Foreign Fighters: Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States-

More than 40,000 combatants from over 110 countries had joined terrorist groups fighting in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, some 5,600 fighters from 33 nations have returned home, many equipped to carry attacks out on their native soil, or drum up new recruits, according to the U.N.. So who are the U.S. Foreign Fighters in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, and who did they support?

Foreign fighter “hot spots”

From 1980 to 2015, foreign fighters departed for overseas conflicts from more than 100 cities in 25 states across the United States. During that span, there have been some instances of concentrated foreign fighter activity in both geography and time. The dozens of Somali-Americans who left the Minneapolis/St. Paul area from 2007-2008 are one such example. However, since the ascent if ISIL starting in 2013, foreign fighter travel from the United States has been much more dispersed across the country. Individuals from at least 16 states have sought to join ISIL in Iraq and Syria since 2013.

The PIRUS-FF data show that U.S. foreign fighters have been associated with 33 foreign militant groups across 14 unique conflicts since 1980. In just a few short years, individuals traveling to joint the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

242 Foreign Fighters (ISIL) hav e outpaced those that have sought to join both al-Qaeda core and al-AQAP(3%) Shabaab.

ISIL affiliated individuals makeup 23% of the database, compared to Al-Shabaab (14%)

ISIL/AQI (23%)

17% for al-Qaeda core and 14% for al-Shabaab. A significant number of U.S.-based individuals have also sought to join the Taliban in Afghanistan, typically Taliban/TTP(14%) Lashkar-e-Taiba (4%) out of a desire to engage in combat against U.S. forces. Despite the group’s involvement in several high-profile attempts to launch attacks in the United States, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has drawn relatively fewer.

Median age 24 years old.

Traveling to foreign conflict zones tends to be an activity dominated by young adults and that is a trend that has remained constant over time. The median age at departure for foreign fighters in 2015 was 24, exactly the same as it was for individuals that traveled to foreign conflicts in 1988.

Responses to Terrorism (START) that contains over 100 variables on all phases – Pre—travel, travel, and return – of the foreign fighter life cycle. The database currently includes information on 242 individuals who have been publicly identified in open sources.

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