The dramatic increase in the number of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war has caused great concern when individuals join extremist terrorist organisations, such as ISIS. These foreign fighters can later return to their country of residence to commit a terrorist attack, or recruit other individuals to join ISIS. Some governments, particularly within Europe, have amended their laws to criminalise foreign fighters and recruiting for terrorist groups. However, if these new laws themselves become a way of framing the West as opposed to Islam is yet to be systematically analysed. This thesis argues that through framing theory, by creating frames that show the legislation as a problem that needs to be solved by ISIS, frame alignment will take place so individuals will shift their views and beliefs to agree with the problem stated by ISIS. Through a comparative case study of four European Union countries, firstly by examining the conditions of the legislation and secondly by studying statements by ISIS, this thesis finds no support for the theory in those four cases, as the predicted outcome did not happen in each case.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the large volumes of foreign fighters involved in civil conflicts in Syria and Iraq over recent years. Yet, there remains little systematic evidence about the effect, if any, that foreign fighters have upon the conflicts they join. Existing literature distinguishes between the resources fighters bring to rebel groups and the liability they represent in regards to campaign cohesion. We seek to establish preliminary evidence as to whether or not foreign fighters contribute to the success of the campaigns they join. Our multinomial logistic and competing risks regression analyses of civil conflicts between 1946 and 2013 suggest that foreign fighters are associated with a decreased likelihood of government victory. Furthermore, we offer partial evidence to suggest that foreign fighters from non-contiguous countries are more likely to help rebels achieve a negotiated settlement or to continue their struggle against the government, but not to directly help them achieve victory.

During the Syrian conflict the number of European Foreign Fighters has increased exponentially and has become an ever-growing concern for European policymakers. This phenomenon presents host of major security challenges for European policymakers and governments. Among European countries, France provides the highest number of citizens who have gone to Syria to fight against Assad´s regime. The French authorities have estimated that by mid-2014, over 700 French citizens have left France and travelled to Syria to fight. Historically France has had a relationship with Syria which started with its role as a border-drawing colonial power. Grounded in a framework of realism, that emphasizes nation-states as the primary actor within the international system, the analysis concentrates on the role of France´s foreign policy on the Syria as push factor for terrorism and radicalization. This paper attempts to determinate a specific correlation between the policy that France has been conducting towards Syria between 2000 and 2015, and the phenomenon of French Foreign Fighters. Findings suggest that France´s foreign policy towards Syria is the main root cause of the French Foreign Fighters phenomenon.

The so called ‘Islamic State,’ an Islamic extremist organization which currently controls large swaths of territory in the Middle East, has attracted foreign fighters to its insurgency in tens of thousands. Until just recently, foreign fighters were not well researched or understood separately from local fighters. David Malet (2013) argues that insurgencies recruit foreign fighters by persuading them to defend a ‘common group’ against a threatening enemy. This ‘defensive mobilization,’ he believed, was critical to recruiting foreign fighters throughout history. After preliminary analysis, the Islamic State presented evidence contrary to this theory, and it seemed dubious that they would use defensive mobilization to recruit foreign fighters. By analyzing at Islamic State’s recruitment propaganda, this research found that the Islamic State did indeed break with Malet’s understanding of foreign fighters. Interestingly, the Islamic State instead invoked the religious duty to conquer on behalf of a legitimate religious state and restore Islamic dominion over the world. These findings may serve to increase our understanding of the Islamic State in general and will likely cause us to make adjustments in how we understand foreign fighter recruitment to other civil conflicts.

Foreign Fighters and the Challenges Associated with their Criminal Accountability JUDr. Anna Richterová The presented thesis focuses on the phenomenon of foreign fighters - a topic that has been for years appearing not only on cover pages of newspapers, but it is mainly a frequent subject of legal discussions and new legislations. The major reason is the connectivity of this phenomenon with the terrorism. The aim of this work is a comprehensive charting/analysing and elucidating of questions who the foreign fighters are, what their status is in the framework of the international law and what the possibilities of their criminal accountability are. In the general part, the work introduces and refines the concept of foreign fighters and foreign terrorist fighters. It offers both the historical and modern perspective of the participation of persons in armed conflicts abroad. It is followed by presenting the modern efforts to define the term of foreign fighters and explaining why the phenomenon of the foreign fighters and the measures against them are not new. The work also outlines the motivation of people to leave and fight in remote parts of the world. Legislative measures concerning foreign terrorist fighters on the universal and regional level are discussed in detail. The age-old effort to adopt a...

The current conflict in Syria and Iraq has attracted a large number of foreign fighters (FFs) from Western countries. The main question of this thesis is why these countries do not have a similar pattern for their proportions of FFs. This thesis explores this question in nine Western countries with varying proportions of FFs: Finland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, England, Canada, Australia, and America. Through a case study of Islamic State’s online FF recruitment campaign, it will be shown that common religious identity is the main part of the group’s recruitment message. However, comparing the identified countries on factors related to Muslims’ identity and integration uncovers that common Muslim identity itself is not capable of answering the question; instead, it is Muslims’ integration into their surrounding societies that correlates with proportions of FFs from identified countries. / Graduate / 0615 / 0616 / 0750 / mhashemi@uvic.ca

This thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that tends to conflate Arab foreign fighters with Islamist terrorists, and ‘martyrdom operations' with ‘suicide attacks.' Overlaps notwithstanding, it aims to draw distinctions between Arab foreign fighters engaged in defensive jihad defending co-religionists against a military foe, and Islamist terrorists engaged in terrorism that indiscriminately targets civilians and non-combatants. Critically, while disaggregating the two transnational cohorts, this thesis also illuminates the nexus between them. It draws on a thesis dataset of 3,010 Arab foreign fighters compiled using biographies, martyrdom eulogies, and postings on ‘jihadi' websites, in both English and Arabic. This dataset is then used to support three case studies involving the defensive jihads in 1980s Afghanistan, Iraq (post 2003), and Syria (post 2011). It leverages a theoretical framework based on the concept of radicalisation and the language of political Islam, whilst concurrently drawing on theories from psychology and historical military examples of combat, germane to defensive jihad and Islamist terrorism. The thesis concludes that Arab foreign fighters involved in defensive jihad employ martyrdom operations against military targets, through tactical necessity. Conversely, Islamist terrorists employ suicide attacks against civilians and non-combatants, through ideological necessity. The trajectory between the two transnational mobilisations appears to be broadly underpinned by facets of the Lucifer Effect – the situational factors encountered whilst participating in defensive jihad, including but not limited to, the experience of close combat in a war zone; being subjected to ideological indoctrination; and being exposed to charismatic authority and obedience to it. This suggests that subsequent involvement in Islamist terrorism by some Arab foreign fighters is primarily forged in the crucible of defensive jihad. Such findings should result in the crafting of more individualised de-radicalisation and rehabilitation programmes for returning foreign fighters, in both the West and the Arab world.

Diploma thesis The Russian Approach to the Process of Disengagement of the Returning Foreign Fighters is dealing with the issue of terminating one's membership and participation on activities of the terrorist organizations abroad in the context of the Russian Federation. The aim of the thesis is to fill the gap in the research which has neglected the Russian approach. The thesis is working with the theoretical knowledge of the current research on disengagement and transfers it to the state level. The approach of the Russian Federation to the process of disengagement is analysed within the categories of hard and soft measures which are being implemented by the Russian Federation in connection with the disengagement of the foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq mainly to the North Caucasian region. Based on the balance between hard and soft measures, the complexity of the Russian approach is being assessed. The approach of the Russian Federation to the process of disengagement of the foreign fighters is varied on the federal and within the regional level as well. The federal level approach is strictly based on hard measures and involuntary disengagement of the returning foreign fighters. The regional level in cases of Chechnya, North Ossetia, Stavropol region and Karachay-Cherkessia is...

Between 2011 and 2019 around 900 British citizens left the United Kingdom to travel to Syria and join militant groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) (EPRS, 2018, p.33). After the fall of the so-called caliphate the issue of prosecuting and/or bringing citizens back was widely debated in Europe, especially in the UK, who was accused of taking a drastic measure to the dilemma, causing a political rift in the nation (NPR, 2019). At the center of the debate, both in the media and in parliament, was a young woman called Shamima Begum, who was deprived of her UK citizenship in 2019. This event lead to a debate on human rights and if Begum had had hers violated (The Times, 2019). Previous research has shown that the ethical media discourse on human rights is multifaced, contested and strong in its ability to incite certain worldviews in society (Sampaio, 2016, p.2). Furthermore, previous studies argue that women tend to be framed differently from men in the media when they are involved in conflict, terror or war (Sjöberg & Gentry, 2007, p.30). In addition to this, western media tends to use Muslim women as a symbol of difference by stereotyping them in terms of culture and religion (Brown, 2011, p.716). This study aims to trace the width and depth of UK media’s discourse on human rights issues and the debate on foreign fighters over the political spectrum, through the case of Shamima Begum. Building off of framing theory and previous research on the framing of females and Islam, it asks how the Guardian and the Times, two national British newspapers, prioritizes the aspect of human rights in their reporting on Begum’s case. This by asking what frames they construct and how these frames compare and differ between the two outlets and the years 2015 and 2019. The material, constituted by articles and images, was analyzed on the base of Critical Discourse Analysis and Framing theory. The results find four different frames used. These frames are the Naïve victim, the Imperfect victim, ISIS radicalisation and the Willing ISIS devotee. The frames propose opposite standpoints of the newspapers both in their view on Begum and her guilt, and ultimately her human rights, perhaps aligning their discourse with the polarized political one in the UK. The study also shows that aspects connected to Begum’s gender and religion to some extent are prioritized in the framing of her, ultimately affecting the view of her end her fundamental rights as a human being.

This study examines the framing of Syria fighters in Swedish newspapers during selected time periods of 2016 and 2017. Syria Fighters refer to individuals who travel to Syria to join the ongoing conflict, an occurrence commonly known as Foreign Fighters. Using framing analysis and framing theory the study finds that Syria fighters and their actions are framed mainly as problematic and as a negative social phenomenon. The study also makes a comparison to similar, previous research of Dutch and Flemish newspapers and finds clear similarities as well as differences.