{"id":49187,"date":"2014-11-03T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=49187"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:34","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:34","slug":"foreign-jihadists-flocking-to-iraq-and-syria-on-unprecedented-scale-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/11\/foreign-jihadists-flocking-to-iraq-and-syria-on-unprecedented-scale-un\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Jihadists Flocking to Iraq and Syria on ‘Unprecedented Scale’ \u2013 UN"},"content":{"rendered":"

UN report suggests decline of al-Qaida has yielded an explosion of jihadist enthusiasm for its even mightier successor organisations, chiefly Isis.<\/em><\/p>\n

30 Oct 2014 – <\/em>The United Nations has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on \u201can unprecedented scale\u201d and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism.<\/p>\n

A report by the UN Security Council, obtained by the Guardian, finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (Isis) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, \u201cincluding a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaida\u201d.<\/p>\n

The UN said it was uncertain whether al-Qaida would benefit from the surge. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida who booted Isis out of his organisation, \u201cappears to be maneuvering for relevance\u201d, the report says.<\/p>\n

The UN\u2019s numbers bolster recent estimates from US intelligence<\/a> about the scope of the foreign fighter problem, which the UN report finds to have spread despite the Obama administration\u2019s aggressive counter-terrorism strikes and global surveillance dragnets.<\/p>\n

\u201cNumbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 \u2013 and are growing,\u201d says the report, produced by a security council committee that monitors al-Qaida.<\/p>\n

The UN report did not list the 80-plus countries that it said were the source of fighters flowing fighters into Iraq and Syria. But in recent months, Isis supporters have appeared in places as unlikely as the Maldives<\/a>, and its videos proudly display jihadists with Chilean-Norwegian<\/a> and other diverse backgrounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are instances of foreign terrorist fighters from France, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland operating together,\u201d it states. More than 500 British citizens are believed to have travelled to the region since 2011.<\/p>\n

The UN report, an update on the spread of transnational terrorism and efforts to staunch it, validates the Obama administration\u2019s claim that \u201ccore al-Qaida remains weak\u201d. But it suggests that the decline of al-Qaida has yielded an explosion of jihadist enthusiasm for its even mightier successor organizations, chiefly Isis.<\/p>\n

Those organisations are less interested in assaults outside their frontiers: \u201cTruly cross-border attacks \u2013 or attacks against international targets \u2013 remain a minority,\u201d the report assesses. But the report indicates that more nations than ever will face the challenge of experienced fighters returning home from the Syria-Iraq conflict.<\/p>\n

Wading into a debate with legal implications for Barack Obama\u2019s new war against Isis<\/a>, the UN considers Isis \u201ca splinter group\u201d from al-Qaida. It considers an ideological congruence between the two groups sufficient to categorise them as part a broader movement, notwithstanding al-Qaida\u2019s formal excommunication of Isis last February.<\/p>\n

\u201cAl-Qaida core and Isil pursue similar strategic goals, albeit with tactical differences regarding sequencing and substantive differences about personal leadership,\u201d the UN writes, using a different acronym for Isis.<\/p>\n

Leadership disputes between the organisations are reflected in the shape of their propaganda, the UN finds. A \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d embrace of social media platforms andinternet culture by Isis (\u201cas when extremists post kitten photographs\u201d) has displaced the \u201clong and turgid messaging\u201d from al-Qaida. Zawahiri\u2019s most recent video lasted 55 minutes, while Isis members incessantly use Twitter, Snapchat, Kik, Ask.fm, a communications apparatus \u201cunhindered by organisational structures\u201d.<\/p>\n

A \u201clack of social media message discipline\u201d in Isis points to a leadership \u201cthat recognizes the terror and recruitment value of multichannel, multi-language social and other media messaging,\u201d reflecting a younger and \u201cmore international\u201d membership than al-Qaida\u2019s various affiliates.<\/p>\n

With revenues just from its oil smuggling operations now estimated at $1m daily, Isis controls territory in Iraq and Syria home to between five and six million people, a population the size of Finland\u2019s. Bolstering Isis\u2019s treasury is up to $45m in money from kidnapping for ransom, the UN report finds. Family members of Isis victim James Foley, an American journalist, have questioned the policy of refusing to pay ransoms, which US officials argue would encourage more kidnappings.<\/p>\n

Two months of outright US-led war against Isis has suffered from a lack of proxy ground forces to take territory from Isis, as Obama has formally ruled out direct US ground combat. On Thursday at the Pentagon, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the US has yet to even begin vetting Syrian rebels for potential inclusion in an anti-Isis army it seeks to muster in Syria. Dempsey encouraged the Iraqi government to directly arm Sunni tribes to withstand Isis\u2019s advances through the western Anbar Province.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30 Oct 2014 – A report by the UN Security Council finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (Isis) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, \u201cincluding a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaida\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}