LONDON - As British police hunt for three teenage girls believed to be on their way to Syria to join ISIS, a senior American diplomat has warned of unprecedented numbers of foreign fighters, including young girls he says are as dangerous as their male counterparts. US Senior Adviser for Foreign Fighters, Ambassador Thomas Krajeski in a phone briefing on Friday, made no distinction between those who are in combat and non-combat roles. “Fighters include people not only picking up a gun, but also going to support Islamists…We’re discussing support, people who are going in support in some way, including young women, or women who have been attracted to the fight, attracted for various reasons, and in some cases children.” His comments came on the back of a busy week for counter-terror officials in Great Britain, where a 19-year old was found guilty of preparing a terrorist act. The teenager was arrested of carrying a 12-inch knife and hammer wrapped in an Islamic flag and told his girlfriend he was planning to behead a soldier. And, on Friday, Scotland Yard launched an appeal through social media and other means, to locate the three teenage girls who flew to Istanbul earlier this week. The girls, two 15-year olds and a 16-year old, met Tuesday morning and boarded a Turkish Airlines flight. It’s believed they were motivated by a romanticized view of becoming Jihad brides. The students were friends with two other girls from the same school who travelled to Syria, were married, and are now already widowed, reports The Times. That the underage girls managed to board a flight, unaccompanied, has raised serious questions about security. Krajeski said strengthening screening of travelers is a key component of a multinational commitment to prevent further foreign fighters from travelling to Syria and Iraq. Krajeski conceded the Turkish-Syrian border represents a weakness in stopping the flow foreign fighters. “We’ve already had quite a bit of discussion about the border and the difficulty of securing that border. The Turkish government has recently taken a number of efforts to strengthen border controls, but we recognize the great difficulty of the task. Turkey is a critically important country in this effort.” Asked about strengthening Iraq’s border controls, Krajeski said “The notion of sealing the border is really not on the table…but I can imagine much greater efforts, whether those are on both sides of the border in order to try to restrict the flow of people and weapons across the border. More needs to be done.” Krajeski’s briefing follows a three-day summit held in Washington last week attended by ministers from 60 nations, aimed at forming a unified vision in the fight against violent groups like ISIS and radical ideologies. A primary initiative will give Interpol a much greater role as a platform for information sharing. Criticism has focused on ineffective, and delayed intelligence and information coordination, something Krajeski says could be improved through the international organization. “We need to move information faster…using Interpol and their newly created fusion cell on foreign terrorist fighters, a cell that we are actively supporting in the United States to increase Interpol’s ability to move the information quickly to the border points, to the security officials, to the organizations that most need it.” Unprecedented numbers of foreign fighters are flooding into Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State or other extremist groups, including at least 3,400 from Western nations among 20,000 from around the world. Krajeski says greater alliances, better border controls, tighter security screening and the effective use of Interpol are instrumental in international effort to stop more young men and women from becoming foreign fighters, and returning.
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