U.N.: half the world's countries sending jihadists to Middle East

UNITED NATIONS, May 28 (UPI) -- Over half the countries on earth are supplying jihadists to extremist Islamist groups in the Middle East, a United Nations report claims.

The report, by the U.N. Security Council's special permanent committee on violent Islamism, says over 25,000 people have joined al-Qaida, the Islamic State and other affiliated groups from other countries, creating an "unprecedented" threat to international security. It adds most governments have failed to understand the phenomenon's long-term effects.

"What has changed over the past three years is the scale of the problem. The overall numbers have risen sharply, from a few thousand foreign terrorist fighters a decade ago. The number of countries of origin has also significantly increased . . . from a small group of countries . . . to more than 100 member states, including countries that have never experienced problems with groups associated with al-Qaeda."

It notes a 70 percent increase in foreign fighters, overwhelmingly in Iraq and Syria, since March 2014, and adds Turkey remains the primary access country. Unlike an influx of foreign combatants into Afghanistan, where non-Afghans tend to stick with their ethnic colleagues, jihadists in Iraq and Syria are more mobile and better integrated into fighting units.

Over 4,000 Europeans have joined the Islamic State, Peter Neumann of the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization told the United Nations Security Council in April.

"However different the foreign fighters that my colleagues and I have found and spoken to; however different their profiles and characteristics; what many, if not most of them, had in common is that they didn't feel they had a stake in their societies. And if you don't feel you belong, if you don't feel you're part of your society, it becomes easier to leave and it becomes easier to hate. It becomes easier to go against the very society whose passport you hold and whose language you speak."