Description
Foreign fighter literature often assumes that foreign fighters are a problem for the armed groups that they join. Foreign fighters have been credited with radicalizing conflicts, killing civilians, and, as is the focus of this paper, causing issues for group cohesion. This paper reassesses this relationship between group cohesion and foreign fighters by tracing veteran foreign fighters from the Soviet-Afghan War across space and time. Importantly, this paper distinguishes between the impact of foreign fighters that fight abroad and returnee foreign fighters on domestic armed groups, as well as the embeddedness of fighters within organizational structures. Drawing on relational and network theory, this paper argues that while foreign fighters rarely contribute to actual group fragmentation while overseas, foreign fighter returnees are often embedded into new network structures that are at odds with their domestic groups. As a result of this network and shared experience of conflict, these fighters are likely to splinter from their domestic armed groups on return.
