Foreign Fighters Are Flooding Into Iraq and Syria to Join the Islamic State
By Samuel Oakford An "unprecedented" number of foreign fighters — some 15,000 from more than 80 countries — have made their way to Syria and Iraq, and their numbers continue to grow, according to a UN Security Council report. The findings, disseminated on Thursday by the Australian mission to the UN, which chairs the Security Council's al Qaeda Sanctions Committee, warn that "the horizontal reach of the fighters is far broader than seen before," and "includes a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges related to Al-Qaida." Most of the fighters in Syria hail from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, but the report observed that others have also come from the United States and other parts of Asia. Though it does not detail what nations compose the group of 80, the Security Council says that the presence of fighters from "small and medium-sized states" is "important, given that some of the future frontie...