The number of foreign fighters flowing to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria continues to increase despite months of airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
The “unprecedented” flow of fighters is fueled in part by the Islamic State’s mastery of social media to reach young Sunni Muslims and others interested in its message — a mastery that has not been sufficiently curbed by coalition efforts to attack the group’s ideology, officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Counterterrorism Center told the House Homeland Security Committee.
“[The Islamic State’s] use of multimedia content has enhanced its effectiveness as a terrorist organization,” said Francis X. Taylor, undersecretary of homeland security for intelligence and analysis.
More than 20,000 foreign fighters have made their way to Syria to join the Islamic State, most of them through Turkey, said Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. That figure includes at least 3,400 Westerners, among them more than 150 Americans, he said, with even more trying to join the jihadist group that controls substantial land areas of Iraq and Syria.
“In addition to the foreign fighters who have already traveled, it is clear that the number of those seeking to go to Iraq and Syria is going up,” Rasmussen said. “The volume and diversity of recruits flowing to and from the conflict makes disruption particularly challenging.”
A report published in June by the Soufan Group, a strategic intelligence firm, noted that the 12,000 foreigners who have traveled there to fight with militant organizations by then were a bigger group than the number who went to Afghanistan to fight for al Qaeda, the Taliban and their precursor groups.
Though most fighters are from other Muslim-majority countries, about 2,500 are from Western countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most members of the European Union, the report said.
But in recent months, the Islamic State has proven “dangerously competent” in its use of social media to help increase its ability to attract new recruits, said Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
Because of the group’s ability to use social media to bridge the gap between committed extremists and like-minded individuals in the United States who might be inspired to commit attacks, “a foreign terrorist now has access into the United States like never before,” he said.
Though all three noted that the administration had sharpened its efforts in line with the growing threat, Republicans have complained about the unwillingness of officials from President Obama on down to link it to the popularity of Islamist ideology.
“They’re barbarians. And I think the barbarians are at the gates of the United States. And we want to keep them out of the gates,” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said.
