Covert operation?
Government, United Nations and charity officials trying to process thousands of refugees moving through Europe each day are struggling to keep up. This has led to fears within the security community about exactly who is making the journey from Syria. “With the volume of people coming in there’s not a huge amount they can do about it,” says the Evening Standard’s defence editor, Robert Fox. But their concerns may be overblown. “Of course, there is some concern about Isis exploiting refugee flows into Europe to avoid detection,” says Shashank Joshi, research fellow at Rusi, a defence and security think tank. “But if you look at how dangerous these routes are, it’s unlikely that an organisation as sophisticated as Isis would find it necessary to use such channels.”