FBI Director James Comey Photo: AP
Paul Sperry writes in the New York Post,
President Obama boasts he’s “made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters” traveling from America to Iraq and Syria. He cites this as a key success in his much-maligned Islamic State strategy.
While it’s true fewer American Muslims are joining ISIS abroad, hold the applause. More are staying at home and plotting terrorist attacks here.
Since July, the FBI has seen just a half-dozen US travelers trying to reach ISIS’ caliphate, a trickle compared with the dozens the agency was detecting in the preceding months. All told, more than 250 Americans have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS.
At the same time, investigators have seen a spike in the number of homegrown ISIS cases.
FBI Director James Comey recently warned that his caseload of ISIS suspects has exploded to more than 900 in all 50 states, with hotspots in the New York-New Jersey area, as well as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Minneapolis.
These are active, open investigations and don’t include the 66 Muslim men and women around the country the bureau has already charged with alleged ISIS activities over the past two years.
The huge caseload is overwhelming the FBI’s capacity to conduct surveillance and disrupt terrorist plots. Making matters worse, ISIS suspects in the United States are switching to mobile and gaming apps with encryption that thwarts the FBI’s ability to monitor their communications. If suspects have gone “dark,” agents may not be able to track their plans.
...One part of the change is ISIL urging people not to travel but to stay and kill where you are,” Comey said, cautioning, “We’re not sure exactly what’s going on.”
Federal agents have apprehended almost 30 American Muslims in recent months before they departed for the Middle East.
That, in turn, has convinced many ISIS recruits it’s no longer worth the risk.
Take Terrence J. McNeil, a Muslim convert from Akron, Ohio, who wanted to travel to Syria to join ISIS, but feared arrest at the airport. He decided to stay home instead and allegedly helped the terrorist group carry out attacks inside America.
“I hate living in Dar-ul Kufr,” or land of the infidel, McNeil said earlier this year on a Tumblr account, according to court records. “I want to make hijra [voyage] to be with the true believers.”
However, he said if he tried to go “to Iraq or Syria,” he would “probably get arrested before I step foot on the plane.”
Agents collared McNeil last week for helping ISIS by allegedly distributing a file containing the names and addresses of more than 100 US service members, along with the command: “Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe.”
Wouldn’t it be better to let such homicidal monsters leave the country and die as “martyrs” in the Middle East, where they have less chance of killing Americans? Blocking their hijra appears only to close off a relief valve for homegrown terrorism.
Of course, there’s a risk in letting them go overseas: Many could return with military training, though that’s become less critical with each publication of Dabiq, the ISIS Webzine that shows jihadists how to make their own bombs in their kitchens.
Still, around 40 American ISIS travelers already have returned from Iraq and Syria, with five arrested and the other 35 being tracked by the FBI. Investigators hope their surveillance will tip them off to terrorist plots in the pipeline, as well as lead them to bigger fish in the terrorist chain.
Monitoring returning fighters doesn’t always help disrupt plots, however. Just ask the French.
On Aug. 11, French police were tipped off to an ISIS plot to attack a Paris “concert hall” and cause mass casualties by a French Muslim they questioned upon his return from Syria. The ISIS recruit, Reda Hame, revealed the plot was personally ordered by ISIS leader Abdelhamid Abaaoud. This is the same Abaaoud who police now say masterminded the Nov. 13 Bataclan concert hall massacre.
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