With the US and its coalition launching a growing war against ISIS last year, a lot of talk has gone into efforts to try to restrict the flow of money and fighters into the self-proclaimed “caliphate.” Despite a lot of very public efforts to crack down on these borders, however, the flow of fighters is picking up, not slowing down.
The latest reports suggest that some 30,000 ISIS recruits have arrived in Syria from the rest of the world just in the past few years, doubling the number of fighters the group has to command in the last year, during a time when military officials have been claiming “progress” in wiping the group out.
These fighters are coming from all over the place, 100 different countries in all, and at least 250 of them are said to be from the United States. Western nations, particularly in Western Europe, have long been a fertile recruiting ground for ISIS.
The report is expected to be affirmed by an upcoming US Congressional inquiry on the travel of foreign fighters, which is said to conclude that the efforts to stop Americans from joining foreign terrorist groups have “largely failed.”
This is just one of many different efforts to weaken ISIS, including airstrikes, arms shipments, and rebel training efforts. These too aren’t going particularly well, and indeed the indications are that the limited signs of “success” were so non-credible that they’ve spawned a whole separate Pentagon inquiry into efforts to sugarcoat intelligence reports.
So what exactly have these, what,14 months of bombing achieved? I recall someone, probably Lindsey Graham, demanding last year that the US “bomb ISIS for a few weeks and see what happens”. Someone should ask him about that now.
As if Washington isn't funding the whole operation. There is a sucker born every minute.
It would be best to let those people sort out their problems–and that would also be good advice for Putin.
That'll keep Putin busy (and bogged down!).
Further proof that we need to stop calling the overthrow of the legitimate government in Syria a 'civil' war. The west is backing foreign extremists to attack Syrians.
True enough, except for the laughable claim that there is, or ever could be, any such thing as a "legitimate government."
Democracy — Root cause of terrorism
Majority rule will always allow the 51% most wealthy to hoard all the wealth and enslave the lower half, the fake morality being that those who do manual labor are lazy and need to suffer poverty.
So, the greed driven upper half being the vengeance generation terrorists that need to be restricted, the solution is simple, a law that prevents the upper half from hoarding more then 75% of the wealth.
Without territory a caliph is a nobody in the Islamic world. His "sacred duty" is to enlarge that territory. Preventing such expansion is therefore a small victory of sorts.
I read often "Under the Black Flag" from Radio Free Europe. I take issue with saying "Western Europe" is fertile ground for ISIS recruits when, really, there are very many from the former USSR. Maybe some time, there will be a break down of nations but can that even be accurate?