![\"(The](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20140908183115im_\/http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/worldviews\/files\/2014\/08\/economist-chart.png?w=620\")
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The total numbers are probably\u00a0higher. The New York Times reported Friday that\u00a0more than 100 Americans\u00a0have participated in the conflict in Syria, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The Independent, meanwhile,\u00a0says\u00a0that a quarter of the roughly 2,000 European fighters in the Islamic State are British.<\/p>\n
For months now, European governments have\u00a0wrung their hands\u00a0over the consequence of this migration and the threat of radicalized fighters returning home,\u00a0spreading their extremism and plotting terror attacks. The Islamic State\u2019s brutal murder of Foley was a sign that the West is in its crosshairs, even as it wages battles on multiple fronts against rival militias and governments in Iraq and Syria. On Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron sounded the alarm,\u00a0warning\u00a0that the fight against the Islamic State\u2019s militancy\u00a0would take \u201cyears and probably decades.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"(Soufan](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20140908183115im_\/http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/img.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/worldviews\/files\/2014\/08\/soufangroup.jpg?w=620\")
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As the map above shows, the geographical spread of foreign fighters in the war is vast, implicating even Japan and Singapore, countries most would think are\u00a0alien to the turmoil of the Middle East. Islamic State recruitment videos have\u00a0been translated\u00a0into myriad languages, including Urdu, Tamil, and Bahasa Indonesia. There are more Muslims in South and Southeast Asia than the Arab world.<\/p>\n
Still, the majority of foreign fighters in the conflict, as the Economist\u2019s chart shows, are from Arab countries. A\u00a0deep dive\u00a0into the workings of the Islamic State by the Times shows that the organization relies on local support, largely drawn from Sunnis who are embittered by the Shiite-dominated regimes around them. Loyalists\u00a0from the defunct Ba\u2019ath Party of Iraq\u2019s toppled dictator Saddam Hussein \u2014\u00a0an institution that was nominally secular \u2014\u00a0 are thought to be enmeshed within\u00a0the Islamic State\u2019scurrent command structure\u00a0in Iraq.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the Islamic State\u00a0continues\u00a0its hideous butchery\u00a0of captured soldiers and religious and ethnic minorities now trapped in its\u00a0de facto domain. That foreigners are\u00a0playing an outsize role\u00a0in its most barbaric acts ought be a chilling sign for world leaders elsewhere, struggling for a strategy to counter this growing threat.<\/p>\n
Source\u00a0washingtonpost<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s estimated that the three-year conflict in Syria has drawn foreign fighters to its frontlines at a rate faster than any such war in modern memory, including the struggle of the Afghan mujahideen<\/p>\n