UN: Foreigners Flocking to Join ISIL

Date: 31 October 2014 - 20:16

News ID: ۶۹۱۴

LONDON (Dispatches) – Extremists from more than 80 countries have flocked to fight in Iraq and Syria on an "unprecedented scale", according to extracts of a UN report published by Britain's Guardian newspaper on Friday.
Around 15,000 people have travelled to fight alongside ISIL and other hardcore militant groups from "countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to Al-Qaeda", said the report.
The number of foreign militants travelling to fight since 2010 exceeds the cumulative total of the 20 preceding years "many times", added the Security Council study.
"There are instances of foreign terrorist fighters from France, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland operating together," it said, according to the Guardian.
Britain's top police officer, Bernard Hogan-Howe, estimated last week that five people a week were leaving the country to fight with ISIL. Security officials estimate that there are currently around 500 British nationals fighting in Syria and Iraq.
The UN warned that more nations than ever face the problem of dealing with militants returning from the battle zone.
The report was produced by a committee that monitors Al-Qaeda, and concluded that the once mighty and feared group was now "maneuvering for relevance" following the rise of the even more militant ISIL, which was booted out of Al-Qaeda by leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Despite the split, the UN concluded that the legal basis for U.S. President Barack Obama's fight against ISIL was justified by its ideological congruence with Al-Qaeda, and considered the two groups as part of a broader movement.
"Al-Qaeda core and ISIL pursue similar strategic goals, albeit with tactical differences regarding sequencing and substantive differences about personal leadership," the UN wrote.
Obama has vowed he will not order a large force into combat in Iraq or Syria, relying instead on air power and local forces.
The ISIL group's "cosmopolitan" use of social media, "as when extremists post kitten photographs", was attracting a new breed of foreign fighters who are put off by the more dogmatic communication tactics of Al-Qaeda, said the report.
ISIL leaders recognize "the terror and recruitment value of multichannel, multi-language social and other media messaging", it added.
The UN agreed with the Obama administration that "core Al-Qaeda remains weak", but argued that its demise had only paved the way for more bloody groups, for whom "cross-border attacks – or attacks against international targets – remain a minority".

New ISIL Atrocities

ISIL militants executed at least 220 Iraqis in retaliation against a tribe's opposition to their takeover of territory west of Baghdad, security sources and witnesses said.
Two mass graves were discovered on Thursday containing some of the 300 members of the Sunni Muslim Albu Nimr tribe that ISIL had seized this week. The captives, men aged between 18 and 55, had been shot at close range, witnesses said.
The bodies of more than 70 Albu Nimr men were dumped near the town of Hit in the Sunni heartland Anbar province, according to witnesses who said most of the victims were members of the police or an anti-ISIL militia called Sahwa (Awakening).
The insurgents had ordered men from the tribe to leave their villages and go to Hit, 130 km (80 miles) west of Baghdad, promising them "safe passage", tribal leaders said. They were then seized and shot.
A mass grave near the city of Ramadi, also in Anbar province, contained 150 members of the same tribe, security officials said.
The Awakening militia were established with the encouragement of the United States to fight Al-Qaeda during the U.S. "surge" offensive of 2006-2007.
Sheikh Naeem al-Ga'oud, one of the leaders of the Albu Nimir tribe, said: "The Americans are all talk and no action."
ISIL, an Al-Qaeda offshoot, has beheaded or shot dead anyone it captures who opposes its ideology. Its gunmen systematically executed about 600 inmates from Badoush Prison near the city of Mosul in June, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
Citing the accounts of 15 survivors, it said the group singled out Shia prisoners, forced them to kneel along the edge of a nearby ravine and shot them with assault rifles and automatic weapons.