The West and Russia are now openly discussing a ground offensive against ISIL’s nerve centre in Raqqa, and the problem they are trying to solve is that of foreign fighters. The protracted stalemate in Syria has created the time and space for external militants to flood into the country and completely change the dimensions of the uprising. As the world’s military giants try to wipe Syria and Iraq clean of foreign fighters, it is important to consider what we know about this type of militant and to apply the lessons of history.
Foreign fighters are typically equated with jihadists, but this definition is simplistic. Militants who have travelled from another country to join rebel groups have been a regular feature of conflict throughout modern history.
Historically, we can document foreign fighters in close to 100 civil wars since the late 18th century. We don’t have precise data in even the biggest and best documented cases like the Spanish Civil War – which drew, in under three years, more than 60,000 militants, or double the number that have recently gone to Syria and Iraq – but we can say that that there have been hundreds of thousands of foreign fighters in world wide conflicts over the past 250 years.
Despite their very different circumstances, they are all consistent in the processes by which they radicalised and mobilised. Whether Muslim or Marxist, the emphasis is always on the need to prevent lasting destruction of a particular group.
They are also consistent with their experiences in the field, notably aggressive attacks, high fatality rates, and schisms with local fighters who tend to exploit them. One possible explanation for this is that foreign fighters do not have to worry about reprisal attacks against their villages and families. Another is that they are actually the most desperate among the militants, because they believe that the existence of their entire people is on the line. Historically, the overwhelming majority disengage from militant behaviour upon their return, with a small percentage becoming involved in domestic terror networks or going on to other wars.
In my book, Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identities in Civil Conflicts, I document that foreign fighters have provided political leadership and skilled manpower in major armed uprisings throughout history. And they have been remarkably successful.
Foreign volunteers contributed to rebel victories in the wars that established the US, the Soviet Union, Israel, Italy, Greece, Venezuela, Colombia, Zimbabwe and Kosovo, among others. In other instances they were responsible for sufficiently weakening the fascist regime in Spain as well as the loss of one-third of Mexican territory to the US in the 1830s.
Throughout history, win or lose, foreign fighters simply went home and in many cases back to their old jobs. A stark example of this concerns a Zionist fighter in 1948 who simply went back to his job as a London hairdresser. His name was Vidal Sassoon.
The so-called Arab Afghans of the 1980s were the first cohort of foreign fighters in modern history not to demobilise at the end of their war. Instead, they continued for decades to hop to other conflicts and to train others in a process described as “bleed-out”.
It is too facile to explain the difference as the result of greater fanaticism or being more dangerous. Other transnational jihadis in Central Asia, in Yemen, and in Sudan in prior decades dissipated. But the bulk of the Arab Afghans were not permitted to return to their home countries and became perpetual insurgents, wandering from one war zone to the next. This development should serve as a caution to proposals to render foreign fighters stateless rather than to take on the difficult and potentially dangerous work of rehabilitation. When Osama bin Laden’s passport was stripped, he simply relocated his radicalisation efforts.
A number of governments have taken steps over the past year to bar their citizens from returning from Syria and Iraq in the name of public safety. But if and when ISIL falls, the problem will not end, and it requires serious thinking about how to avoid the mistakes of the past. Will surviving ISIL volunteers be barred from returning home and left to metastasise on the world stage?
Of the estimated 30,000 foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq today, despite the publicity it has generated, perhaps only one third are with ISIL. The rest are fighting for groups including Shia militias and even western evangelical Christians fighting for Kurdish groups – some of whom have faced criminal charges in countries like Australia. What will happen to these other foreign fighters?
With the advent of social media, clearly they no longer need to physically be in their home countries to continue radicalisation efforts.
At loose ends, they will be free to spread their ideology as outlawadvocates to the next generation. Bringing them home and to account, and employing cooperative returnees to speak to at-risk youth about how their real experiences fell short of promised ideals, is a necessary investment in ensuring the bleeding in Syria does not continue for another generation.
David Malet is a lecturer in international relations at the University of Melbourne
