ISIS Returnees Pose Major Terror Threat

The Straits Times

25 October 2017

More than 40,000 foreigners from about 110 nations, including hundreds from countries in South-east Asia, left home to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), after it declared a caliphate back in 2014.

Today, as the terror group loses the last vestiges of territory it had seized in Iraq and Syria to United States-backed coalition forces, at least 5,600 of these foreigners have returned home or fled to safe havens elsewhere.

Senior analyst Jasminder Singh from Singapore’s International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research said there has been chatter about the training of next-generation “mujahideen” in South-east Asia, against the backdrop of the recent battle between Philippine government troops and pro-ISIS militants in the southern Philippine city of Marawi.

“As a pro-ISIS post warned, ‘Marawi is just the beginning’ and ‘new cubs and soldiers’ will be trained to fight the ‘crusader forces’,” he said.

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