 Income received from illegal narcotics trading are also used finance jihadist activity as sympathisers with an ideology which uses violence to reach a higher goal will automatically be drawn into crime.In the Stockholm area, individuals who have joined jihadists in Syria and Iraq have predominantly been male, whereas in Gothenburg they have been both male and female.In 2017, Swedish Security Service director Anders Thornberg stated that the number of violent Islamic extremists residing in Sweden to number was estimated to be "thousands".