Syria nightmare: Fresh fears al Qaeda fighters returning home as sleeper terrorists

Westerners have joined al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria in unprecedented numbers, increasing the risk that they will strike their home countries, including the U.S., a key Republican lawmaker said Thursday.
Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committeeon Intelligence, said al Qaeda’s core group, which is based on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, sees such Westerners as a means to conduct “external operations.”
“Al Qaeda core … is saying, ‘We have so many Westerners who have showed up, who we’re training, who we are putting through their paces … we’re giving combat experience to that we are ready to do external operations,’” the Michigan Republican said. “I don’t know about the rest of you; that’s going to cost me about a week’s nights sleep.”
Those Westerners have passports from their home countries to which they will eventually return, Mr. Rogers said at a conference in Washington hosted by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Al-Monitor, a media site focused on developments in the Middle East.
“We have never seen this number before in the history. That’s a problem, a huge problem,” he added.
In Syria, Westerners have joined al Qaeda-affiliated groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the Nusrah Front. The militants have asserted control over the northern parts of the country that were seized by opposition forces fighting since 2011 to topple the Syrian government.
Syria’s civil war has created an atmosphere conducive to the resurgence of al Qaeda in the region, particularly in nearby Iraq.
“I have never seen a pooling of the numbers of al Qaeda. We didn’t even see this in Iraq at the height of the Iraq war from foreign fighters — from regional attraction into the eastern provinces of Syria and the western border area in Iraq,” Mr. Rogers said.
“So you think about why I’m nervous. We have our allies looking for other partners in the region now. We have this pooling of al Qaeda. We don’t have a good operation to vet opposition fighters on the ground in the way I think we need to. This is a recipe for disaster,” he said.
Mr. Rogers cited the September attack by al-Shabab, a Somalia-basedal Qaeda affiliate, on the Westgate Mall in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, as proof that regional terrorist groups are setting their sights on international targets.
“All of these affiliates are feeling empowered in a way they haven’t felt empowered before and are trying to engage in this notion of external attacks,” he said. “Now, it might not be in the United States right away. They all have that aspiration. But what we’re seeing is they’re getting better at what they’re doing.”
In February 2012, al Qaeda announced that al Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi aw-Mohamed had pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
Mr. Rogers said this affiliation helped al Shabab conduct the deadly mall attack in Nairobi that left at least 72 people dead.
“Al-Shabab, two years ago, three years ago, maybe even four years ago, you would never see them do an operation of that size, scope and complexity in Kenya, across the border,” Mr. Rogers said. “They went and joined al Qaeda, started affiliating with al Qaeda, taking direction from al Qaeda. They do an external attack that’s pretty successful. That’s what we’re seeing metastasize around the [world], and that’s why we’re so concerned.”

Source: Breaking News Network