"Confronting terrorism and extremism is a collective international mission that necessitates a true political will by all governments of the world", Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafari said during the United Nations High-level Conference of Heads of Counter-Terrorism Agencies of Member State.
Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN said that luring and recruiting terrorists across the world is not an emergency phenomenon, noting that the influx of tens of thousands of "foreign terrorist fighters" into Syria was an unprecedented phenomenon in terms of the number of terrorists or the number of countries from where they came.
"The UN reports confirmed that tens of thousands of terrorists have flown from 101 UN member states", Bashar al-Jaafari added.
Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN revealed that the number of the foreign terrorists with European nationality who fought in Syria reached more than 12,000 terrorists, most of them were from Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Spain.
Al-Jaafari stressed that any collective international effort to counter the phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters and the risks posed by their return to their homelands or any other states must be based on acknowledging that the emergence and expansion of this dangerous phenomenon have been a result of failure of the international community to bear its responsibilities from the very beginning.
“We would not have been sitting here in this hall to discuss what has become known as the danger of the return of the foreign terrorist fighters if the governments of the UN member states have activated early alarm systems and exchanged data about extremists,” said al-Jaafari
Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN indicated that the Syrian government has information and confessions which intersect with UN secret or public reports confirming that there are governments and intelligence agencies have been involved in facilitation of recruiting, financing, arming and training foreign terrorist fighters.
Meanwhile, in an Op-Ed, the UN Secretary General António Guterres called for a concerted multilateral response at global, regional and national levels to defeat the threat of terrorism. According to the United Nations Information Center, he writes “Terrorism is a transnational threat that cannot be defeated by any single government or organization… we must also address root causes by promoting education, tackling youth unemployment and addressing marginalization.” through the engagement of local communities, religious organizations and the media.
ISIS started a campaign of terror against Syria and Iraq in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
It, however, lost all of its strongholds in both countries last year thanks to counter-terrorism offensives of the Iraqi and Syrian national armies, backed by their allies.
