Horrors at Home: Assessing the Islamic State’s Strategy to Attack France and Belgium from Within

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Kokotakis, Giacoma

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2025

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Article

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en_US

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Abstract

“There is no excuse for any Muslim not to migrate to the Islamic State ... joining [its fight] is a duty on every Muslim. We are calling on you either to join or carry weapons [to fight] wherever you are,” said a spokesperson for the Islamic State in a May 2015 audio message (Gardner 2015). It served as perhaps the clearest indication of the Islamic State’s external strategy: conducting attacks against the West from within. From a perspective of lethality, the Islamic State successfully employed this strategy. Between 2014 and 2019, five Islamic State-directed attacks in Europe have killed 188 people (Bergen, Sterman, and Salyk-Virk 2019), and including other attacks that have been conducted by individuals inspired by Islamic State ideology, this figure has increased considerably. Even though it lacked the military power to face the West head-on, the Islamic State’s actions caused tragic losses that shook European communities and worsened social tensions arising from the refugee crisis. This paper examines past Islamic State attacks using foreign fighters and homegrown terrorists in France and Belgium, its networks in those countries, and its Western-targeted recruitment strategies. It concludes that the Islamic State’s strategy to direct attacks against theWest from within succeeded because of its French and Belgian networks and the Al-Hayat media branch’s effective Western-targeted propaganda, although the strategy proved unsustainable due to territorial loss and social media content moderation. Currently, the group’s increased activity, ‘digital caliphate,’ and returning foreign fighters require the Islamic State to be viewed as an enduring, significant threat to the West.

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Kokotakis, Giacoma. "Horrors at Home: Assessing the Islamic State’s Strategy to Attack France and Belgium from Within." West Point Journal of Politics and Security, Volume 3 Issue 1; Spring 2025.

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West Point Press

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