More than one hundred U.S. militants are currently fighting in the extremist insurgency in Syria, according to Western intelligence reports (the number may actually be more than that, but the lowest estimates start at 50).
Daily Beast wrote in a new report that the latest U.S. intelligence estimates say that more than 100 U.S. citizens have joined the war in Syria to fight alongside extremist terrorists. This dwarfs the likely 3000+ Europeans who have gone abroad to interfere in foreign politics.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials also said that they believe 6 to 12 U.S. citizens who had gone to Syria have now returned to the United States.
Although, British militants apparently make up the largest foreign contingent of the terrorist groups fighting against the Syrian government, a commander of the country’s Western-sponsored Syrian opposition says.
In his letter to the British newspaper The Times on Monday, Brigadier General Abdullah al-Basheer of the so-called Free Syrian Army, said that members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), most of who are from the UK, are involved in brutal acts against the Syrian people.
General al-Basheer also noted that the ISIL militants are responsible for “beheadings, crucifixions, beatings, murders [and] outdated methods of treating women” in the Arab country.
Meanwhile, the commander of the anti-Damascus militancy group called on the British government to send weapons in order to more effectively fight the terrorist group.
In his later, he also warned that a failure to curb ISIL could lead to British militants returning home to “continue on their pernicious path of destruction“.
Earlier, in February, Charles Farr, Britain’s chief anti-terrorism official, warned that the security threat from those militants operating inside Syria is now “the biggest challenge” facing the police and intelligence agencies.
Around 400 Britons are believed to have gone to Syria over the last two years and joined terrorists operating in the Arab country, with an estimated 20 having already died.
In January, the New York Times reported that at least 70 U.S. citizens have either traveled or attempted to travel to Syria. And earlier in May, FBI Director James Comey told reporters that he believed “dozens” of U.S. citizens were believed to be in Syria, but declined to give a more precise number.
In recent months, the U.S. intelligence community has shifted to making the tracking of all Westerners who have gone off to fight in Syria a top priority.
The Syrian government has long been calling on the United Nations Security council to act on multi-national militant groups which are fighting in the country. The United Nations has thus insisted Saudi Arabia stop its support of the groups.
Washington has been an open supporter of the insurgency in Syria and has been giving extensive political and military support to the armed groups to topple the Syrian government.
Earlier in April 2014, a father of six, from Saltdean near Brighton in East Sussex, made an emotional plea to his two remaining sons to return home from Syria, after one was killed by sniper fire and another was shot in the stomach during his fighting against the Syria Army in the north-west of Syria.
Speaking for the first time in detail about his three sons’ decision to join extremist groups fighting in Syria, Abubaker Deghayes, 45, said, “Amer, Jaffar, if you see me or this interview please, please come back home. Enough. This war has taken away Abdullah already … I’d like to see you live longer,” the British daily Guardian wrote in a report.
Abdullah Deghayes (shown in the image below), 18, left for Syria in January without telling his mother, and was reportedly fighting with a militant group when he was shot. His brothers Jaffar, 16, and Amer, 20, are still thought to be in Syria.
Jaffar Deghayes (shown in the image below), 16, asked his mother for a cuddle before running away to Syria to fight alongside his brother, who later died in battle alongside al-Qaeda in Syria.
UK intelligence sources told the Daily Telegraph in December, last year, that from among the over 1,000 Westerners fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, over 300 are British nationals.
Thousands of foreigners, mainly from Arab and European countries, are said to be operating against the Syrian government. Western spy agencies have already warned that the foreign militants pose a potential security threat when, or if, they return home. This situation is, from the looks of it, only going to get more tense and confusing.