The Impact ofJihadistForeign Fighters on Indigenous Secular-Nationalist Causes: Contrasting Chechnya and Syria

Social Network Analysis of German Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq

“…Foreign fighters often flock to extremist groups in civil conflicts, and are potentially destabilizing, violent, and less amenable to demobilization and reintegration than local forces. 70 Some will undoubtedly return to conduct attacks against their homelands, or disperse to conflict zones where they could leverage their militant skills. 71 It is estimated that one out of every nine foreign fighters is likely to conduct a "blowback" attack in their home country after returning from fighting abroad.…”

The ontological threat of foreign fighters

“…Research questions that look at foreign fighting are usually a subset of one of two broader questions: what motivates individuals to become foreign fighters (Bakke, 2013; Clifford, 2018; Malet, 2013), or what is it that they do in terms of transnational violence (Braithwaite and Chu, 2018; Cragin, 2017; Cragin and Stipanovich, 2017; Hegghammer, 2013; Hegghammer and Nesser, 2015; Lindekilde et al, 2016; Noonan and Khalil, 2014; Rich and Conduit, 2015; Tammikko, 2018). Separately, there is also legal research on foreign fighter, which looks at how they are treated in different international jurisdictions (de Gutty et al, 2015; Paulussen and Entenmann, 2014).…”

“…In terms of case selection, there is a tendency to favour the recent (post-2010) conflicts in Syria and Iraq with a passing mention of the Spanish Civil War as a way of defining the potential universe of case, while ignoring contemporary examples of foreigners fighting in Ukraine and recent experiences in the ex-Yugoslavia and Chechnya. Rich and Conduit (2015) have conducted one of the few comparative analyses which contrast Syria to the recent case of Chechnya. Li’s (2016) analysis looks at Bosnia with a focus on Islam and Jihad.…”

The “Syria traveller”: reintegration or legal sanctioning?

“…According to Hegghammer, however, the motivations of a foreign fighter are primarily nonmaterial, such as an idea of (expanded) nationhood, or other beliefs or ideologies. Rich and Conduit (2015) further distinguish between Sunni and Shi'a fighters, arguing that they are too different to be treated as a uniform group.…”