International Expert: More than 12 Thousand Foreign “Fighters” Joined Terrorist Organizations in Syria

NEW YORK-Professor Peter Neumann, Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at the King’s College in London has uncovered that more than 12 thousand foreign terrorists from 74 countries have travelled to Syria to join fight alongside the armed terrorist groups over the past three years.  

The Associated Press quoted Neumann as saying that between 60-70% of those foreign “fighters” has come from Middle Eastern countries and between 20-25% has come from the West and that the crisis in Syria has attracted unprecedented number of foreign terrorists since the 1980s when some 20 thousand foreign fighters joined the battle alongside the terrorist movement of Taliban in Afghanistan.

Neumann clarified that the war in Afghanistan has produced the terrorist al-Qaeda organization in addition to several “jihadi” networks “and now new terrorist networks are being launched because of the large number of foreign fighters in Syria that will inevitably pose terror threat to the entire world.”

According to the expert, Tunisia has sent the biggest number of terrorists to Syria. Saudi Arabia comes next before Jordan and Morocco and the rest are foreign terrorists from France, Britain, Germany, Belgium and America.

Neumann said that some European countries revealed that between 10-20% of the terrorists, who travelled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) terrorist organization, are women recruited via internet programs.

He clarified that the propaganda launched by the ISIL in which it claims the protection of Moslems and the establishment of the so-called “Caliphate State” has played a role in attracting more western terrorists. Moreover, following the release of videos showing the beheading of two American journalists by ISIL in Syria more terrorists began to talk about the fight against the West and the United States.

Hamda Mustafa