This is why Isis prefers to use home-grown terrorists over foreign jihadis

Recently three women were arrested for allegedly plotting an Isis directed attack on Paris after French police found a car filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame Cathedral. It is easy for this to register as just another arrest, but as the list of attempted terror attacks seems to grow and grow, the biographies of these women should concern us.

We know little of Sarah Hervouet but we do know that she had been previously engaged to two jihadists. One was Larossi Abballa, the Isis-sworn former-recruiter who stabbed a policeman and his wife to death. The second was Adel Kermiche who in July killed a priest while he said mass. The other women arrested were a mother and her 15 year old daughter.

This pattern of brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, daughters, sons and childhood friends all being recruited in the name of radical Islam, is one we are seeing again and again. Think of the Kouachis, the Abdeslams, the el-Bakraouis - all brothers involved in recent attacks.

These relationships give a network strength that cannot be bought. As terrorism expert Mohammed Hafez said “trust is already established and the risk of talking to the ‘wrong people’ is minimized — as a result, defection is also betrayal of ‘the cause and one’s family’”.

Looking back there are many similarities between Isis and European al-Qaeda networks circa 2000. This includes the presence of criminal backgrounds, experience training or fighting abroad, and the use of fraud and forgery to facilitate their terrorist activity. In these respects, the current threat posed by Isis shows a failure on our part to learn from past mistakes.

But one new characteristic stands out — the significant increase in family and childhood friendship bonds. The backbone of the new network is formed by families and childhood friends, a number of whom had been involved in petty crime together before graduating to terrorism. It may seem like a mundane observation but this fact has consequences.

Unlike past al-Qaeda operatives who came to Europe from North Africa, and therefore had to build their networks in a more opportunistic manner, the new Isis operatives are able to draw on ‘ready-made’ networks. Born in the countries in which they sought to operate, they already have roots in European cities.

This advantage is consciously exploited by Isis — it is why they use European jihadists like Frenchman Salim Benghalem as a theatre commander for Europe, or Brussels-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud to organise attacks on European soil. When these men return from Syria, as Abaaoud frequently did, to organise and conduct attacks, they have an established support network back home on which they can rely.

They knew that they could count on friends and family to pick them up, drop them off, find them a safe house, and hide them. They also knew, as Hafez implied, that they could trust those around them. Trust is indispensable and its presence or absence is reflected in recruitment styles and their success. Al-Qaeda recruiter Djamal Beghal was far more predatory—and the lack of long-term relationships with his recruits likely hindered his success. Abaaoud, on the other hand, could take these relationships for granted.

These long term bonds of trust are one of the most distinguishing features of the network behind the Paris and Brussels attacks — meaning that even when the orchestrating figure was taken out of the network, trust remains, and the network doesn’t wither.

Through these strong bonds, complex networks hold together over time and are even more difficult to dismantle. This is why we should be extremely worried when this characteristic is found — it warns us not to be too optimistic when one member of the network is arrested or killed.

Emma Webb is a Research Fellow at The Henry Jackson Society, a security and foreign affairs think tank