The report, released by the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, found more than 250 Americans have joined or attempted to join ISIS.
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The House panel noted that several Americans were identified and apprehended trying to return to the United States while others are being monitored.
Minnesota leads the nation in the number of citizens seeking to fight alongside ISIS.
Though Iran’s president has differing views for fighting ISIS, the absence of an invitation highlights that the road to repairing diplomatic relations is long to travel.
“We are witnessing the largest global convergence of jihadists in history”, the report said.
The foreign fighters that have enlisted with Islamist jihadist groups include at least 4,500 Westerners, the report states. “But as we continue our fight against ISIL and they continue to have setbacks that attraction will wane”.
The report said a particular concern was western Europeans who travel to Iraq or Syria and would be permitted to fly to the USA without applying for a visa.
“ISIL’s damage and looting of historic sites in Syria and Iraq have not only destroyed irreplaceable evidence of ancient life and society but have also helped fund its reign of terror inside those countries”, the State Department said in a press release, using an alternative acronym for ISIS. “Several dozen have also managed to make it back into America”, the report found.
“The US Department of State hopes this reward generates information regarding individuals or entities engaged in the production, facilitation, processing, smuggling, distribution, sale and trade of oil and antiquities that benefit ISIL, as well as information regarding smuggling networks, methods and routes”, it said. Previously, Treasury had sanctioned just four Islamic State officials, one of whom was killed in a USA drone strike in June.
Analysts also point to the actions of Sunni Arab countries in the Middle East, a few of which had tacitly supported the flow of foreign fighters, seeing it as a chance to take down the Syria’s Shi’ite rulers.
ISIS’s force now consists of between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters according to the latest Central Intelligence Agency estimate – mimicking the group’s numbers in fall 2014. The resurgence of the Taliban in numbers and organizational capabilities that allow them to seize provincial capitals suggests that all the money and effort the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies put into the battle against the Taliban – not to mention the 2,361 dead Americans and more than 20,000 others injured in the past 13 years – has not been able to put the Taliban out of business.
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This story was first published on CNN.com, “Congressional report: USA has “failed” to stop flow of foreign fighters to ISIS”.
