Foreign fighters are flocking to Syria at an “unprecedented” rate, with more than 20,000 volunteers from around the world joining the Islamic State group or other extremist organizations, US intelligence officials said on Tuesday.
The foreign fighters have traveled to Syria from more than 90 nations, including at least 3,400 from Western nations and more than 150 US residents, according to the latest estimate from the US National Counterterrorism Center.
A majority of the foreign volunteers who arrived recently in Syria and Iraq have joined forces with the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, it said.
‘CONCERNING TREND’
The estimate of the total number of foreign fighters flocking to Syria was up from last month’s estimate of about 19,000, the center said.
No precise numbers are available “but the trend lines are clear and concerning,” center director Nicholas Rasmussen said in prepared remarks for a US House of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee hearing scheduled for yesterday.
His prepared testimony was released to reporters on Tuesday.
“The rate of foreign fighter travel to Syria is unprecedented. It exceeds the rate of travelers who went to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia at any point in the last 20 years,” a copy of his remarks said.
The volunteers come from a range of backgrounds and “do not fit any one stereotype,” he said.
“The battlefields in Iraq and Syria provide foreign fighters with combat experience, weapons and explosives training, and access to terrorist networks that may be planning attacks which target the West,” he said.
Western governments have voiced increasing alarm over the flow of foreign volunteers heading to the Syrian conflict, particularly in the aftermath of Muslim extremist attacks in Paris that left 17 dead last month.
The militants are able to recruit new volunteers partly because of their savvy use of propaganda on social media outlets, producing videos and appeals in a range of languages, Rasmussen said.
Catering to a younger, thrillseeking audience, the Islamic State militants employ references to Western brands and popular video games, he said.
‘YOU ONLY DIE ONCE’
“They have also coined pithy ‘memes’ such as, ‘YODO: You Only Die Once. Why not make it martyrdom?’” he said.
Al-Qaeda and its branches in the Middle East and Africa have never displayed such an acumen with propaganda, he added.
In a statement for Wednesday’s hearing, the Republican chairman of the House committee, Representative Michael McCaul, said he was “worried about our ability to combat this threat abroad, but also here at home.”
The threat of homegrown extremism, in which individuals inspired by Islamist propaganda are motivated to launch attacks, also remains cause for concern but has not intensified, he said.
The center believes that the annual threat of homegrown violence could result in fewer than 10 “uncoordinated and unsophisticated” plots in the US from a pool of up to a few hundred people, he said.
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