UNITED
NATIONS — As the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR)
continues to offer its latest assessment of how many foreigners are fighting in
Syria's civil war, another leading expert on terrorism estimated to be over
12,000 foreigners from 74 countries have gone to fight in Syria, 60-70 percent
from other Middle Eastern countries and about 20-25 percent from Western
nations.
Earlier,
ICSR published its first estimate in April, the issue of foreign fighters in
Syria has become a major concern for Western governments over the past year.
Syria
is recently becoming as big a magnet for Muslim fighters as Afghanistan was in
the 1980s when an estimated 35,000 foreigners joined the mujahideen ranks
against Soviet invaders.
Prof.
Peter Neumann, who administers the International Center for the Study of
Radicalization at King's College London, said the Syrian divergence has sparked
the most significant mobilization of foreign fighters since the 1980s war in
Afghanistan.
The
Afghan conflict in the 1980s produced al-Qaida and the Syrian conflict is now
forging new networks that will carry out terrorist attacks, Neumann said.
He
has been consulting the U.N. Security Council ahead of its Sept. 24 summit
meeting, chaired by President Barack Obama, on foreign terrorist fighters and
the threat they pose.
The
increase in number of the foreign fighters began in earnest in early 2012, a
year after peaceful protests against the Assad regime were violently
suppressed, and an armed revolt ensued.
Now, thousands of people have reportedly been
killed and millions forced from their homes. UN have already described Syria as
the greatest humanitarian crisis of modern times, and appealed help from
international donors.
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