Race to stop ISIL in the USA

Terrorist group effectively pursues fighters from West

WASHINGTON A recent string of terrorism-related cases in the U.S., including the arrests of six Minnesota men accused earlier this month of attempting to join the Islamic State, highlights an unprecedented marketing effort being waged by ISIL, U.S. law enforcement officials and terrorism analysts said.

It’s a campaign that is finding resonance from urban metros to the American heartland.

“This is not so much a recruitment effort as it is a global marketing campaign, beyond anything that al-Qaeda has ever done,” a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter said Thursday.

The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said the Islamic State’s slick multimedia productions, its use of social media and personal “peer-topeer” communication are proving to be effective parts of a sophisticated program aimed at the West.

“I don’t think there has been one case in which we haven’t found some connection to the videos or other media the group has produced,” the official said.

Federal authorities have identified more than 150 U.S. residents who have sought to join the ranks of the terrorist organization or rival groups in Syria. There is evidence that about 40 of those have traveled to the region and returned to the U.S. Most have been charged; an undisclosed number are free and subjects of intense surveillance, the senior official said. The smallest subset of the group, an estimated dozen, represents those who have actually joined the fighting ranks.

But the official said that the breadth of the ongoing inquiries suggests that the actual numbers of ISIL sympathizers, or those contemplating travel to join the group and other rival organizations, are likely much higher.

The threat posed by aspiring foreign fighters has been a blinking red light within the nation’s counterterrorism network for months. But the flurry of new cases suggests a persistent problem for law enforcement officials who fear that some of the recruits could launch attacks against U.S. targets when they return home or will be inspired to lash out on their own.

They are young women and men who are “responding to the call to join violent jihad abroad at an alarming rate,” Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, chief of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, told a homeland security summit last weekend. He said that the federal government has brought 35 such