Foreign fighters hide in small groups, waiting for a regrouping and a new strategy. Some of them already found a new war in Sinai, Egypt (Photo: Alisdare Hickson)

Trump right for once: Europe should take back foreign fighters

EU & the World

Opinion

by Koert Debeuf, Brussels,

Six years ago, I walked into a dark room in one of the poor areas in Cairo. Two Syrian friends of mine had asked me to drop by to meet a special friend of theirs.

Through the twilight, I saw a rather corpulent, but friendly looking man in his 50s. My friends introduced me to Qassem, a soldier from the rebel group the Free Syrian Army.

Nothing special, until my friends said they had convinced him to fight for a free, secular Syria, and no longer for the Islamist group Al Qaeda, i...

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EU & the World Opinion

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s, not those of EUobserver

Author Bio

Koert Debeuf is a visiting research fellow at Oxford University and author of the book "Tribalisation. Why War is Coming" (ASP, 2018).

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Foreign fighters hide in small groups, waiting for a regrouping and a new strategy. Some of them already found a new war in Sinai, Egypt (Photo: Alisdare Hickson)