TerrorismIslamist Syrian rebels train foreign fighters for terrorist attacks in home country

Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria are gaining ground in their campaign to recruit foreign fighters to launch terrorist attacks when they return home.

Many of the recruited fighters traveled to Syria to fight against the regime of SyrianpPresident Bashar al-Assad, but upon arrival they become indoctrinated by al-Qaeda affiliates. About 200 Australians have traveled to Syria to help rebels topple the Assad regime, and according to U.S Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a few dozens of theme are actively engaged in combat.

U.S intelligence has discovered training complexes in Syria for foreign fighters to learn techniques which equip them with the know-how to conduct terrorists acts when they return home.

The Age reports that Clapper has pointed to Jabhat al-Nusra as a terror group with “aspirations for attacks on the [U.S.] homeland.”

Half of the Australians fighting in Syria are thought to be members of Jabhat al-Nusra, while others have joined the Islamic State of Iraq, and Syria (ISIS), a more militant Islamist group which claimed ties to al-Qaeda, although al-Qaeda, in a recent posting on its Web site, had distanced itself from the group. American and Australian intelligence agencies have long been concerned of their citizens returning from Syria with combat skills and a high level of radicalization, creating the conditions which might lead them to launch a terrorist attack. Clapper acknowledges the concern as serious and that the chance of a terrorist attack in Western countries is not less than it was a decade ago.

The Age notes that Australia’s counterterrorism ambassador Bill Fisher agreed with Clapper’s assessment. The 2002 attacks in Bali that killed 202 people included eighty-eight Australians. ‘”The likelihood of an attack like 9/11 in the West has lessened but the capability of al-Qaeda and its affiliates to undertake lots of smaller but nonetheless deadly attacks is very real - hitting bars where Westerners congregate overseas, and other soft targets. In this respect, the threat is worse,” he said. ”Any places where there is very low domestic security control is an obvious target.”

While large and more organized terrorist networks have been disrupted, smaller grassroots terror cells are emerging and are difficult to detect. Australian intelligence agencies are finding it difficult to track who has traveled to Syria and what they are doing there. ”The numbers (of Australians going to Syria) have caught everybody by surprise,” said Greg Barton from the Global Center for Terrorism Research. The numbers far exceed those of Islamists in Australia who have traveled to other conflicts, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 Clapper noted that al-Qaeda’s affiliates have developed counter-espionage tactics to battle Western intelligence agencies. ”They’ve gone to school [on] us, on how we try to track them,” he said. ”The combination of … the geographic dispersal and the increasing challenges in collecting against them makes al-Qaeda, in all of its forms, a very formidable threat.”