US spy chief: Syria has become huge magnet for extremists

Director of the US National Intelligence James Clapper stressed Wednesday that Syria has become a "huge magnet" for extremists with the appearance of "training complexes" in that country. He told the Senate Intelligence Committee that it is estimated that "at this point in excess of 7,000 foreign fighters have been attracted from some 50 countries, many of them in Europe and the Mideast." He affirmed "this is of great concern not only to us but to those countries. " "In our recent engagements with our foreign interlocutors, and particularly in Europe, tremendous concern here for these extremist who are attracted to Syria, engage in combat, get training and we're seeing now the appearance of training complexes in Syria to train people to go back to their countries and, of course, conduct more terrorist acts. So this is a huge concern to all of us, " he stressed. He affirmed that "dispersion and decentralization actually creates a different threat and a harder one to watch and detect, because of its dispersion." "It's clear as well that our collection capabilities are not as robust, perhaps, as they were, because the terrorists -- generally have gotten smarter about how we go about our business and how we use trade craft to detect them and to thwart them," he noted. In a Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, Clapper reiterated that Syria has become "a significant location for independent or al-Qaeda-aligned groups to recruit, train, and equip a growing number of extremists, some of whom might conduct external attacks." He added "we assess that the Syrian regime and many insurgents believe that they can achieve a military victory in the ongoing conflict. However, given their respective capabilities and levels of external support, decisively altering the course of the conflict in the next six months will prove difficult for either side." On weapons of mass destruction security in Syria, Clapper said "we judge that some elements of Syria's biological warfare (BW) program might have advanced beyond the research and development stage and might be capable of limited agent production, based on the duration of its longstanding program." "To the best of our knowledge, Syria has not successfully weaponized biological agents in an effective delivery system, but it possesses conventional weapon systems that could be modified for biological-agent delivery," he remarked. The report also shed light on Sub-Saharan Africa, indicating that it "will almost certainly see political and related security turmoil in 2014." Clapper said that the continent "has become a hothouse for the emergence of extremist and rebel groups, which increasingly launch deadly asymmetric attacks, and which government forces often cannot effectively counter due to a lack of capability and sometimes will." "Governments in Africa's Sahel region; particularly Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, are at risk of terrorist attacks, primarily as retribution for these countries' support to the January 2013 French-led international military intervention in Mali," he stressed.