JIHAD OR RE-INTEGRATION: PATHWAYS OF FOREIGN FIGHTERS AFTER WAR

Project Information

MPP

Grant agreement ID: 798392

DOI

10.3030/798392

Project closed

EC signature date 9 November 2018

Start date 2 September 2019

End date 1 September 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 165 598,80

EU contribution

€ 165 598,80

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MPP (JIHAD OR RE-INTEGRATION: PATHWAYS OF FOREIGN FIGHTERS AFTER WAR)

Reporting period: 2019-09-02 to 2021-09-01

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project analyzes pathways of foreign fighters in the aftermath of wars: why some choose between continued fighting and demobilization, and why some of the demobilized fighters integrate into society, while others go back to fighting. The aim is to examine the post-war trajectories of the foreign fighters who fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), and Croatia (1991-1995) on all the warring sides. Many observers acknowledge that the activities of foreign fighters tend to be recursive and that some of them who fought in Afghanistan or Bosnia in the 1990s re-appeared in Syria in 2011 as either the combatants, recruiters, or conduits for terrorist groups. Despite this observation, there is no adequate understanding nor explanation of why this is happening.

This project addresses this lack of knowledge through a comparative case study and the use of process tracing to analyze primary (personal biographies of foreign fighters and semi-structured interviews) and secondary sources (published books and articles by other authors). In the first stage, the project examines secondary sources and personal biographies of former fighters in order to identify the available data and determine the cohorts of foreign fighters. In the second stage, I aim to interview foreign fighters who fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. The project strives to shed light on the experience of foreign fighters as well as their motives and opportunities to either demobilize or pursue fighting elsewhere.

This project has far-reaching policy implications to help understand the behavior and ties of foreign fighters today, particularly in Europe’s courtyard. There are several hundred individuals who left for Syria to wage jihad on the side of ISIS, many of whom had already fought in the Yugoslav wars. There are also former fighters who have taken part in recruitment and support for ISIS. It is, therefore, imperative for long-term European security planning that a clear understanding exists regarding how to deal with foreign fighters, how to integrate them into the society, and how the EU can tackle radicalized foreign fighters in the most effective way. This project contributes to emerging debates on foreign fighters by providing a better understanding of the behavior of foreign fighters.

This project pursues several objectives. First, it develops an innovative theoretical framework to analyze the behavior of foreign fighters in the post-war setting by examining their different roles in militant organizations. The second aim is to shed more light on the behavior of foreign fighters who fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia: why some returned to civilian life and integrated into the host society, while others moved on to fight wars elsewhere. The final objective is to develop a number of policy recommendations to assist European policymakers in the integration of foreign fighters coming home from Iraq and Syria and tackling those who work with terrorist groups.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project has achieved most of its objectives and milestones for the period, with relatively minor deviations. The number of expected outcomes was exceeded. According to DoA, these objectives are broadly divided into research and training objectives.

Expected

Over the course of the project, the Fellow was expected to:

- Participate in research seminars at ISGA
- Conduct literature review on foreign fighters
- Establish contact with potential interlocutors in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo
- Prepare informed consent policy, incidental findings policy as well as data management plan (DMP) for conducting interviews in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo
- Make two open datasets on foreign fighters in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo
- Participate in and present at 1 conference
- Publish 2 popular articles about the project
- Prepare 2 articles for publication at peer-reviewed journals (one of which might be a book chapter) utilising results from the project
- Organize a workshop on the wider themes of the project

Realized:

- Participated in all research seminars at ISGA that were held every Monday until the pandemic started (months 1-7)
- Conducted literature review on foreign fighters (months 1-3)
- The contact was established with potential interlocutors in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (see below the reasons for the deviation).
Prepared informed consent policy, incidental findings policy as well as data management plan (DMP) for conducting interviews in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia
Due to the global pandemic, in-person fieldwork was not possible and a research assistant was hired to carry out interviews in Croatia. This work was successfully carried out and 25 interviews were collected from former foreign fighters who took part in the Croatian war (1991-1995). These interviews were transformed into open data and stored in Zenodo. For the Bosnian case, it was not possible to carry out similar work through a research assistant because nearly all of the former fighters returned to their home countries or elsewhere. While the research could not find the whereabouts of the former Mujahideen fighters, existing biographies, and reports on the Russian and Greek foreign fighters allowed for the creation of the Bosnian dataset, which is stored in Zenodo.
-Participated at an online American Political Science Association conference in September 2020. Several in-person conferences were canceled due to the pandemic.
- Published a blog piece on the role of foreign fighters in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia on the Leiden security and -global affairs blog (https://www.leidensecurityandglobalaffairs.nl/articles/pathways-of-foreign-fighters)
- Prepared a working theoretical paper on the influence of foreign fighters on insurgent cohesion on a global sample and submitted it to Terrorism and Political Violence for publication
- Published 3 peer-reviewed research articles. 1 co-authored peer-reviewed research article on determinants of Kosovo recognition published in Journal of Peace Research (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343320963382)
- 1 co-authored peer-reviewed research article on haram attacks accepted for publication in Comparative Politics (forthcoming)
- 1 single-authored peer-reviewed research article on the effect of bombing on electoral results accepted for publication in Journal of Peace Research (forthcoming).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This project advances the EU's long-standing aim of building its safe neighborhood by demonstrating how foreign fighters behave in the aftermath of civil wars: why some continue fighting in other wars while others go back to civilian life. The project offers novel empirical insights into how foreign fighters pursued different paths in two similar, post-conflict contexts (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia). The resulting research in the form of publications and open datasets helps policymakers in dealing with returning foreign fighters. from other conflicts. This project bridges theory and practice in dealing with policy-relevant security issues such as terrorism, transnational organized crime, and conflict resolution in war-torn regions.

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