Description
The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have raised concerns over the issue of foreign fighters. This concern is two-fold. It involves not only individuals who travel to participate in foreign conflicts, but also the perceived terrorist threat these individuals pose when they return to their country of origin. In developing counter-strategies to combat foreign fighters, the primary approach adopted by state actors has been to frame the response as a counter-terrorism issue. This paper argues that this framing is, for several reasons, highly problematic. First, foreign fighters are motivated to participate in conflict for a multitude of complex reasons, very few are attracted by the prospect of committing terrorist acts. Second, the counter-terrorism frame has led to the development of harmful policies that include expansion of police authority, travel bans, revocation of citizenship and criminal convictions without legal safeguards. Third, the policies developed in response to foreign fighters and returnees are not based on the academic research in this area or supported by evidence. This paper argues that if policies developed to combat the foreign fighter issue are to be effective, they should be evidence-based and take greater of academic research in this area. As such, we propose that counter foreign fighter policy could be greatly improved if policy-makers were to learn lessons from the academic research on social movements.
