia by other “self-radicalized” militants with Western passports.

Information on potential extremists on both sides of the Atlantic goes into a special data base at the NCTC in Washington, which feeds US watch lists — including the “no-fly list” designed to prevent attacks on airliners bound for the United States.

The two men believed to have carried out Wednesday’s horrific attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris, Said Kouachi, 34, and his younger brother Cherif, were both on the watch lists, including the “no-fly list.”

Said Kouachi traveled to Yemen in 2011 to receive training from Al-Qaeda’s branch there, a senior US administration official has told AFP.

But neither man was under constant surveillance and there had been no indication of an imminent attack, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazenueve said.

Round-the-clock surveillance requires manpower and resources, and no Western security service can track every suspected jihadist on its soil, experts said.

Like other governments, the French try to focus on those they deem the most dangerous and the most likely to commit violence, but there are limits — both practical and legal.

“At some point surveillance comes to an end, especially if you are smart enough to watch your step for a while. These are inevitable holes in the net,” said Eric Denece, director of the French Centre for Intelligence Research.

- In a race with extremists -

Western authorities are effectively in a race with extremists, scrambling to bolster counter-terrorism methods faster than new volunteers can be recruited or encouraged to commit violence.

Concerns about foreign fighters are nothing new. But the sheer volume of Westerners heading to Syria poses an unprecedented threat, particularly for European countries.

US officials say about 100 Americans have travelled to Syria and more than a thousand Europeans have flocked to the region to fight with the Islamic State group or other jihadists, while some independent analysts say the number is likely higher.

European governments once took a more cautious approach to sharing information with Washington’s spy agencies. But worries about volunteers returning from Syria have led to a dramatic increase in intelligence cooperation with the Americans, officials said.

“We’re pushing on an open door,” Rasmussen at the NCTC said last year.

– Eavesdropping on extremists –

Events in France have reignited a bitter debate about controversial eavesdropping by the United States, with former American spymaster Michael Hayden arguing that the attacks underscored the need to sweep up “meta-data” from mobile phones and emails to help ferret out extremist plots.

“A lot of people were hyperventilating about that six, 12 or 18 months ago,” Hayden said on Newsmax TV.

“The French are going to come to us and ask us in that ocean of metadata, do these new numbers that we’ve just associated with these people, do these new numbers show up and what have they been doing and with whom have they been in contact?” he said.

“We did that stuff for a reason. We did it to keep you safe, not to invade your privacy.”

The chief of the British spy agency MI5, Andrew Parker, made a similar argument, saying intelligence agencies needed more authority to enable them to track down militants.

Britain upped the national threat level to “severe” in August — the second-highest of five levels — meaning an attack is considered “highly likely.”

Parker said the move was mainly due to the rise of the IS in Syria and Iraq and an affiliated group of Al-Qaeda veterans, known as Khorasan, who have been hit by US air strikes.

But even if spy services are granted more powers to snoop on electronic communications, Parker acknowledged there were limits to what could be done to prevent another attack.

“We know that we cannot hope to stop everything.”

Spy services struggle to track growing ranks of extremists