WASHINGTON — As the U.S. stands on high terrorism alert ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, including in Boston, Friday’s deadly terror attack in Kuwait served as a wake-up call to leaders in that country to better heed U.S. demands to stamp out terror funding within their borders, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch told the Herald in a phone interview from the region.
Lynch, who is traveling throughout the Middle East with a delegation of lawmakers aimed at finding ways to better combat ISIS in the region, arrived in Kuwait the day after a suicide bomber killed 27 people Friday at a mosque in ?Kuwait City, the same day attacks were also carried out in France and Tunisia. ISIS claimed responsibility for those attacks.
After attending memorial services for the victims, Lynch, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee’s Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing, met with Kuwaiti officials in an ongoing effort to curb money-laundering, whose proceeds go to terrorists in the country.
Friday’s blast, the first terror attack in the country in more than two decades, served to drive home the point.
“I think Kuwait will be more cooperative going forward,” Lynch said.
Lynch spoke to the Herald from Amman, Jordan, after making another stop in Iraq with the delegation, which now heads to Turkey.
“We are trying to help the Sunni who are fighting with ISIS right now,” Lynch said.
But that help will require building a coalition strong enough to take on the terrorist network, a tough task of skillful diplomacy to bring together disparate groups — Shia fighters in Baghdad, Kurdish militia in northern Iraq and Turkish fighters battling ISIS on its border with Syria.
“They have not worked together, these three factions. There is very little trust there,” Lynch said. “But the military experts think they have to work together if they have any hope of beating ISIS.”
Meanwhile the growing threat from ISIS and other groups and network chatter has the U.S on heightened alert, with Homeland Security and FBI officials warning of the potential of an Independence Day weekend attack on U.S. soil.
Lynch, who was briefed on the threat, said so far there is “no specific threat” in Boston and elsewhere.
“But there’s chatter that they believe is consistent with that type of activity, but it’s nothing that one can identify with any specific amount of information,” Lynch said of federal security officials. “It’s just a feeling that they have.”
But, he said, attempts by ISIS to spur lone-wolf ?attacks like the one in Kuwait makes the potential for a strike ever-present.
“ISIS has made these repeated requests out there to motivate people who might be susceptible to that type of plea,” Lynch said.
