When it came to recruiting foreigners to flee the comforts of home for the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, ISIS succeeded like no other — encouraging more than 40,000 fighters from more than 110 countries to travel to the fighting fray both before and after the declaration of the “caliphate” in June 2014. Subsequently, authorities have warned about the threat of returning jihadists to their homeland and since the falls of Mosul, Raqqa and the rapidly receding footprint of ISIS, such fears have come to the forefront.
According to a new report, “Beyond the Caliphate: Foreign Fighters and the Threat of Returnees,” released this week by the Soufan Center — a Washington-based security intelligence consultancy — there are now at least 5,600 citizens or residents from 33 countries who have returned home — accounting for about 15 percent of the fighters.
FILE – In this file picture taken on Friday, July 21, 2017, Kurdish soldiers from the Anti-Terrorism Units, carry a blindfolded an Indonesian man suspected of Islamic State membership, at a security center, in Kobani, Syria. Western governments have tacitly handed down guidance to the forces uprooting the remnants of Islamic State in Raqqa and beyond on how to handle their citizens who joined the extremist group by the thousands. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File) (Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
The report asserts that for the United States, 129 fighters succeeded in leaving the country and only seven have returned.
Of the 5,000 residents of the European Union who flocked to Iraq and Syria, a quarter are alleged to have returned home. But in the U.K., that figure was closer to half, with some 425 of the 850 fighters who left Britain to join the self-styled caliphate back on home soil. Around 5,000 left from Central Asia, of which just 500 — 10 percent — too have returned.
The countries with the highest number of foreign fighters included Jordan at 3,000 (around 250 returned), France at 1,910 with 271 back and Morocco at 1,623 with 198 having gone home. Meanwhile, 400 of Russia’s 3,417 fighters are estimated to be back on their native soil, 147 of the 1,300 Tajikistan fighters, 800 of Tunisia’s 2,926, none of the 1,200 from Uyghurs — in China’s western Xinjiang region — have returned and none of the 1,500 from Uzbekistan are believed to have crossed back into their mothership.
The Old City of Mosul in the final days before ISIS defeat in July, 2017. (REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani)
“This is only what we know and what official records report. What about those that are still transiting illegally and freely across borders,” Lee Oughton, security expert and global business development director of international risk management firm, the Abbey Grey Group, observed. “The borders going into the U.S. are seen as porous and could be an ideal spot for returning ISIS fighters to filter undetected back into society.”