Canada: Ready, Aye Ready!
"For the small group [of Islamists that left Canada to join Islamic State abroad] that we've decided are a risk, 24-7 surveillance -- even with electronic support -- is very manpower intensive."
"And even if CSIS uses the help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other police forces, it's very tough to do."
"I would say we're on the margins of being able to do it. The other issue is that there are radicalized people in Canada who have never gone abroad. Islamic State and al-Qaeda decided a few years ago to give advice to people who wanted to go fight in Syria and Afghanistan: stay in your own countries and cause havoc there."
"There are two countries -- Russia and China -- that are particularly problematic. Generally speaking, they're going to try and be as disruptive as they can. Both of them are what I call revisionist states; they're both unhappy about their position in the world and they effectively have no limitations on what they can do to advance their positions. So they have decided they are going to try and acquire as much intelligence from the West as they can, including intellectual property. The bigger worry is espionage through the use of cyber tools."
"It's generally thought that China uses the vacuum cleaner approach -- they'll extract anything from any country they can. The Russians are generally thought to be much more surgical."
Richard Fadden, former director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service
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| A video was recently released of Toronto's Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed, after he was captured by Kurdish forces battling ISIS in Syria. (CBC) |
"On the margins" in preparation and resources required to be enabled to monitor radicalized returnees to Canada, according to the former head of the Canadian spy agency, CSIS. It is unclear in all cases what the 60 to 75 "foreign fighters" had involved themselves with while overseas evidently, which may mean only that they are required to be tracked when they all return, and it is questionable whether Canada can muster all the required resources. Most reasonable citizens might recommend they be arrested and imprisoned on the basis of their having left Canada for the express purpose of fighting alongside the venomously vicious terrorists.
But the kind of justice that Canada relies upon requires evidence, solid evidence of any of the returnees having engaged in the atrocities for which the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant made itself so proudly infamous. Their support and enablement of the horrendously criminal terrorists who slaughtered and enslaved tens of thousands of innocent Yazidis, who beheaded Western aid workers and reporters, who crucified, burned, bombed and terrorized minorities like Christian groups and were held back by the courage of the Kurdish fighting groups should be enough to condemn them but in a Canadian court of law will not be.
Canada's dilemma is how to possibly collect evidence of any kind in the areas in which these terrorists practised their medieval brand of Islamic conquest. Not that Canada is alone in grappling with the dilemma with its political and moral questions hanging on the air of nations who prefer to leave their nationals right where they are, marooned in Syria and Iraq, and in the careful hands of Kurdish militias who would vastly prefer to be relieved of a burden they don't deserve to have imposed upon them indefinitely.
Should their citizenship be revoked as Britain has done? Most certainly. Should they be permitted to return to Canada? Most definitely not. And their families? How to separate the committed, vicious women who condoned the horrors their men inflicted on the helpless victims who had no defences? That they have children, some of whom have been raised on the milk of human kindness that is ISIL's view of the disposability of the children of the kuffars melts the heart, doesn't it?
And is Canada any better prepared to handle the risks and growing threat inherent in the influence and espionage plans of foreign governments? Not that you might notice, actually. "If Huawei were to be given the right to build our 5G network, it would potentially be the fastest thing I can think of into virtually every bit of information held in Canada. The threat, the possibility of their doing it, is sufficient that we should say no."
Labels: Canada, Defence, Foreign Espionage, Intelligence, ISIL returnees, Security
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, April 04, 2019
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