Today's Wild Geese: Foreign Fighters in the GWOT

[ODB]

Any thoughts on this?

http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=180

Faced with a large population of young, Islamic-extremist prisoners during the Afghan jihad, governments across the Arab world found a release valve for radical religious pressures in their societies by freeing ideological prisoners on the condition that they would go to fight the atheist Soviets in Afghanistan. Many such prisoners agreed and were released by regimes that hoped they would go to Afghanistan, kill some infidels, and be killed in the process. Many of these fighters were killed, but many were not and returned to bedevil their respective governments to this day. Still, for more than a decade, the Afghan jihad allowed Arab governments to redirect domestic Islamist activism outward toward the hapless Red Army. Although the policy proved shortsighted, it reduced domestic instability for most of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s.

Today, it is hard to know for sure whether this trend is repeating itself. Yet, we do know three things for certain: (a) every Arab government faces a domestic Islamist movement that is broader and more militant—though not always more violent—than in the 1980s; (b) the insurgency in Iraq, because the country is the former seat of the caliphate and is located in the Arab heartland, is an attraction for Islamists far more powerful than was Afghanistan; and (c) the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan seems to be more than sufficient to allow a steady increase in the combat tempo of each insurgency. Thus, the situation seems ideal for Arab governments to try a reprise of the process that lessened domestic instability during the Afghan jihad.

This circumstantial argument that the current situation in Iraq is an almost ideal opportunity for Arab regimes to export their Islamic firebrands to kill members of the U.S.-led coalitions and be killed in turn is augmented—if not validated—by the large numbers of Islamic militants that have been released by Arab governments since the invasion of Iraq. The following are several pertinent examples drawn from the period November 2003-March 2006:

November 2003: The government of Yemen freed more than 1,500 inmates—including 92 suspected al-Qaeda members—in an amnesty to mark the holy month of Ramadan [1].

January 2005: The Algerian government pardoned 5,065 prisoners to commemorate the feast of Eid al-Adha [2].

September 2005: The new Mauritanian military government ordered "a sweeping amnesty for political crimes, freeing scores of prisoners…including a band of coup plotters and alleged Islamic extremists" [3].

November 2005: Morocco released 164 Islamist prisoners to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan [4].

November 2005: Morocco released 5,000 prisoners in honor of the 50th anniversary of the country's independence. The sentences of 5,000 other prisoners were reduced [5].

November-December 2005: Saudi Arabia released 400 reformed Islamist prisoners [6].

February-March 2006: In February, Algeria pardoned or reduced sentences for "3,000 convicted or suspected terrorists" as part of a national reconciliation plan [7]. In March, 2,000 additional prisoners were released [8].

February 2006: Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali released 1,600 prisoners, including Islamist radicals [9].

March 2006: Yemen released more than 600 Islamist fighters who were imprisoned after a rebellion led by a radical cleric named Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi [10].

The justifications offered by Arab governments for these releases vary. Some claim they are to commemorate religious holidays or political anniversaries; others claim they are part of national-reconciliation plans. In some of the official statements announcing prisoner releases, Islamists are said to be excluded from the prisoners freed; in others, they are specifically included. In all cases, the releasing governments are police states worried about internal stability in the face of rising Islamist militancy across the Islamic world, the animosities of populations angered at Arab regimes for assisting the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the powerful showings Islamist parties have made in elections across the region. While the motivation of Arab governments in releasing large numbers of prisoners is impossible to definitively document, it seems fair to conclude that those governments are not ignorant to the attraction that the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan will exert on newly freed Islamists, nor of the chance that it might take no more than a slight incentive to dispatch some of the former prisoners to the war zones. It may well be that the West is seeing but not recognizing a reprise of the process that supplied manpower to the Afghan mujahideen two decades ago.

[Ron Humphrey]

Any thoughts on this?

http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=180

To look for ways to utilize their prison populations for warfighting, building foreign bases, creating havoc, or anything else they could find to help divest themselves of the burden of caring for/ dealing with them. In that sense it doesn't seem all that surprising.

[bourbon]

Any thoughts on this?

http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=180

Thoughts of how we could exploit this immediately come to mind. I imagine it would largely hinge on tagging and tracking technology available. Do we have subdermal gps chips yet? Can they be inserted surreptitiously? Those who would know likely cant say. This does not directly address the topic at issue, but it is where my mind jumped to.

[Rex Brynen]

It seems to me that Scheuer is really stretching to make his supposed point here.

Several of the prisoner releases that he cites are overwhelmingly criminal, not political, prisoners. In these cases, most were nearing the end of their sentences, and their release (to mark religious and national holidays) has come to be as much an expected part of the judicial and incarceration system as is parole in the US.

Second, Arab regimes are--precisely because of blowback from the Afghan experience--fully aware of the dangers of militants traveling out of country to receive "work experience" in a foreign insurgency. It stretches credulity to expect that most would today see this as an effective strategy for limiting domestic national security challenges given their knowledge that most of those chickens come home to roost.

Third, some of those prisoner releases have to be seen in the context of successful deradicalization efforts by Arab governments. In Algeria, for example, national reconciliation efforts have reduced the militant Islamist movement to a tiny, tiny fraction of what it was during the height of the post-1991 civil war (a conflict that claimed well over 100,000 lives). Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also experienced some substantial deradicalization successes, in part because of their manipulation of selective inducements such as early release.

Certainly there are recent cases of released prisoners going on to cause mayhem elsewhere (Shakir al-'Absi of Fateh al-Islam comes to mind), and there is particular grounds for concern regarding Yemen's detention-and-release (or escape) policies.

However, I suspect that a look at the background of captured foreign jihadists in Iraq in particular would show that very, very few of them had been imprisoned Islamists given early release in their native countries. On the contrary--and rather more alarmingly--a significant proportion were rather latent Islamists mobilized into action by US intervention in Iraq.

[Ron Humphrey]

Several of the prisoner releases that he cites are overwhelmingly criminal, not political, prisoners. In these cases, most were nearing the end of their sentences, and their release (to mark religious and national holidays) has come to be as much an expected part of the judicial and incarceration system as is parole in the US..

This one I can agree with you on

Second, Arab regimes are--precisely because of blowback from the Afghan experience--fully aware of the dangers of militants traveling out of country to receive "work experience" in a foreign insurgency. It stretches credulity to expect that most would today see this as an effective strategy for limiting domestic national security challenges given their knowledge that most of those chickens come home to roost..

The thing about that is how often those in power don't actually care to look so far as the roosting since their expectation is for it not to happen until after their gone. I will accept however that some of those whose leadership seem to never () be gone may tend to look at it more long term.

[Van]

Someone in the Arab world read their history carefully, and is undoubtedly laughing his rear end off at the symmetry of the situation.

One piece of driving force of the Crusades was "What the heck do we do with all these uppity younger sons?"

Now, I know that this is only one piece, usually ignored under the religious, political, and economic issues, but it was a piece of the European motivation. Looks like the Islamic violent fundamentalist extremist terrorist criminal elements (or whatever Dept. of State wants us to call them this week) jumped on this population control technique.