Danger At Our Door: ISIS Fighters Flee as Caliphate Collapses
04-27-2017
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As the Islamic State continues to lose ground to coalition forces, its fighters are running away and trying to go home.
Turkish and European embassy officials told the London Guardian that increasing numbers of Isis fighters have contacted them in the hope of returning to their home countries.
The Rand Corporation, a global research organization, reports that ISIS has lost most of the territory it once controlled and that its self-declared "caliphate" is now "on a path to collapse."
Rand says ISIS has lost 57% of its territory and 73% of the people once under its control since it's peak in 2014. At that time it ruled over nearly 30,000 square miles of territory and a population of about 11 million.
Rand also reports there is "declining support across the Muslim world for the Islamic State and its ideology."
The Guardian says at least two British fighters and one American have attempted to escape ISIS and enter Turkey in recent weeks.
They are Stefan Aristidou from Enfield in north London, his British wife and Kary Paul Kleman from Florida.
Sources told the Guardian that Kleman converted to Islam after he divorced and married a Syrian woman. His family said he traveled to Syria "to help with humanitarian efforts" but then decided he had been lured in by a "scam."
There are reports suggesting dozens more have also attempted to escape the collapse of ISIS. Among them, ideologically committed operatives who hope to commit revenge attacks inside Europe.
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