WP: 1000 Terrorists Pouring into Syria Every Month, US Air Strikes Not Affecting

Local Editor

More than 1,000 foreign extremists are streaming into Syria and Iraq each month despite the ongoing international aerial military campaign there, the United States has warned.

US intelligence and counterterrorism officials have said the US-led military campaign against "ISIL" has neither deterred nor led to a surge of foreign militants travelling to Syria.

"The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise," The Washington Post quoted a US intelligence official as saying.

The rate of 1,000 militants a month was established over the past year, which would put the total number of foreign militants in Syria at more than 16,000.
The pace of this migration exceeds similar trends in comparable past conflicts, such as the Afghanistan war of the 1980s, according to the Washington Post report.
US officials have attributed the flows to a range of factors, including the sophisticated recruiting campaigns orchestrated by groups in Syria such as the "ISIL" and the relative ease with which militants from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe can make their way to that country.

A UN report has warned that the terrorist migration to Syria and Iraq has reached "unprecedented scale," with an estimated 15,000 foreign fighters currently there.
"Numbers since 2010 are now many times the size of the cumulative numbers of foreign terrorist fighters between 1990 and 2010 - and are growing,"
Counter terrorism experts have said the number of foreign fighters in Syria is likely to continue swelling.

"I don't think 15,000 really scratches the surface yet," Andrew Liepman, a counterterrorism expert, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying.
The vast majority of those militants have come from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Tunisia has sent more fighters to Syria than any other nation.

More than 2,000 fighters have come from countries in Europe, carrying passports that would enable them to travel relatively freely in Western countries.
Most militants entering Syria have done so through Turkey.

Source: Washington Post, Edited by website team