TerrorismMore Westerners join ISIS following the group’s successes in Iraq

ISIS on the march with western volunteers // Source: ifeng.com

Of the 10,000 foreign fighters who have already joined militant groups in Syria and Iraq, 3,000 hold European or other Western passports, making it easy for them to travel across most borders. U.S. officials report that as many as 100 foreign fighters hold U.S. passports, leading to worries that foreign fighters may return to the United States to launch an attack. “It’s the largest number of Western fighters we have ever seen in a jihadist theater,” said Seth G. Jones, a former U.S. counterterrorism official now with the Rand Corporation.

Another counterterrorism official familiar with the matter reports that Yemeni terrorists have developed a powerful cellphone bomb designed to avoid detection at airports, prompting the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to ask overseas airports to stiffen security measures, especially checking cellphones and other electronic devices.

In addition to concerns about terrorists relocating back to the United States to launch an attack, U.S. officials are worried that territories in Syria and Iraq held by militants belonging to the Sunni Muslim group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), could become sites for launching future attacks. “The concern is not what is happening today, but in four or five years,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified assessments. “If they get their own state, take on new projects, turn from looking inward to outward … we want to get in front of it.”

Intelligence agencies have also intensified the screening of passenger manifests of flights in and out of Turkey, the main entry point to Syria. A counterterrorism task force of FBI agents and federal prosecutors is investigating dozens of Americans who they believe have or plan to travel to Syria to join militants. “We’re spending a tremendous amount of time and effort trying to identify those who go [to Syria] so we can know who they are when they come back,” FBI head James B. Comey told reporters.

Leader of the special task force, veteran prosecutor Stephen Ponticello, joined Attorney General Eric H. Holder in Europe earlier this month to urge allies to share intelligence on suspects, conduct more undercover investigations, and to enact stronger laws criminalizing support for terrorist groups. The Justice Department has even offered to help European allies draft laws making it easier to charge suspects with attempt to commit an act of terror. The expanding conflict has become “a cradle of violent extremism,” Holder said in a speech in Norway. “But the world cannot simply sit back and let it become a training ground from which our nationals can return and launch attacks.”

French and British citizens form the largest bloc of Western passport holders in Syria and authorities have begun to crack down. The Los Angeles Times reports that between January and March, at least forty people in Britain were arrested on charges relating to supporting militant groups in Syria, and the British Home Office has stripped at least twenty people of their citizenship for suspected terrorism support.

American officials have also made some arrests of would-be terrorists including Michael Wolfe, a native of Houston, who told undercover FBI agents that he would use a $5,000 federal income tax refund to relocate his wife and two children to Turkey, and then he would join the fighting in Syria. Wolfe was arrested in June by FBI agents at George Bush Intercontinental Airport as he prepared to board the first in a series of flights to Turkey. Wolfe pleaded guilty in June to one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization. He faces up to fifteen years in prison and a $250,000 fine.