“In general, we have found that Western fighters, not just those from the U.S., are joining the biggest game in town and the biggest game in town is ISIS.”
They are known as “the wannabes” — a small group of mostly young Americans whose devotion to Islam calls them like a siren to two of the world’s bloodiest military conflicts. But while their efforts to reach ISIS and other extremist groups in Syria and Iraq are often born of ignorance or naïveté, they pose a serious long-term threat, according to U.S. officials who are doing everything they can to stop their journeys before they begin.
At least seven Americans have been arrested in the last 15 months as they sought to travel to the region to join ISIS or other Islamist groups fighting the Syrian government, according to an NBC News analysis of data provided by the security firm Flashpoint Partners.
In recent months, most of the jihadi recruits have been trying to join ISIS, which became the pre-eminent Islamic extremist group in Syria this spring when it spilled southward into northern Iraq, seizing troves of weaponry abandoned by the U.S.-backed Iraqi army. In the past four months alone, five Americans have been arrested trying to join the barbaric group that has killed thousands of Syrians and Iraqis, made refugees of millions of others and, in recent weeks, beheaded two U.S. journalists.
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