Both of these articles have to do with the Islamic State and how they are trying to find their way into Western Europe. The article by the Daily Mail is talks about how ISIS is trying to find it’s way into Europe by “disguising” themselves as refugees. Turkey is an easy path for them to take since border control there is very flexible, they has kept there borders so open to let the Syrian refugees in, so up to this point it has been very hard for they to track down any ISIS members that are passing through there. The article also states that many of these Islamic State fighters have fake passports, so once they get to Turkey it will be very easy for them to get to their destination, which is Europe. A U.S. intelligence source state that this can be very dangerous because it might lead to “devastating terror attacks”. In the Buzzfeed article, we get the other side of smuggling ISIS members. In this article they interview a man named, Hassa (not his real name). He states that he thinks he has helped members of ISIS get into Europe. The reason why Hassa thinks he has helped IS members is because of the way they acted. He said that many would be to themselves and not talk to the other refugees, especially the time he interacted with a man. His man stated, “The Western world thinks there is no ISIS in their countries — that all the jihadis have gone to fight and die in Syria,” Hassan said. “But this man said, ‘No. We are sending our fighters to take their places” and once that man was in Greece he told Hassa that “we want you to bring our brothers too.” Hassa also said that many of these men he was helping would pay more than the other refugees about $1,000 more. When the U.S. State Department and the E.U. officials were asked about this they said they had no evidence that IS members were entering Europe like this because it’s very hard to control the Turkish boarder at this point. At the end of the article Hassa stated that he only really cared about the money and that he supported ISIS, but later reconsidered a stated, “I fear I am sending them to fight in Europe,” he said. “This is not what my work is supposed to be.” These two articles talk about the two sides of smuggling ISIS members into Europe, one is about what we hear in the news and the other is a personal account of what the process of human smuggling ISIS members into Europe. I thought these articles were very interesting because it’s something I never really considered because of their current locations in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, but to hear the personal account of how they want to attack Europe is bizarre to me. ISIS is becoming a global problem, it’s not just affecting the Middle East anymore. Global terrorism is nothing new, but when new terrorist groups emerge into the global arena that’s when it becomes a problem.
