WASHINGTON — Many of the invitations have yet to go out and the outcome remains a bit vague for an upcoming White House conference intended to showcase efforts to prevent young people from joining terrorist organizations.

Announced on Jan. 11 in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris, the so-called Summit on Confronting Violent Extremism (CVE) was initially planned last year to be a largely American affair and has now been broadened to include foreign guests.

An Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor that the Feb. 18 conference “will not focus on any specific group or violent extremist actor” despite the recent rash of attacks by Westerners claiming adherence to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS).

Indeed, the number of foreign fighters who have joined jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq now exceeds 20,000 — more than those lured to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s — according to a new report by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College, London. The largest numbers come from Arab countries — Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia are each the source of at least 1,500 recruits — but about 500 have joined the fight from both Germany and Britain and about a hundred from the United States, according to the report.