MI6 has warned that the war on Isis could last 50 years.

Boss Alex Younger said the recruitment drive is vital to keep Britain safe from extremist attacks if the war does last into the 2060s.

He said:“I would like to be optimistic about this but we have got quite long experience.

“Regrettably, this is an enduring issue which will certainly be with us, I believe, for our professional lifetime.”

The recruitment drive will see a 40% rise in spies to 3,500 by 2020.

He said fast changing technology “throws everything up in the air”.

MI6 – home to fictional spy James Bond, left – will hire whizzkids to keep ahead of terrorists.

Mr Younger added: “This issue will dictate our success.”

The MI6 chief also slammed whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s 2013 National Security Agency leak, calling it “highly problematic”.

Last year a government review said £2.5bn was being invested in security and intelligence staff.

It will ensure they have everything they need to “prevent and disrupt plots against this country at every stage”.

dailystar.co.uk

German police said on Wednesday that initial investigations into a 16-year-old Syrian arrested at a refugee hostel near Cologne showed that the suspect had contact with someone who had links to the Islamic State militant group.

It was unclear whether the teenager, who police said appeared to have been radicalised recently, was planning any sort of attack.

On Tuesday, police in Cologne had said an initial assessment had pointed to a “serious threat” but gave no further details.

“An evaluation of the young man’s mobile phone proves contacts to a person living abroad who has IS links and who wanted to win over the young Syrian for Islamist activities,” said the police in a statement on Wednesday.

Germany is on high alert after militant attacks in France and Belgium this year that have killed dozens of people and Germans are especially fearful about security risks after last year’s influx of about 1 million migrants.

In July, Islamic State claimed responsibility for two attacks in Bavaria.

Police arrested three Syrian members of Islamic State this month, brought into Germany by the same network that smuggled militants into France to carry out deadly attacks last November.

reuters.com

Unaccompanied children in German refugee camps are being targeted by ISIS to carry out Paris-style massacres in a new recruitment drive.

It comes as the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) announced the number of potential terrorist offenders under supervision of German security authorities had once again increased.

‘At the moment we are looking at 523 suspects,’ said BKA Chief Holger Münch – up by 22 in June.

Now underaged and unaccompanied minors are the targets of radical Salafists eager for recruits to cause Paris-style carnage in towns and cities in Germany.

The interior ministry expressed concern on today saying that youngsters in particular ‘are being recruited with money and false promises.’

Salafism is an extreme form of Jihadism that believes in violence to combat anyone who is not a Sunni Muslim.

Recruiters in Germany have sent over 700 young people to battlefronts in Syria and Iraq in the past few years.

Now, say the government, they are turning their sights on to the impressionable youngsters caught up in the refugee tide.

The government says that recruiting pressure will increase.

It said that since October last year it has recorded 340 cases where migrants have been contacted to join the cause.

But the true figure is likely far higher.

Many immigrants are too afraid to report contacts with radicals for fearing of losing their chances to stay in Germany.

‘The contacts are sometimes made under the guise of humanitarian assistance,’ said the government, with recruiters offering money, food and prayer mats to refugees who have nothing.

‘Unaccompanied minor refugees, are particularly susceptible to the promises of Islamists,’ warned the interior ministry.

‘It ithe task of the whole of society to protect refugees in Germany from any hate propaganda and to enable refugees to enjoy rapid integration in Germany and thus avoid ceding any further ground to the Salafis.’

But Ulla Jelpke, domestic affairs spokesman for the Die Linke party, said; ‘I find it a matter of concern that the federal government has not discovered new ideas to combat Salafist propaganda.’

dailymail.co.uk

Britain’s strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is “necessary but not sufficient” and the country needs a “grand strategy” instead, according to British lawmakers from the House of Commons Defense Committee.

In a report on U.K. military operations in the two countries released Wednesday, the MPs said Britain’s current strategy of air strikes in the region was helping, but more needed to be done.

“Assuming Daesh is squeezed out of both countries, we have to focus too on what happens next — both in other countries to which Daesh may migrate, and in Syria especially where there is no shortage of other Islamist groups, just as dangerous, which are planning to take control,” the committee’s head Julian Lewis said in astatement. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State or ISIL militant group.

While in Iraq “air operations have been effective in reclaiming territory,” progress in Syria is more uncertain, the committee said. In Syria, the U.K.’s goal of having a government that is neither authoritarian nor Islamist “cannot be achieved by military means alone,” according to the report.

MPs also criticized the British government’s lack of transparency, accusing it of failing to provide statistical information on airstrikes and a list of the groups it supports in Syria. This could “undermine the government’s assertion that the bombing campaign in Syria is in support of credible moderate ground forces,” MPs said.

politico.eu

The European Union has adopted new rules allowing the bloc to impose travel bans and asset freezes on associates of the Islamic State extremist group.

The move by EU member nations on Tuesday also targets foreign fighters who train or work with IS.

Sanctions could be imposed on people who have planned or carried out attacks, as well as financed, recruited for or supported the group’s activities.

IS sympathizers from outside Europe could be banned from entering, while EU nationals who work with the extremists outside the bloc would be permitted to travel only to their home countries.

Until now the 28-nation EU could impose sanctions only on people and entities listed by the United Nations, or as EU member states acting individually.

ap.org

Around one in four French Muslims, mostly young people, support an ultra-conservative form of Islam, including the wearing of the full-face veil, but the vast majority accept France’s strict secular laws, a study showed Sunday

The Ifop survey carried out for a major study of French Muslims by Institut Montaigne, a liberal think-tank, showed that the vast majority of people who identify as Muslim accept curbs on religion in public.

But 60 percent considered girls should nonetheless be allowed to wear the headscarf in school, 12 years after it and other religious symbols were banished from the classroom, the survey published in Le Journal du Dimanche weekly showed.

And around one in four — 24 percent — supported the wearing of the burqa and niqab, the full-face veils that were banned in public places in 2010.

The survey of 1,029 people aims to inform the government’s plans to overhaul French Muslim bodies in the wake of several jihadist attacks, most of them the work of French extremists.

It was carried out between April 13 and May 23, before this summer’s furore over the banning by several towns of the full-body burkini swimsuit, which has made Islam a hot-button topic eight months before the next presidential election.

Institut Montaigne’s report grouped French Muslims into three categories: “completely secular”, devout but accepting restrictions on religion in the public domain, and a more reactionary group that uses Islam for the purposes of “revolt”.

Those in the secular category, which made up 46 percent of the total, did not reject Islam but demonstrated their religious feeling mainly by eating halal meat.

Most “problematic”, according to the report, was the third group which was composed of “mostly young, low-skilled people with low levels of participation in the labour market” living on the outskirts of cities.

“Islam is for them a way of asserting themselves on the margins of French society,” the report found, noting that most people in that group approved of the burqa and of polygamy, which is permitted by Islam.

Around half of under-25s fell into this category, compared to around 20 percent of over-40s, revealing a generational gap between moderates and younger hardliners, the report found.

Halal meat and headscarves

Two issues — the right to wear the headscarf and access to halal food — emerged as enjoying support among all Muslims, whether practising or not.

Two-thirds of all respondents said they supported the right to wear the headscarf, even though two-thirds of the women questioned said they themselves did not wear the garment.

And eight out of ten people believed that public school canteens should offer halal options — a demand that has been rejected by several town councils who see it an encroachment of religion in schools.

The survey also showed that, contrary to commonly-held perceptions, French Muslim women are more conservative than men on some issues.

Only 56 percent of women said they would attend a mixed swimming pool, compared with 75 percent of men.

The study also showed that, while most respondents consider their religion as important to them, most do not regularly attend a mosque, with only 29 percent of attending a mosque on a weekly basis.

France has Western Europe’s biggest Muslim population.

The study estimated the number of French people identifying as Muslim to be far smaller than often thought, at around 3.7 million, or 5.6 percent of the population of over 15 years.

sbs.com.au

The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office says authorities have detained two people for questioning following anti-terror raids in two districts of the capital Brussels and the city of Liege in the southeast.

Police searched two homes in Haren and Schaarbeek districts of Brussels and another in Liege in the French-speaking Wallonia region, the office said in a statement.

According the statement, the two detainees “will be interrogated by the investigators” and a judge will decide later whether expanded detention is needed.

A judge specializing in terrorism cases ordered the raids “in connection with an ongoing federal investigation into the activities of a terrorist group,” the office said, without providing further details.

According to Belgium’s RTBF television network, the two are a 28-year-old man and his female companion.

The television station added that the man, who was engaged in criminal but not terrorist activities, had been active in a chat group on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where he “apparently indicated he was preparing to carry out an attack.”

The RTBF did not name its sources but said authorities sought to determine whether the man was linked to the recently detained users of Telegram in France.

abna24.com

The number of Salafi Muslims in Germany, adherents of  an ultra-conservative school of thought within Sunni Islam, has been growing rapidly and is boosting the ranks of jihadist recruits, the country’s intelligence chief said Wednesday.

Hans-Georg Maassen, president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said that there are 9,200 Salafis in Germany, up from 8,900 in June and  about 5,500 three years ago. His remarks came a day after three young Syrian militants posing as refugees were arrested on suspicion of planning terror attacks.

Salafis, who the German government says want to overturn democracy and install a system based on Islamic law, make up only a small proportion of Germany’s total Muslim population of more than 4 million.  But, security officials say, they join jihadist groups at a much higher rate than others.

“The unchecked growth in the number of Salafis is expanding the pool of recruits for jihadists,” Maassen said.

Almost all of the German nationals who have travelled to Syria to fight for Islamic Statebecame radicalized by Salafis, who target low-income Muslim youths in German cities, experts say.

“Young Muslim men who are drifting are the main targets for Salafis,” said Thomas Muecke, co-founder of the nonprofit group Violence Prevention Network. “Those who preach hate are especially effective in attracting and holding on to these lost young men.”  

He also said that agents were facing challenges monitoring potential terrorists who are using various methods of communication such as WhatsApp, Facebook and other networks that sometimes make it harder for authorities to track.

Muecke said authorities believe terrorist groups are trying to attract new recruits from among the refugees who have arrived in Germany in the last year.

It is increasingly difficult for the German intelligence agency to differentiate between those who identify intellectually with Salafism and those who espouse using violence to realize a radical version of Islam.

The warning from Maassen, the country’s top domestic spy came just a day after the German government said three Syrians were arrested in a raid by 200 police officers north of Hamburg.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said they were Islamic State members who entered Germany along with some 1 million refugees in November, aided by the same network that brought militants into France to carry out deadly attacks last year.

Germany and governments across Europe are on high alert after a string of terrorist attacks in France, Belgium and Germany. Refugees carried out two attacks in Germany in July claimed by Islamic State.

Tuesday’s arrests in a collection of small towns just north of Hamburg, the city where Mohamed Atta lived as a student while quietly plotting the 9/11 attacks, was a shock for Germany. Many are worried that there are more dormant terrorists among the refugee population. Sixty-one percent of Germans believe the influx of refugees has increased the chance of terrorist attacks in the country, according to a poll conducted in July by the Pew Research Center.

Maassen also said the German intelligence agency was increasingly worried about the growing number of “lone wolves” behind the most recent attacks.

“We’re concerned about this new breed of attackers who seem to be acting on their own,” he said. “It’s a real challenge for us to detect such small sleeper cells.”

Salafis have been in the news in Germany in the past when they’ve clashed with police at protests. In 2012, Salafis attacked police protecting a demonstration in front of a Saudi Arabian school in Bonn. Twenty-nine officers were wounded, two of them were stabbed, and more than 100 people were arrested.

latimes.com

Something has been building within for the German people. With their declaration that all citizens should prepare by storing up food and water for an extended period, and the attempt to allow internal military policing, it is clear that the nation – outwardly welcoming refugees – is deeply concerned about the social unrest it has been causing.

Fear and unease have accompanied panic, as self-defense tools have been flying off the shelves, and natives have become increasingly vigilant against the violent and unfriendly element among the refugees. Everyone is watching for the next terror attack, as blowback continues to rule the day.

As The Daily Sheeple’s Joshua Krause explains that The Germans Are Clearly Preparing for a War on Their Own Soil

There have been several alarming developments in Germany over the past few weeks. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the German government has told its citizens to begin stockpiling food and water. And not long after announcing that, the government suggested that they may bring back the draft, which was abolished in 2011 after it was deemed to be archaic and unnecessary.

Initially the government was reluctant to bluntly spell out exactly why they wanted to bring back conscription or why their citizens should start stockpiling necessities. But based on some of the reports that have come from the German government since then, it’s obvious that they’re preparing terrorist attacks. And not the kind of run of the mill attacks that Germany has seen over the summer. It seems like Germany is preparing for the kind of terror attacks that could break down their society.

For instance, the German military admitted in August that dozens of Islamic extremists had infiltrated the armed forces. However, that’s nothing compared to what Germany’s interior minister recently admitted.

Speaking in an interview with Bild newspaper, Thomas de Maiziere said there were currently at least 520 “potential attackers” in the country, which has been on edge since two Islamic State-inspired attacks in July.

He said another 360 “relevant” people were known to police because of their close proximity to the potential attackers.

Many Germans fear that fighters belonging to the Islamic State jihadist group could have slipped into Germany with the roughly one million of refugees from Syria, North Africa and Asia who arrived last year.

“The terror threat now stems from foreign hit teams as well as fanatical lone wolves in Germany,” de Maiziere said in the interview ahead of the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the United States, which were partly coordinated from Germany.

And when you think about it, 520 could very well be a conservative estimate. The German government allowed over a million refugees into its borders. For all we know there could be well over a thousand of these lunatics lurking in Germany.

In any case, you have wonder what the German government is going to do about this threat. If a dozen terrorists decided to coordinate several attacks in a short period of time, it could disrupt the whole country for days. But if Germany is bombarded with hundreds of terror attacks, it could lead to a total breakdown of society. That’s probably why the German government is getting ready for the day when they may have to deploy their soldiers domestically.

Authorities stress that counterterrorism measures will primarily remain the responsibility of police.

However, the potential for large-scale attacks have made the use of German military assets “conceivable, even probable,” according to Lt. Gen. Martin Schelleis, the Bundeswehr’s chief of joint support services.

zerohedge.com

A 15-year-old boy who was reportedly intending to carry out a terror attack has been arrested in Paris.