Greece and the Migrant Crisis: The Threat of Foreign Terrorist Fighters - Potential Islamic State ISIS Operative Transit and Recruitment Opportunities, EU and NATO Coordination in Processing Migrants

This mid-2018 report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Since the June 2014 establishment of the "caliphate" by the Islamic State, there has been an alarming increase in the number of terrorist attacks in Europe. Concurrently, wave after wave of migrants from war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan have landed on Greek shores—and the shores of other southern European countries—in search of safety and freedom. Could the increased number of migrants entering Europe have any correlation to the greater incidence of terrorist attacks in Europe? This study considers the effects of the Islamic State sending trained operatives, including foreign terrorist fighters, into Europe through Greece disguised as migrants. This study also explores the impacts of the migrant crisis on the Greek government and society. Further, it analyzes the security implications for the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This study concludes that if Greece, the EU, and NATO policies remain unrevised, the migrant crisis will continue to present grave challenges, including transit and recruitment opportunities for terrorist operatives in Europe. This study recommends greater EU and NATO coordination in receiving, hosting, processing, and identifying migrants entering Europe, notably via Greece.

The research design of this study will be a qualitative analysis of the literature focused on a single case study, specifically the Greek migration crisis. The research design will also be based on acquiring information about the impacts of the Greek migration crisis from databases such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the EU's border control agency Frontex, in addition to the main scholarly articles discussed in the literature review. This study will conduct a qualitative analysis of the literature pertaining to terrorism, migration, and foreign terrorist fighters in order to establish a connection between terrorism and FTFs posing as migrants as a part of the Greek migration crisis. The research will then examine the roles of Greece, the EU and NATO in stemming the flow of FTFs posing as migrants. Finally, the study will conclude with recommendations as to what these three entities could do in order to curtail the threat created by FTFs who pose as migrants.

This study is organized as follows: Chapter I has introduced the topics of the migration crisis in Greece, terrorism, and foreign terrorist fighters to set the stage for the rest of the study. Chapter II examines the Islamic State in its current condition and examines the possibility of FTFs leaving Iraq and Syria to return Europe through IS organized crime networks. Chapter III explores the Greek migration crisis in more depth and the Greek Government's response to the crisis, both the humanitarian response and the military and police response to the security implications of the crisis. Chapter IV examines the crisis within the context of the EU. It explores what the EU has done in response to the security implications of the crisis. Chapter V examines NATO's response to the crisis, specifically in the Eastern Mediterranean. Chapter V, in the conclusion, provides suggestions and recommendations for Greece, NATO and the EU to response to the security implications of the Greek migrant crisis.