WUNRN
Syria – ISIS – Thousands,
Including Women, Enter Syria to Join ISIS, Despite Global Efforts to Deter
Spanish police officers arrested an 18-year-old Moroccan
woman this month who was suspected of recruiting volunteers for ISIS.
Credit Jose Jordan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By ERIC SCHMITT
and SOMINI
SENGUPTA - September 26, 2015
WASHINGTON — Nearly 30,000 foreign recruits have now poured into Syria,
many to join the Islamic State, a doubling of volunteers in just the past 12
months and stark evidence that an international effort to tighten borders,
share intelligence and enforce antiterrorism laws is not diminishing the ranks
of new militant fighters.
Among those who have entered or tried to enter the conflict in Iraq or
Syria are more than 250 Americans, up from about 100 a year ago, according to
intelligence and law enforcement officials.
President
Obama will take stock of the international campaign to counter the
Islamic State at the United Nations on Tuesday, a public accounting that comes
as American intelligence analysts have been preparing a confidential assessment
that concludes that nearly 30,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Iraq and
Syria from more than 100 countries since 2011. A year ago, the same officials
estimated that flow to be about 15,000 combatants from 80 countries, mostly to
join the Islamic State.
That grim appraisal coincides with the scheduled release on Tuesday of a
six-month, bipartisan congressional investigation into terrorist and foreign
fighter travel, which concludes that “despite concerted efforts to stem the
flow, we have largely failed to stop Americans from traveling overseas to join
jihadists.”
Other parts of the Obama administration’s policies on Syria and for
combating the Islamic State have suffered significant setbacks, as well.
A $500 million Pentagon effort to train rebel forces to take on the Islamic
State in Syria has produced only a handful of fighters. Russia has defied
American attempts to block Moscow’s buildup of a new air base with warplanes in
Syria — a topic Mr. Obama will discuss
with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at the United Nations on
Monday. And in a break in continuity for the mission, John R. Allen, the
retired four-star general who since September 2014 has served as the diplomatic
envoy coordinating the coalition against the Islamic State, has told the White
House that he will step down at the end of the year.
The focus on shortcomings in the global effort to combat the Islamic State,
also known as ISIL or ISIS, is playing out as tens of thousands of
refugees flee strife in the Middle East and North Africa, including many
seeking to escape the violence in Syria and oppression in areas under the
control of the Islamic State.
A year ago, Mr. Obama and other top American officials spent a great deal
of diplomatic capital rallying support for a legally binding Security Council
resolution that would compel all 193 United Nations member states to take steps
to “prevent and suppress” the flow of their citizens into the arms of groups
that each country considers to be a terrorist organization.
But this month, Tina S. Kaidanow, the State Department’s top
counterterrorism official, offered a sobering summation of the foreign fighter problem.
“The trend is still upward,” Ms. Kaidanow said. “We’re going to see that for
the whole gamut of reasons.” Mainly, she added, because of the Islamic State’s
unprecedented ability to recruit and to radicalize followers over the Internet
and on social media.
At the United Nations meeting on Tuesday, chaired by the president, the
heads of state and government from Iraq, Nigeria and Norway will speak; all
told, 104 countries have been invited to the event. Iran has not been invited,
American officials said.
Despite Pentagon reports that coalition strikes have killed about 10,000
Islamic State fighters, the group continues to replenish its ranks, drawing an
average of about 1,000 fighters a month. The government several months ago last
publicly assessed the flow at “more than 25,000,” including at least 4,500 from
the West. Given the region’s porous borders, American officials emphasize that
their figures are rough estimates not precise head counts, based on allies’
reports on citizens’ travel and other intelligence, which vary by country.
“By now there is a ‘network effect’ where friends, family are bringing
along other friends and family,” said Daniel L. Byman, a counterterrorism
expert who is a professor at Georgetown University and a fellow at the
Brookings Institution.
In a new bipartisan report after a six-month investigation, the House
Homeland Security Committee criticizes the administration and its allies for
failing to do more to combat the threat from foreign fighters.
President Obama spoke about ways to counter the radical ideologies of
groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State during a speech at the United
Nations General Assembly in September 2014.
“Foreign partners are still sharing information about terrorist suspects in
a manner which is ad hoc, intermittent, and often incomplete,” says the 85-page
report. Its release is timed to the meeting at the United Nations. “There is
currently no comprehensive global database of foreign fighter names,” it says.
“Instead, countries including the U.S. rely on a weak, patchwork system for
swapping individual extremist identities.”
Some counterterrorism analysts have identified what they say are more
positive trends. The more than 7,000 military strikes against Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria have largely contained the group in its core territory, they
say, and international efforts to strengthen border security and share
information about suspected fighters have largely stopped the Islamic State
from expanding at the accelerated pace it did in the summer of 2014. Other
indicators also suggest that the Islamic State’s ability to recruit and retain
followers may be slowing.
A small but growing number of defectors from the Islamic State are risking
reprisals and imprisonment to speak out about their disillusionment with
the extremist group, according to a report published this month by the
International Center for the Study for Radicalization at King’s College London.
“ISIS no longer has the momentum in its core territory of Syria and Iraq,”
said Peter Neumann, director of the center and a professor of security studies
at King’s College. “It’s no longer the ever-expanding jihadist utopia that it
seemed to be.”
In Britain, more than 750 people have traveled to take part in
terrorist-related activity in Syria and Iraq, up from about 500 a year ago.
About half of those have returned home, raising fears that they could carry out
attacks on British soil. And since September 2014, 34 countries, including the
United States, have arrested foreign terrorist fighters or aspirants. The
United States has active criminal cases against almost 50 foreign fighter
suspects.
The United Nations Counter-Terrorism office has recommended that countries
take urgent measures to disrupt travel by would-be fighters. At the moment,
only five of 21 high-priority countries surveyed require advance passenger
information or passenger name records, making it virtually impossible to flag
suspects who might be flying to conflict zones in incremental steps, rather
than taking direct flights that would invite scrutiny.
Most countries have passed laws to restrict “incitement” to terrorist acts,
but in some places those laws are so broad that they prevent free expression.
Most countries, however, do not have laws that enable them to prosecute those
suspected of planning travel to a country to commit terrorist acts or receive
terrorist training; of the 21 countries, only five had such laws.
Amid the spate of new laws, human rights groups warn of a possible backlash
if governments go too far in muzzling dissent and in turn, send even more of
their citizens into the arms of radical extremists. Efforts to stop fighters
from rallying to the side of ISIS put the greatest scrutiny on countries like
Turkey, whose long porous border has allowed thousands of militants to cross
into Syria and Iraq. Turkey has openly supported some rebels who have sought to
unseat Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, but lately it has faced the direct
ire of the Islamic State.
Under stiff international pressure, Turkey has increased detentions,
arrests, and prosecution of suspected foreign fighters, increased its
information sharing with allied partners, and is taking steps to improve the
security of its border, Western officials said.
“Turkey has turned a corner, having recognized the impact of this problem
on its own society,” said Thomas Krajeski, a former United States ambassador to
Yemen who last week completed a yearlong tour as the State Department’s senior
adviser on foreign terrorist fighters.
Germany, Morocco and Tunisia have all passed new laws criminalizing support
to terrorist groups, fighting or training in conflict areas, or recruitment for
such acts. France has passed a new law since last year’s Council resolution
that prevents French citizens and residents from leaving French territory if
they are suspected of intending to join a terrorist group.
Perhaps most far-reaching, a new law requires Internet companies to provide
the French government with metadata in real time, at the request of
intelligence agencies, in suspected terrorist cases.
Still, France finds itself reeling. Its Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, told the French Parliament this month that 1,800 French citizens and residents are believed to be enlisted in jihadist networks worldwide. Among them close to 500 are still in Syria and Iraq, and 133 have died in combat.