India, which has been target of attacks since 1990s from terrorists trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, continues to face strong risk from thousands of militants still active in these areas.
"India has faced multiple terrorist attacks linked to individuals who had trained or fought with Al-Qaida associates in Pakistan and Afghanistan", a recently released UN report on foreign terrorist fighters said.
Situation still remains worrisome for India as Afghan security forces estimated in March 2015 that some 6,500 foreign terrorist fighters were still active in Afghanistan. While most are associated with the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, nearly 300 are with the Tehrik-e Nefaz-e Shariat-e Muhammadi, 200 with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, 160 with lashkar-e-Tayyiba and 150 with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement. Of these lashkar has been the main tormentor for India and with the TTP now moving operations in Pak occupied Kashmir India's worries have only doubled.
The United Nations report suggests countries to tighten their Borders, have passenger screening systems, place vigil on internet space to prevent radicalisation of youth and joining Islamic terror organisations like Al Qaeeda and its splinter group like Islamic State in Iraq and the levant (ISIl).
The UN report also recommended maintaining a passenger data to monitor travelling patterns of suspects and having biometric systems to track movement of people. The report prepared by the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the UN was submitted to the Security Council Committee recently.
It said that it was an alarming situation as youth from over 100 member States are joining terror organisations and the overall numbers have risen sharply, from a few thousand foreign terrorist fighters a decade ago to more than 25,000 now. Analysis by the UN team showed that 6 countries have generated more than 1,000 foreign terrorist fighters each, 42 have generated more than 100 such fighters each and a further set of countries have generated between 1 and 100 known cases each. The trend line remains worrying as there has been increase of 71% in reported foreign terrorist fighters worldwide between the middle of 2014 and March 2015.
"More than half the countries in the world are currently generating foreign terrorist fighters", the report said while incorporating foreign terrorist fighters operating in countries such as Afghanistan (6,500), hundreds in Yemen, libya and Pakistan and around 100 in Somalia. The greatest concentrations of foreign terrorist fighters at present are in the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq and Afghanistan, while a smaller numbers are present in Yemen, libya, Pakistan, the Sahel countries, Somalia and the Philippines.
Since internet and social media is helping in faster radicalisation of youth for terrorism, the UN report also urged countries to explore ways to disrupt the use of the internet and social media by terror groups to deliver propaganda, communicate and recruit foreign terrorist fighters. It said the new generation of foreign terrorist fighters bring "plug-and-play" social networks for future attack planning, linking diverse fighters from different communities worldwide.
For instance the ISIl propaganda target young people with a heady combination of idealism, excitement and gore. They also use blockbuster and horror-inducing videos of murders and attacks to attract fighters.
The recruitment mode for foreign terrorist fighters varies. Human contact remains important, which is why there are clusters of recruitment around towns or schools (as seen in the United Kingdom), prisons (France) and criminal networks (ethnic Chechens resident in Austria). In some European countries, it has been reported that violent extremists who dominate some religious institutions, reportedly both government-run and non-government-run, use religious gatherings to recruit. Networks based around particular schools, communities and colleges show how reliant on community-based social networks recruitment remains.
Most of the new generation of foreign terrorist fighters are young males between 15 and 35 years of age. Interestingly, while some are motivated by extremist ideology, a few appear more driven by alienation and boredom than by ideology and in some countries there is a stronger link to prior petty crime. There are also a growing number of women and girls in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic who have travelled to the region, either to accompany their family or volunteer and find fighter husbands. Also, there is a significant proportion of minors, even among active militants.
Foreign terrorist fighters finance their travel in two major ways: self-funding (the predominant method) or funding from a third party, including a recruitment network. Self-funding was also used by the first generation of foreign terrorist fighters to travel to the conflict zones of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia. Most fighters funded their own travel.