The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the securitization discourse used to construct the security threat coming from the veteran effect of the Islamic State's foreign fighters in Europe, and to see what kind of policies were adopted to counter it so far. The phenomenon of departing European citizens, who are becoming foreign fighters in the Syrian conflict, joining the ranks of the Islamic State, and then return back to their country of origin after having acquired combat experience or other training, has become a hot topic of discussion not only for academics, but also for politicians and ordinary citizens. To precise, this thesis is working with three main case studies, whose securitization discourse and security policies are analysed. These are: European Union, United Kingdom and France. The author was interested in finding out what similarities and differences can be found between the analysed countries, plus, whether there is some pattern of influence between the European Union and its member states in this area. The author of this thesis chose to use a comparative case study as a research design. It is useful to realize a contrast of contexts and therefore to discover specifics of the analysed cases. Two tables were created in order to clarify the operationalization of the analysed...

This thesis deals with the phenomenon of Central Asian foreign fighters in Syria, 2011- 2017. It analyzes their radicalization, recruitment, and travel patterns. Special emphasis is placed on tracking the home states' responses, including elements of de-radicalization and counter-radicalization. The thesis has found that there is arguably no single factor explaining the Central Asian fighters' radicalization; nor is there a typical profile of a Central Asian fighter. Available data suggest that radicalization and extremist recruitment most often occur in Russia. Furthermore, the analysis of travel patterns has shown that the majority of Central Asian fighters traveled to Syria either indirectly via multiple countries (again, most often Russia) or directly from their country of origin, and then crossed the border from Turkey. The thesis concludes that all five Central Asian states have adopted policies to address the perceived security threat of returning foreign fighters, whereas the hard, restrictive and punitive approach has been prevalent all across the region.

In recent years Europe experienced several terrorist attacks on its soil. Some of these were committed by Jihadists radicalised in prisons. An issue already identified by scholars has thus become publicly known and attracted attention of policy makers. The combination of Islamic propaganda with jails imprisoning substantial amount of vulnerable inmates and incarceration of returning foreign fighters create a mixture threatening to produce more violent extremists. The aim of this thesis is to describe how Germany approaches the issue and connect its solution with existing radicalisation models and prison regime concepts. Because of the federal structure of Germany, this description is based on analysis of three levels: institutional analysis of the German framework (macro); comparison of state projects tackling the issue (meso); and a case study of practitioners of one federal state (micro). The thesis comes to a conclusion, that the German strategy is strongly decentralised, still not in its final form, applies the concept of dynamic security as its prison regime and approaches the issue from a holistic perspective, involving also non-state actors and other areas of radicalisation.

Why do some rebel groups perpetrate conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) while others do not? A growing body of research has suggested various explanations, but offers no consensus regarding this puzzling question. At the same time, recent studies have recognized how foreign fighters impact rebel groups’ violence against civilians. Yet, to what extent the presence of foreign fighters could also explain rebel-inflicted CRSV remains unexplored. In this study, I argue that rebel groups with foreign fighters are more likely to perpetrate CRSV than rebel groups without foreign fighters, based on two causal mechanisms. Firstly, foreign fighters pose a risk to the internal cohesion of rebel groups, which is why CRSV is initiated as a socialization tool. Secondly, foreign fighters alleviate the rebel groups dependency on the local civilian community, thereby enabling such violence. The results from logistic regressions, based on a sample of 45 rebel groups between 1989 and 2014, indicate that there is indeed covariation between the presence of foreign fighters and CRSV occurrence. The findings contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate trying to explain variations in CRSV, as well as to the emerging field of foreign fighters' effect on violence against civilians. The results also have relevant policy implications for the international efforts in preventing CRSV.

The thesis has the ambition to follow the origin and first years of the Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters and its entry into the public space of Benešov. The research focuses in more detail on the formation of the memory of the citizens of Benešov on the anti-Nazi resistance, in the process of which the SPB played an obvious role. In addition to this federal activity, the work will follow the institutional development of the organization; what kind of people led the union, who could join, which areas of social life were influenced. This thesis maps the period from 1945, when the Second World War ended, when the associations and organizations associating the inhabitants of Czechoslovakia, which participated in the anti-Nazi resistance, until 1969, which determined the restructuring of the association. Key words Union of anti-fascist fighters, second resistence, Benešov, public space, memory policy, identity

The awareness that the threat of terrorism is no longer linked only to the Middle East, but has home-grown nature and arisen from young people living on European soil, alarmed the public and subsequently provoked increased interest in radicalisation research. 9/11 or the European terrorist attacks in London or Madrid have led to the increasing media attention of the phenomenon of radicalisation occurring among young European Muslims. At the beginning of the new millennium, the threat stemming from terrorism embodied one of the most urgent security challenges, whether for politicians or scholars. The academic and political interest in research into factors that increase the risk of radicalisation to violent extremism has ended up in many efforts to grasp and properly define radicalisation, or to outline the expected pathways of radicalisation (Veldhuis, 2009: 1). In my thesis, I build on these efforts of prominent experts and I examine the effect of the factors contributing to violent radicalisation like social networks, dissatisfaction with current reality, moral outrage, family and individual characteristics including criminal backgrounds. I look at the impact of these factors in case studies of three Western European countries - Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom. Except discussing specific...

While transnational rebellion and rebel recruitment have received much attention in previous literature, the combination of the two, transnational rebel recruitment, has been relatively understudied. This study aims to cover this research gap by further developing Jeremy Weinstein’s theory on resource endowments to test their effect on transnational rebel recruitment. It seeks to answer the research question: “How do resource endowments impact transnational rebel recruitment?”. A distinction will be made between domestic and transnational rebel groups to test the theoretical argument. It will be argued that rebel groups can have a variation in their economic and social endowments, which both have a domestic an transnational variant. The main hypothesis reads: transnational rebel groups that have much transnational resource endowments are more likely to recruit transnationally. This study will employ a structured focused comparison on strategically picked cases using Mill’s method of difference. The selected cases that will be compared are the transnational rebel group NPFL in Liberia (1989-1995) and the domestic rebel group NRA in Uganda (1981-1986). This study finds support for the theory and the main hypothesis.

The present thesis compares media representations of Yekîneyên Parastina Jin (YPJ or the Women’s Protection Units), an all-female Kurdish military organisation, in British media versus the organisation’s own media outlets, with the aim to see how they differ, more specifically in terms of representations of their ideological agency. By utilizing critical discourse analysis (CDA) in combination with postcolonial theory, the media construction of four soldiers’ deaths have been scrutinized in 30 media texts in order to provide a deeper understanding of the hegemonic discourses and sociocultural practices which underpin these constructions. The result shows a discrepancy in terms of representations of YPJ’s ideological agency. On the one hand, YPJ adopts an explicit effort to assert their ideology through a propagandistic discourse that emphasises their values of resistance, freedom, egalitarianism, gender emancipation and democratic confederalism, portraying their fighters as fearless martyrs and heroines that are determined to die for their cause. On the other hand, the UK media represent YPJ’s ideology in generic ways in which hidden ideological ‘us vs. them’ representations are deeply rooted in a broader naturalised Western hegemonic discourse, with portrayals of YPJ’s fallen soldiers mostly characterised by sensationalism and victimisation. One part of such hidden ideological agenda is the way in which YPJ constantly gets included in, and excluded from, ‘us’ (the West), depending on who the enemy is, in addition to mainly receiving media coverage in direct relation to ISIS, a common Western enemy. The result is a representation that endorses YPJ’s fight within a hegemonic Western discourse, neglecting their ideological agency. This has sociocultural implications since such hegemonic discourse misrepresents YPJ’s struggle, constructing their fight mostly as part of a Western counterterrorist strategy, which further legitimises the Western power to construct history based on its own premises and claims of truth.

How does the prevalence of female combatants in a rebel group influence conflict severity? Previous research has investigated the impact conflict has on women but has overlooked women’s contributions to conflict. Diverging from this paradigm, recent quantitative research has investigated why women join rebellions, why rebel groups recruit them, and how this affects conflict dynamics and outcomes. This study contributes to this new direction by asking how the gender composition of a rebel group influences the number of battle deaths amassed during a conflict. I hypothesize that a higher prevalence of female combatants in a rebel group increases conflict severity. I argue that female combatants increase rebel group capabilities, creating parity between rebel-state dyads, which then produces a greater quantity of battle deaths. Using a dataset on women’s prevalence in 211 rebel groups between 1989 and 2014, I run an ordinary least squares regression model to test my hypothesis. This study’s empirical evidence shows support for my hypothesis but does not yield any substantive indication of how female combatants contribute to severity. The causal mechanism behind this relationship remains for future research to uncover.

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