Today's Wild Geese: Foreign Fighters in the GWOT

[davidbfpo]

A free article from the Journal of Forensic Sciences, part of the EU-funded PRIME project on Lone Actors by some academic experts. Which I have not read.

The Abstract:

This article provides an in-depth assessment of lone actor terrorists’ attack planning and preparation. A codebook of 198 variables related to different aspects of pre-attack behavior is applied to a sample of 55 lone actor terrorists. Data were drawn from open-source materials and complemented where possible with primary sources. Most lone actors are not highly lethal or surreptitious attackers. They are generally poor at maintaining operational security, leak their motivations and capabilities in numerous ways, and generally do so months and even years before an attack. Moreover, the “loneness” thought to define this type of terrorism is generally absent; most lone actors uphold social ties that are crucial to their adoption and maintenance of the motivation and capability to commit terrorist violence. The results offer concrete input for those working to detect and prevent this form of terrorism and argue for a re-evaluation of the “lone actor” concept.

Link:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...029.13676/full

[davidbfpo]

Richard Barrett of The Soufan Group, had another article three weeks and the focus is on the UK.
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...gislamic-state

Recently Max Hill, the UK's Independent Reviewer of CT Law, became controversial to some over his reported remarks on how to deal with returnees, in essence not all of them can be prosecuted so we must have other options. He was recently at a conference and the next article summarises his contribution.
Link:https://www.connectfutures.org/kill-...r-lynn-davies/

[davidbfpo]

Recommended by Professor Bruce Hoffman via Twitter. First a long Buzzfeed report on the smuggling along the Turkish border:

US officials say most of ISIS fighters have died on the battlefield. Smugglers along the Syria-Turkey border say many have escaped.

Link:https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/...haps-to-fight?

Secondly, a wider international viewpoint on the "hot potato" by a NDU staffer; which opens with an editorial passage:

As the Caliphate collapses, many of its foreign volunteers are fleeing Iraq and Syria. A lot of ink has been spilled (some by me, in fact) on the problem of foreign fighters returning home. However, some of these fighters end up in a third country—not in the Caliphate, but not home either—that is not prepared for the problem.

Link:https://lawfareblog.com/foreign-fighter-hot-potato

[davidbfpo]

I rarely spot anything from Stratfor these days, but this one landed today. It is a point of view and ends with:

Without combatting their narrative assertions about the legitimacy of western legal systems and processes, much of our military success could be nullified.

Link:https://marcom.stratfor.com/horizons...ing-propaganda

[davidbfpo]

Two reports on returning foreign fighters, the first from a Belgian think tank, published as an Egrmont Paper covers Belgium, Netherlands and Germany (79 pgs.).

Summary:

Some 5000 men, women and children have travelled from Europe to Syria and Iraq since 2012. An estimated 1500 of these foreign terrorist fighters (FTF) have returned so far. Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands represent a third of European FTF and returnees. This report looks into the evolution of policies on returning foreign fighters in these three countries, comparing responses with regard to fighters that are still in the conflict zone, policies to deal with returnees in prison and attitudes towards the children of foreign fighters. It is the very first systematic and in-depth study into national approaches and policies vis--vis returnees. Its added value lies in the wealth of data, including data that has not been published before, and in the comparative angle.

Link:http://www.egmontinstitute.be/return...e-netherlands/

The second report (116 pgs.) is from the GW Program on Extremism 'The Traveler: American Jihadists in Syria and Iraq' and the summary refers to:

Hundreds of Americans have been drawn to jihadist organizations fighting in Syria and Iraq. Many were arrested while attempting to make the journey. The 64 individuals identified in this study all reached their destinations. This study, released in February 2018, sheds light on the motivations, methods, and threats posed by these travelers.

Link:https://extremism.gwu.edu/travelers

[AdamG]

Many of the Americans who traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the group wound up coming back because “life in jihadist-held territory did not live up to their expectations,” according to a new study from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism that provides a sweeping look at their experiences.
These Americans had seen “an idealized version of reality” in online propaganda they consumed, but that contrasted unfavorably with the harsh living conditions, infighting and menial assignments that greeted them, the report found. For Americans like Khweis — who later insisted he was not part of the group and only wanted to see the situation in Syria for himself — household chores could lead to their decisions to abandon the fight.

*

(Far more people left Europe to join the Islamic State — estimates range from 5,000 to 6,000, the report says — though that flow of volunteers also plummeted as the group lost territory.)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...cid=spartandhp


From link above (in bold)

But Neumann and others said the decline in Islamic State recruiting figures — which has come almost as quickly as the rise following leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s declaration of a caliphate in June 2014 — is hardly an unmitigated success for the United States and its allies.
Instead, it may be the beginning of a new stage, one in which would-be fighters choose to carry out attacks at home rather than travel abroad, and battle#hardened veterans seek out new lands for conflict.
“It’s like after the Afghanistan war in the 1980s,” said Neumann, citing the period after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989 and legions of foreign fighters formed a diaspora of radicalized veterans that subsequently fueled the rise of al-Qaeda. “They’ll be asking themselves, ‘What’s next?’ ”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.d1f210b32af1