Study: Unusually active rate of terror recruitment

MINNEAPOLIS» An unprecedented “cluster” of Minnesotans aspiring to become jihadists overseas fueled the nation’s highest rate of terrorism recruitment, according to a new study that also found that attempts to travel to Syria or Iraq are on a steady decline since 2015.

The number of Americans to successfully join the Islamic State is just a fraction of the several thousand Europeans who have made it into the group’s ranks.

But researchers at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism found that Minnesota, particularly the Twin Cities, has seen an unusually active rate of jihadist mobilization with roots in an earlier wave of departures to join Somalia’s Al-Shabab militants in the late 2000s.

In a report released Monday called “The Travelers: American Jihadists in Syria and Iraq,” three terrorism scholars described a Twin Cities cluster more akin to terror conspiracy hubs in Belgian and French neighborhoods than the more common one- and two-off efforts more typically foiled by American law enforcement.

“The relatively high number of travelers is a reflection of the personal connections,” Seamus Hughes, one of the report’s authors, said Monday. “Brothers, roommates, and friends of individuals who traveled to join Al-Shabab in Somalia were part of the group that traveled to Syria. Personal connections still matter a great deal to successfully make it to conflict areas.”

The report — written by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Hughes and Bennett Clifford — looked at seven Minnesota cases of successful travelers who were part of a group of 64 Americans who traveled to join jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq since 2011. They found at least an additional 50 Americans who were stopped from trying to travel overseas and added that both data sets “pale in comparison to recruitment” from some European cities.

But while the most popular form of “jihadist mobilization” has recently been traveling to join groups such as the Islamic State abroad, the recent loss of territory and calls for a renewed focus on attacks in the West have contributed to a steady drop in traveler cases since 2015, the report found.

“The concern is that, absent a physical space to travel to, their focus will shift elsewhere to avenging the loss of the Islamic State,” Hughes said. “We’ve seen Islamic State propaganda romanticizing the lost caliphate and calling for those to commit attacks out of revenge.”

U.N. experts say Islamic State militants still pose world threat.

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Islamic State extremists still pose “a significant and evolving threat around the world” despite recent setbacks in Iraq, Syria and the southern Philippines that forced them to relinquish strongholds, U.N. experts said.

The report to the Security Council circulated Tuesday said the Islamic State “has lost its focus on conquering and holding territory” but is continuing “to give prominence to external attacks.”

“In future, it will focus primarily on a smaller and more motivated group of individuals willing to fight or conduct attacks,” the experts said.

The report said the fight is entering a new phase “with more focus on less visible networks of individuals and cells.” — The Associated Press