Chechen diaspora members as foreign fighters in Syria and Ukraine: a diachronic study

ABSTRACT

Drawing on unique diachronic interviews, this article explores the self-reported willingness of Western Europe-based Chechen diaspora members to travel to Syria and Ukraine as foreign fighters. It posits that diaspora-centred ethno-cultural motives mirroring the Chechen master narratives – struggle for independence, victimization, and quest for revenge – drove Chechen radicalization in both Syria and Ukraine. Self-identifying with Syrians’ and Ukrainians’ plight, the respondents’ sense of victimization triggered their desire for revenge against Russia and its allies, whereas helping foreign anti-Russian war efforts was seen as the first step towards restoring Chechnya’s independence.

KEYWORDS:

• Chechen diaspora
• Radicalization
• Foreign fighters
• Syria
• Ukraine

Introduction

The Chechen diaspora communities in Western Europe are an important and puzzling case to investigate in the context of radicalization¹ and foreign fighting.² With the Chechen population estimated at about 1.8 million,³ ethnic Chechens have been overrepresented as a foreign fighting force in the Syrian Civil War, rating as the third largest ethnic group after 400 million Arabs and about 80 million Turks (Falkowski and Lang 2015). Estimates place the number of Chechens who left for Syria as high as four thousand, of which only about 15% mobilized from Chechnya (Arutunyan 2018; Suchkov 2017). Likewise, they established a significant presence amongst pro-Kyiv forces in Ukraine’s Donbass, with ‘several hundred’ volunteers organized in combat units, according to a Chechen recruit (Gauquelin 2022). The fact that this relatively small diaspora, consisting of between 130.000 and 190.000 individuals, has become the core source of the Chechen foreign fighting force has been overlooked (Williams 2015, 229; Laruelle 2017, 15; Kirilenko 2017).

Until today, only Wilhelmsen (2020) has discussed the social and relational drivers behind the mobilization of Chechens from the North Caucasus into the ranks of Syrian jihadi groups. According to the author, the radicalization of Chechen foreign fighters stems from two interrelated processes, namely the social exclusion of Chechens as a ‘dangerous’ element from the wider Russian society and the conceptual inclusion of Chechnya as part of the ‘global jihadi milieu.’ Importantly, this narrative has also taken root amongst the Chechen diaspora in Europe. As reported by the International Crisis Group (2021), several second-generation youngsters in Western Europe who had experienced a relational exclusion from their host societies felt drawn towards the communal milieu of the Islamic State (IS): ‘Ideologically, this group has much in common with people who followed similar paths in Russia.’

Although Wilhelmsen’s study shed light on the importance of collective narratives for the radicalization of young Chechens, it bears limitations that the present article seeks to overcome. First, the lack of primary source interviews prevented the author from investigating the ways in which collective narratives shape the radicalization of individual foreign fighters, with the consequence that the cognitive processes driving young Chechens to embrace violence remain empirically unexplored. Second, Wilhelmsen’s study heavily relies on the accounts of Chechen foreign fighters who already travelled to Syria, whilst neglecting to investigate the dynamics leading to the radicalization of those who are yet to become one. This difference is empirically and methodologically significant, as individuals who have already joined a jihadist group often attribute ideological or religious explanations to many of their otherwise earthbound life choices (Souleimanov and Colombo 2021).

Looking at the radicalization processes experienced by individuals who are yet to join an armed group, this article explores an important yet overlooked dimension of radicalization processes, demonstrating that foreign fighters may be motivated by different reasons from the ones that they refer to once recruited. This study is also the first in the empirical literature to explore the motives behind the cognitive radicalization of Western Europe-based Chechen diaspora members and their self-reported willingness to fight in Syria and Ukraine.

Although numerous journalistic reports provide anecdotal evidence on the participation of Chechen volunteers in both armed conflicts, they tend to portray the phenomenon through the prism of religious motivations, particularly in the case of the Syrian Civil War. This coincides with religiously centred explanations that have become mainstream in Western reporting (Byman 2019; Fainberg 2017). Of the few existing studies dealing with ethnic community-centred radicalization, most have investigated the role of religion (Sirseloudi 2012) or the general characteristics and profiles of foreign fighters (Shtuni 2015).

To address these shortcomings, this article offers the first empirical investigation of self-reported motivations towards foreign fighting amongst members of the Western European Chechen diaspora. The sample draws on a total of 44 in-depth interviews, 33 of which were carried out with cognitively radicalized diasporic Chechens who expressed a strong willingness to fight in Syria and Ukraine. This interview material, albeit small-scale, is unique as it draws on seven years of meticulously collected fine-grain data. It contributes to filling a gap in the existing literature on radicalization that suffers from a lack of primary source interview material (Schuurman 2020). It also highlights the importance of diaspora-centred ethno-cultural motives – an aspect that has been neglected in previous research on ‘Muslim’ radicalization. As will be demonstrated by the analysis of Chechen master narratives, the wish to become foreign fighters among this group is rooted in a specific ethno-cultural discourse. The motives for radicalization and travelling to Syria and Ukraine duplicate master narratives dominant in Chechnya, namely a strive for ethnic independence, feelings of victimization, and desire for revenge.

The article proceeds as follows. In the first section, we elaborate on the concepts of radicalization and foreign fighting, providing a critical review of previous research on the motivational factors for radicalization. Next, we conceptualize ethno-cultural motives as an under-researched pathway to radicalization. The subsequent section discusses data and methods. The empirical section consists of two parts. In the first part, Chechen master narratives are identified and assessed. In the second part, the three main motives for foreign fighter radicalization are presented and analysed. The concluding discussion summarizes the findings and their implications.

Typologies of radicalization

The extant literature on terrorism and foreign fighting distinguishes between two main dimensions of radicalization. Cognitive radizalisation refers to ‘the social and psychological process of incrementally experienced commitment to extremist political or religious ideology, which typically occurs when individuals show support for terrorist acts or radical groups’ (Horgan 2009, 152). Behavioural radicalization focuses on the steps and initiatives undertaken by individuals committing or taking part in acts of violent extremism (Wolfowicz et al. 2021, 4).

Although cognitive radicalization is often believed to precede acts of radical violence, the two processes can occur at different times, and one is not necessarily the outcome of the other. In their seminal study on radicalization patterns, McCauley and Moskalenko (2017) put forward a typology model of radicalization, the Two Pyramids Model, in which cognitive and behavioural processes are treated as two separate forms of radicalization. Drawing upon interview material with Swedish jihadist foreign fighters, Nilsson (2021, 189) argued that cognitive radicalization may also occur through processes of behavioural radicalization, especially when new recruits are pressured to ‘change cognitions about the effects or meaning of [their] actions’ to come to terms with the beliefs and ideas endorsed by their comrades-in-arms.

Behavioural and cognitive processes are equally relevant for the study of radicalization. Yet, the scholarship has thus far overwhelmingly focused on the former whilst largely neglecting the latter. In reviewing the existing literature on radicalization and violent extremism, Vergani et al. (2020) find that less than one-quarter of studies discuss cognitive radicalization. These findings echo Neumann’s (2013, 880) call for research into the cognitive dimension of radicalization, which is arguably far less understood than many ‘well-documented’ aspects of behavioural radicalization. Below, we provide an overview of the three main narratives advanced in studies discussing the cognitive radicalization of foreign fighters.

Religious-ideological grievances

Motives most referred to in studies on radicalization are those of religious or ideological nature. Scholars point out that many radicalized Muslims give religion as reason, or even moral obligation, to take up arms (Juergensmeyer 2005; Wiktorowicz 2005). Sageman (2011) notes that radicalized Muslims frequently describe themselves as protectors of the ummah against non-Muslim aggression. Furthermore, many are convinced that a war against Islam is not only being waged militarily in the Muslim world (Van San 2015), but also in their host-countries where the Muslim faith and way of life are perceived as threatened. Such developments can cause feelings of humiliation and anger, which may lead to individuals joining radical Islamist milieus or groups where violence is considered a legitimate tool (Slootman and Tillie 2006; Van San 2015).

Socio-economic and political grievances

The issue of socio-economic and political grievances is largely inter-related with the previous category. Socio-economic grievances concern the real and perceived socio-economic deprivation of immigrant youngsters relative to their native peers and are a critical motivating factor for engagement in violent extremism (Sageman 2011). Studies highlight that, amongst European Muslims who have been involved in political violence, members from lower-income families are overrepresented (Coolsaet 2015, 2016; Bakker 2011, 140).

With regards to political grievances, the perception of inappropriate foreign policy choices towards the Muslim World, misdirected or abused anti-terrorism legislation in the host-country, and discrimination by law enforcement are considered to fuel radicalization (Nesser 2006; Slootman and Tillie 2006). Directly linked to the present study, Falkowski and Lang (2015) find that, in post-Soviet states, local authoritarian regimes often repress communities based on religious or cultural traits. This discrimination has important effects on radicalization processes by creating a social basis for future recruits. The compelling desire to support the local population exposed to the brutality of infidel or ‘renegade’ Muslim regimes, sometimes associated with the regimes of their host countries, is another frequent motive mentioned by (prospective) foreign fighters (Zelin 2015; Bakker and de Bont 2016).

Personal grievances

In some cases, the decision or willingness to join a distant war is affected by people’s unhappiness with their personal lives. Leaving the old and ‘sinful’ life behind for a deeply meaningful project with divine overtones (i.e., establishing the caliphate) can appear as an attractive endeavour to individuals who are thirsty for change. Personal grievances are closely connected with the socio-economic and political factors discussed above. One notable combination of socio-economic and personal grievances is Nesser’s (2006) notion of ‘social relative deprivation’, which describes how ‘young Muslim immigrants’ become progressively alienated from the host society because of discrimination. Likewise, Slootman and Tillie (2006, 71) find that radicalization among Muslims in Amsterdam is ‘on the one hand a means to satisfy the demand for justice in a situation of (perceived) discrimination, and on the other an answer for the need for belonging and identity.’

Along similar lines, identity-uncertainty theory postulates that uncertainties about one’s identity and the resulting lack of life-embeddedness can prompt individuals to join radical groups to abate these feelings (Lindekilde et al. 2016; Bjørgo 2009). A different strand of research shows that such personal-level motives, such as sensation-seeking, the sense of communal belonging, and being part of a brotherhood are important contributing factors leading to the violent mobilization of foreign fighters (Nussio 2020; Dawson and Amarasingam 2017; Bakker and de Bont 2016).

This debate, which draws upon the literature on conflicting ethno-national and religious identity building processes amongst Western Muslims, illustrates the diversity of potential motives for foreign fighting, emphasizing the role of life uncertainties in the radicalization of Muslim youngsters (Cesari 2007; Maliepaard et al. 2010; Voas and Fleischmann 2012). Nonetheless, little is known about the ways in which ethno-cultural motives shape the patterns of cognitive radicalization. The next section discusses the role of ethno-cultural motives as a pathway to cognitive radicalization, thereby providing a new perspective into largely overlooked dynamics conductive to foreign fighting.

Conceptualizing ethno-cultural grievances in cognitive radicalization processes

Described by Varshney (2009, 277) as a ‘sense of collective belonging … based on common descent, language, history, culture, race, or religion (or some combination of these),’ ethno-cultural identity has long been recognized as a fundamental factor leading to violent mobilization. In his seminal book on ethnic groups in conflict, Horowitz (1985, 89) argues that ethnicity constitutes a distinct cause of warfare that should not be lumped together with other drivers of violence: ‘Ethnic identity is not just a mask for social class conflict … [and] ethnic affiliations are not just a convenient vehicle by which elites satisfy their own class aspirations.’ Byman (1998, 156) further explores the composition and behavioural patterns of ethnic terrorist groups, contending that the quest for identity creation ‘often is the primary reason that culturally aware individuals become terrorists.’ Similarly, drawing upon interviews carried out with more than two thousand jihadist foreign fighters, Venhaus (2010, 8) finds that the largest percentage of interviewees could be described as ‘identity seekers’ driven to violence by the need to understand ‘who they are, why they matter, and what their role in the world should be.’ Given the salience of ethno-cultural grievances for the processes of violent mobilization, it comes as surprising that the same factor has not received an equal appreciation in the literature on radicalization and foreign fighting.

A strong desire for independence feeds into the dynamics of ethno-cultural radicalization. Aware of their community’s yearning for ethnic independence, some individuals may legitimize extremist agendas to resist cultural assimilation. For instance, in Kashmir, the strive for secession provided fertile ground for jihadist narratives to take hold, with many youngsters embracing jihad to oppose the Indian occupation. As recalled by a former jihadi, the desire to ‘liberate Kashmir’ was a key motivational factor for seeking membership in militant groups (Zahid 2018, 6). In the separatist region of Bangsamoro, southern Philippines, jihadi groups have capitalized on the locals’ desire for independence to attract recruits. As testified in a statement by Salamat Hashim, founder of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the concept of jihad was closely interlinked with the local population’s desire for ethno-cultural independence: ‘Given the ever-worsening and depressing conditions that had befallen our community for more than a decade, all our endeavours and efforts to defend our religion, the dignity of the Bangsamoro people, and to regain our legitimate rights to self-determination fall squarely within the category of jihad’ (Galsim 2021, 31). The desire for independence can also motivate foreign fighters. This was the case of ethnic Uyghurs who, from their home region of Xinyang, in north-west China, travelled to Syria. As explained by a militant, the determination to fight for the ethno-cultural survival of the Uyghur nation was a primary driver of radicalization and foreign fighting: ‘We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was … We just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China’ (Shih 2017).

The feeling of belonging to a community that is victimized based on its cultural, ethnic, or religious identity is another prominent ethno-cultural motive of cognitive radicalization. In societies where concepts of male honour and warrior ethos are deeply ingrained in the local socio-cultural milieu, young men may feel incentivized to perceive violence as a legitimate and rightful response to humiliations or affronts inflicted upon their communities. Drawing upon interviews with several former Indonesian jihadists, Duriesmith and Ismail (2019, 151) find that cultural expectations of masculinity were key drivers of radicalization across the region: ‘The tradition of the Javanese warrior … is deeply entwined in the cultural vernacular of manhood in contemporary Indonesia … the notion of being an Islamic warrior and jago [strong man] resonates deeply with Betawi identity.’ As remarked by the comment of a former member of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian jihadist group, the cultural valorization of men as combatants against oppression is powerful and attractive for local young men: ‘My blood boiled to see the brutality of the enemy of Islam attacking our women and children. I believed I must defend the weak against those bullies’ (Duriesmith and Ismail 2022, 11).

In other cases, the process of internalizing extremist ideologies is a product of culturally driven responses to personal insults, affronts, or threats. In societies where honour validates social status, individuals who fail to defend their family’s reputation by taking revenge against the perceived culprit incur in severe social sanctions (Pitt-Rivers 1968). In such situations, individuals may seek revenge irrespective of their political or ideological attitudes. Across the tribal areas of Yemen, the ranks of local jihadi groups have been swelled by apolitical tribesmen seeking to avenge their relatives killed in U.S. drone strikes. As explained by a Yemeni activist, ‘There is a new generation of brothers within [the local Al-Qaeda-affiliate known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,] AQAP. It consists of brothers – mostly – of those who were killed by U.S. drones’ (Middle East Eye 2015). In these cases, the trigger of radicalization is ethno-cultural, for it is only after joining a militant unit that the avenger embraces jihad as a legitimate pathway to social change.

These findings bear important implications for our understanding of cognitive radicalization processes. Although ideological and political attitudes are amongst the most cited causes of foreign fighting, many radicalized individuals come to embrace extremist principles for reasons that have little to do with militant groups and their agendas. In bringing ethno-cultural motives to the fore of the literature on radicalization and foreign fighting, we contribute to the extant scholarship by exploring a largely misunderstood dimension of cognitive radicalization processes, at the benefit for both scholars and practitioners designing programs aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism.

Data and methods

Participants in this study were second-generation members of Chechen diaspora communities in Western European countries, and one of a Central European country, who expressed a strong interest in joining the conflict in Syria and Ukraine.⁴ Similarly to other ethnic diasporas, second-generation Chechen migrants retain their cultural heritage through their family members, whose understanding of cultural norms is ‘frozen at the time when they emigrated from their country of origin’ (Giguère et al. 2010, 16). This is particularly the case for first-generation Chechen migrants, who are often adamant about passing on their cultural identity to younger family members. As explained by a member of a Europe-based Chechen community, succeeding in transmitting cultural ideas of ‘Chechenness’ to children and grandchildren is a source of pride: ‘I was afraid that he [his grandson] will not become “boersh” [a true Chechen man] … Now, I am calm. I taught him how to be a Chechen and I am proud of it’ (Iliyasov 2021, 7). The attachment of older family members to the cultural values of their homeland has greatly contributed to maintaining concepts of Chechen etiquette intact amongst second-generation migrants.

Over the years, a notable share of interviewees attempted or did leave to join armed groups in Syria or Ukraine. Many of those who did not travel experienced some complications, such as needing to look after sick relatives or due to a strong parental objection. Additionally, a few cognitively radicalized individuals who travelled to Syria and Ukraine found themselves incapable of reaching the battlefield, either due to financial issues, inability to cross the border of Turkey to Syria or Poland to Ukraine, or because they were apprehended by law enforcement.⁵ In 2014, the war in Ukraine’s Donbas broke out. Reflecting news on the involvement of Chechens in a new armed conflict, a new round of interviews was carried out with Chechens interested in joining the fighting in this area. This dual focus, covering similarities and differences in motives for participation in these two conflicts, gives the study’s empirical material a unique diachronic character. It also explains why the fieldwork was broken down into three periods.

The first round of interviews was carried out between September 2012 and May 2014. To ascertain the attitudes of young diaspora Chechens to the ongoing war in Syria, the leading author carried out semi-structured interviews with 24 Chechen males aged from 18 to 28 and based in several European cities. Between September 2014 and August 2016, the same researcher carried out a second round of semi-structured interviews with most of the same respondents (n18) predominantly via internet communicators, but also in person. He also conducted predominantly face-to-face interviews with a group of new interviewees (n9) of similar age and social composition. These additional Chechen males were aged between 17 to 26.⁶ The goal of this second series of interviews was to ascertain the attitudes of young second-generation diasporic Chechens to the armed conflict in Donbas. In total, 33 persons were interviewed.

In the period of May 2017 to June 2019, a third series of mostly remote semi-structured interviews was carried out with some of the same respondents (n18). As several (n6) left for Syria or Ukraine, interviews were carried out with their relatives and friends instead (n11). Interviewing friends and relatives provides an additional avenue for disclosing valuable information regarding the dynamics leading to radicalization amongst foreign fighters. As argued by Speckhard (2009, 200), talking with this pool of interviewees can ‘help us to learn about how they [terrorists and foreign fighters] entered the terrorist trajectory, what motivated them along it, and how they acted and spoke leading up to their last moments [before embracing violence].’ Accordingly, recent studies on foreign fighting draw upon interviews with friends and relatives to shed light on the radicalization processes of foreign fighters (Weggemans et al. 2014; Jørgensen 2023). The purpose of the third round of interviews was to ascertain whether the radicalization in previously interviewed individuals persisted or not, and why they decided to stay in their host countries or to travel abroad.⁷ A total of 44 interviews were carried out between September 2012 and June 2019. A remarkable 85% (23 out of the remaining 27)⁸ of those initially willing to travel to Syria subsequently expressed a desire to travel to Ukraine.

Different gatekeepers were used to ensure that the pool of interviewees was not confined to a limited network of individuals knowledgeable of each other. Except for two respondents, all interviewees consented to be interviewed on the condition of strict confidentiality. Their main concern was the growing sensitivity of the topic, as Europe’s Chechens, according to the interviewees, found themselves under increased monitoring by intelligence services. This study provides no information that might compromise their identities and locations, thereby using randomized pseudonyms when referring to participants.

The limited number of respondents makes this exploratory article far from representative for a general study of radicalization. Nor it claims to cover all possible pathways to radicalization and foreign fighting followed by Chechens in Europe. Some do indeed embrace IS’s ideological fanaticism, as testified by the arrest by Belgian authorities in May 2023 of seven Chechen IS supporters who were plotting a terrorist attack (Rose 2023), or find in nationalist narratives the reason for mobilization, as it was the case of dozens of Europe-based Chechens who volunteered to fight the Russians in Ukraine under the banners of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (Feng and Malofieieva 2022; Ponomareva 2023). However, the sample comes close to reflecting the general characteristics of foreign fighters from Europe-based Chechen diaspora communities, as well as the larger pool of Muslim volunteers fighting abroad, as these are predominantly young men aged between 18 and 28 (Barrett 2014). In this sense, the current sample contributes to the existing literature.

Although the use of primary source data in the field of terrorism studies registered a notable increase between 2007 and 2016, with almost 54% of articles using ‘some kind of first-hand data,’ only about one-third of these are based on interviews with (prospective) terrorists or their friends and close relatives (Schuurman 2020, 1020). There is an acknowledged problem with access to relevant interviewees in the field of radicalization and terrorism studies, which has often relied in the past on secondary sources of dubious quality (Sageman 2014; Neumann 2015; Schuurman 2019). Those studies that do use interview material investigate the dynamics of home-grown terrorism or foreign fighting in single countries, like Belgium and the Netherlands (Van San 2015), or cities, such as Amsterdam (Slootman and Tillie 2006). This diachronic study offers new insights extrapolated from primary source data collected from members of a group largely absent in the literature.

Setting the ethno-cultural landscape: master narratives in the Chechen national context

Master narratives are ‘coherent system[s] of interrelated and sequentially organized stories’ impacting the ways in which cultural identities are constructed and communicated (Halverson et al. 2011, 14). Functional to socialization processes, master narratives provide a ‘master truth’ that underpins culturally informed social scripts on ‘how to be a “good” member of a culture’ (McLean and Syed 2016, 320).

The desire to belong to one’s culture exercises a powerful influence over the ways in which individuals perceive themselves. As argued by Fivush et al. (2019, 157), ‘how individuals narrate their personal experiences is constructed in sociocultural contexts, and these narrative forms come to define individual experience.’ The extant literature points to three interlinked central themes in the Chechen master narratives: an age-old struggle for independence, victimization, and quest for revenge (Gammer 2006; Layton 2014; Iliyasov 2018; Williams 2000; Robbins and Sigal 1997, 27). These are closely interwoven: a history of resistance spanning centuries generated victimization at the hands of the Russian state(s), which feeds into the Chechens’ desire for revenge, while making their commitment to acquiring independence stronger.

Struggle for independence

‘The Chechen movement and its struggle for independence were much more deeply embedded in a cultural fabric of struggle and resistance than a few pictures can capture,’ Johnston (2008, 324) states. From the late 18^th century until the mid-19^th, cyclical popular revolts took place against the Russian colonization of the North Caucasus. These revolts came to be known as the Greater Caucasus Wars, some of the longest and deadliest in Russia’s history (Blanch 2015). With Russian imperial armies holding sway over the region in the early 1860s, uprisings – all bloodily suppressed by Tsarist and Soviet authorities – recurred periodically in this restless frontier. In 1944, on the pretext of collaboration with advancing Nazi armies, the entire Chechen population – roughly between 350.000 and 400.000 people according to various estimates – was deported to Central Asia and only allowed to return in the late 1950s (Williams 2000, 110).

The long-simmering resentment towards the Soviet authorities for the sufferings inflicted during the deportation surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse. As Gall and De Wall (1997, 74) explain in their monograph on the history of Chechnya, in 1989, the collective memory of past sufferings was ‘the most emotive element in a rich brew of nationalism as the Chechens started to invent themselves as a nation.’ With the Communist Party’s nomenklatura overthrown, in November 1991, the newly elected president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, issued a statement ‘declaring the Chechen Republic to be a fully independent state’ (Dunlop 1998, 115). When attempts aimed at co-opting or ousting Dudayev failed, the Kremlin staged a direct military intervention. In December 1996, a nearly 40.000 strong mechanized invasion force crossed the Chechen border. What was expected to be a ‘bloodless blitzkrieg’ quickly turned into a quagmire for the Russians, who retreated in August 1996 (Lapidus 1998, 20).

After a brief two-year-long intermezzo, in October 1999, a reorganized Russian force counting about 100.000 men invaded Chechnya, this time defeating the Chechens’ regular forces. Since then, Chechnya has turned into a tinderbox of low-level insurgent activity, as well as a recruiting ground for jihadi networks. As argued by Akhmadov and Lanskoy (2010, 235), ‘the conflict has not ended. It regenerates itself and mutates,’ driven by the dream of independence for some, and the allure of a Caucasus Emirate for others.

Campana (2009) describes how Chechen political mythology, as she calls it, depicts Chechens as an untamed nation of resolute fighters who heroically defend their freedom, the most important self-ascribed value for the Chechen nation. The legendary figures of Sheikh Mansour and other rebel leaders have come to symbolize the ‘400-year resistance’ of the small Chechen people to the ‘Russian colonial yoke’ (Jaimoukha 2004, 23–39). The deeds of anti-colonial heroes of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, known as abreks, are recalled in countless songs, accounts, and legends to this day. Complementing this theme is the Chechens’ exclusivist self-representation, embedded in the Chechen ethno-nationalist narrative, as a nation of tough highlanders with a ‘warrior soul’ (Colombo and Souleimanov 2022, 66).

A recent ethnographic study of Europe’s Chechen diaspora emphasizes resistance and the quest for independence as two of the fundamental master narratives. According to Iliyasov’s (2018, 10) respondents, ‘Chechens need freedom. A Chechen and freedom are synonyms […] We will be free only if we have our own independent state […] This is the ultimate goal of the Russians […] They always wanted to turn us into those “Ivans”, because they want to make an army of mankurts [slaves, who do not recognize themselves as human beings] out of us.’

Victimization

The victimization narrative is centred on the notion of Russians as Chechens’ historical enemy and a major threat to the Chechens’ identity and survival as a nation. As a Chechen political scientist summarized, for centuries, ‘the Chechens were not only deprived of their lives, but of their homeland [because of their fierce struggle for independence]. Killed, raped, humiliated […] We’ve suffered so many wrongs as a people, it’s impossible to express.’⁹ The post-Soviet Russian-Chechen wars saw the widespread destruction of Chechnya’s territory, as well as the loss of at least 50.000 civilian lives (Zürcher 2007, 70). This enormous human toll was caused by Russia’s deployment of indiscriminate violence, as well as by pro-Moscow Chechen paramilitary units, Kadyrovtsy, whose atrocities against the insurgents’ relatives and sympathizers forced thousands to seek political asylum in Europe (Gilligan 2009; Sugaipova and Wilhelmsen 2021).

Accordingly, the sense of victimization is particularly strong amongst Chechen émigré communities. As reported by Iliyasov (2018, 486) in his study on the perception of ethnic identity amongst members of Chechen diaspora communities in Europe, informants often associated the current pro-Russian Chechen government to a Stalinist regime prone to terrorize ‘everyone, even children, women, and old people.’ This reflects a known fact in the literature, that romanticized ethno-nationalist self-perceptions are often the strongest amongst ethnic diaspora communities (Mannur 2007; Sorenson 1996). A recurring theme in the works of Chechen intellectuals (Avtorkhanov 1992; Akhmadov and Lanskoy 2010), feelings of victimization have been omnipresent in the testimonies of respondents interviewed by the leading author since the early 2000s.

Quest for revenge

The custom of blood revenge endures in Chechnya. An integral part of the local culture of honour, it requires males to exact revenge for grave wrongdoings suffered by themselves or their kinsmen, including murder, rape, abuses and insults. As Iliyasov (2019) observes in his ethnographic study of Chechen diaspora’s reproductive patterns, the current push to have as many children (particularly sons) as possible is primarily explained by the necessity to produce the manpower necessary to face Russia in a future war of ‘revenge.’ Intriguingly, the quest for revenge was present in ‘old’ Chechen diaspora communities across the Middle East even before the First World War, with many diasporic Chechens having returned to their native homeland to partake in the Russian-Chechen wars (Koinova 2011).

Recent research shows that the wish to avenge injured and killed relatives, destroyed property, and deeds associated with dishonour seem to overshadow any other political motivation in this respect (Souleimanov et al. 2023). Throughout the wars, blood revenge motivated hundreds of Chechens to take up arms to avenge the injustices inflicted by the Russians (Souleimanov and Aliyev 2015). Accordingly, this master narrative legitimizes retaliatory violence as an inescapable response to the oral histories of suffering within Chechen families – stories that often date back to as early as the 19^th century (Jonson 2001). As summarized by Huseyn (19), ‘revenge [against Russia] is inevitable. Otherwise, we would lose our honour and cease being Chechens. This is our tradition, our values. As long as our homeland is under occupation and the blood of our relatives and ancestors is not avenged, we cannot have a good night’s sleep.’ Importantly, as the following section demonstrates, many respondents have regarded it as a potent trigger of retaliatory violence.

Empirical analysis

Interviewees identified a range of motives for seeking engagement in foreign battlefields. Among the most frequently mentioned are the combination of war thrill, warrior ethos, and the sense of belonging to a community of fellow fighters. This line of reasoning can be traced to the Chechens’ self-perceived tradition of resistance, highlander honour, and soldier fraternity. In the respondents’ understanding, their self-esteem as ‘true Chechens’ would increase after travelling to foreign battlefields in continuation of their forefathers’ revered tradition of resistance.

These self-reported motives were often imbued with nationalist overtones: the respondents expressed the need to demonstrate to the ‘rest of the world’ the prowess of Chechens as ‘inborn fighters’. While these motives are implicitly present in the three major explanations of radicalization presented, they are not explicitly detailed to yield space for a nuanced exploration of the master narratives of independence, victimization, and revenge that dominated the interviews. No grievances against host countries as motives for violent mobilization were reported, testifying to the participants’ gratitude towards Western countries for sheltering them as refugees.

Independence: Islamic caliphate and Ukrainian independence as a first step for liberating Chechnya

Most interviewees – including religiously-leaning individuals – linked the prospect of establishing an Islamic theocracy in Syria to the idea of liberating Chechnya. For them, consolidating the Islamic State was seen as the necessary precondition to reignite the North Caucasian insurgency. Even interviewees who admitted that they would be willing to join Syrian jihadist groups explained that Chechnya would benefit from their actions in Syria ‘sometime in the future’.

Interviewees tended to associate the regime of President Bashar Assad with Russian interests, citing media reports indicating the Russians’ military involvement in the Syrian civil war. According to a respondent, ‘we should start somewhere. Today we engage the Russians in Syria, tomorrow we will engage them in front of the Kremlin…’ (Suleyman, 21). Indeed, some interviewees referred to the warlike statements made by the leaders of the Islamic State towards Moscow. They also highlighted the Chechens’ strong standing in the hierarchy of the Islamic State and other jihadist groups as a factor increasing the likelihood for these groups to redirect their attention to the North Caucasus, ‘once the war in Syria is over’ (Akhmad, 19). According to some interviewees, Russia’s ongoing military engagement in Syria may serve this goal of uniting local jihadist groups against their common enemy. Seen from this perspective, the ‘Syrian jihad’ offers to Chechen fighters the possibility of establishing contacts necessary for reclaiming Chechnya; acquiring necessary training and skills; and aiding a population that may support the Chechen cause in the future.

While respondents almost exclusively mentioned Syria as an important anti-Russian battlefield during the first round of interviews, they increasingly referred to the Donbas conflict during the second. As one interviewee put it, ‘Ukraine is the key to breaking Russian expansionism. If Russia breaks its teeth in there, we still have a chance […] Then, we can eventually liberate the Caucasus’ (Alikhan, 26). A statement of a Chechen fighter engaged in pro-Kyiv units fighting in eastern Ukraine encapsulates a position that was widespread among the respondents as they began questioning their prior intention to travel to Syria:

Why are Chechens fighting for ISIS, why are they fighting against Kurds who have never done us any wrong? […] That is not a Chechen war. This, here in Ukraine, is a war for Chechens. If we defeat Russia here, we are closer to freeing our homeland. (Walker 2015)

Isa Munayev, a Chechen refugee from Denmark who fought alongside pro-regime armed forces in Donbas as a rebel leader before being killed in 2015, spoke of ‘[t]he fight of the Ukrainian people against imperial Russia’ as ‘part of our common struggle for the decolonization of the Caucasus; we decided to express our support’ (Vatchagaev 2014). Importantly, several Chechens previously involved in Syria-based jihadist groups moved to eastern Ukraine to fight the Russians (Mamon 2015). Interviewed by a Russian journalist, several Chechen jihadists who had moved from Syria to Ukraine explained that their primary motivation was to fight the Russian invader, ‘who occupies our country, Ichkeria [Chechnya]’ (Nemtsova 2017). These same fighters lamented the Ukrainian authorities’ unwillingness to allow Syria-based Chechen fighters to move to eastern Ukraine, which may also explain why the ethnic-Chechen jihadists from the Middle East number in dozens, not in hundreds (Nemtsova 2017).

Along these lines, the Chechens’ engagement in the Donbas war was seen as an important step to deter Russian expansionism. ‘To ultimately beat Russia, you cannot let it occupy Ukraine. It is critical,’ summarized Mairbek (27). Some respondents highlighted the strategic rationale for the Chechens to support Ukrainians instead of ‘distant’ Syrians; after all, Ukraine was closer to Chechnya and Russia’s failure in Donbas was due to have a more immediate impact in Chechnya. According to Isa (28), ‘those fighting alongside our Ukrainian brethren are doing the right thing for the Chechen people. While I cannot criticize our boys travelling to Syria, I hope they would go to Ukraine instead.’

Victimization: help fellow victims of Russian aggression

Support to fellow Sunni Muslims in Syria caught in the misery of war featured prominently in the respondents’ explanations of their willingness to fight in the Middle East. This was a recurrent theme in the testimonies, with several respondents referencing the plight of people inhumanely targeted by the Assad forces and its allies. According to Suleyman (21), ‘as Muslims and Chechens, we cannot stay away and observe the suffering of our [Muslim] brethren … It is natural for Chechens to step in and help the weak, a brother … We have always done so in our history.’ Interestingly, most interviewees likened the brutal practices deployed by the Assad regime to those of Russia during the Russian-Chechen Wars. As an interviewee put it, ‘nowadays, Syrians are going through what we went through years ago. When we were dying, nobody gave us a helping hand. We cannot just stand by and watch how the Russians are killing innocent civilians […] It is not normal for us [Chechens]’ (Idris, 23). Likewise, interviewees often associated the Assad regime with the current pro-Moscow regime in Chechnya, comparing the ‘Syrian butcher’ Assad with Moscow’s ‘Chechen puppet,’ Ramzan Kadyrov.

Familial stories of wartime plight, backed by references to the victimization of the Chechen people during the ‘centuries of Russian oppression,’ were also mentioned. For example, one respondent frequently mentioned his grandfather’s narrations of plight and suffering that, passed on from generation to generation, evoked his moral responsibility to seek revenge to ‘remain a true Chechen.’ According to this culturalist line of thought, which was common amongst respondents, being a victim imposes on Chechens the compelling obligation to take up arms to ‘wash off’ family and ethnic wounds of honour, instead of just complaining.

During the interviews centred on the Eastern Ukraine war, Chechens willing to fight against Russian-backed separatists mentioned similar humanitarian motivations. Interviewees seeking to travel to Donbas referred to the suffering of the local population at the hands of Russia’s ‘imperialism’: ‘Ukrainians are being killed today the way our people have been killed for years. Russian imperialism devours people of all religions, ethnicities, and races’ (Khanpasha, 27). Only three interviewees expressed strong preference as to whether to join anti-Assad or anti-rebel forces in Ukraine, while most of them coalesced over the human suffering worthy of their support. Importantly, for most respondents, the religious identity of the local population did not play a decisive role in their willingness to join either war effort.

Revenge: ‘do the Jihad where you can’ to fight the Russians

Participants were selected due to their intention to become foreign fighters. Yet, most of them wished they could travel to Chechnya to fight the Russians and their Chechen ‘collaborators.’ Having spent most of their lives in ‘honourable exile’ in Western European cities, as one interviewee put it, interviewees were marked by a deep sense of injustice inflicted by Russia’s occupation of Chechnya, resultant large-scale violence against civilians, and their flight from their homeland. Many grounded their negative attitudes towards Russia in their family stories of wartime plight and discrimination. Mironova (2019) reports that, in Syria, Chechens tended to build their own mono-ethnic units and that they frequently clashed with their commanders because they were primarily interested in fighting against Russians, not other groups.

The obligation of seeking blood revenge was another prominent feature in the accounts of cognitively radicalized participants. As summarized by Huseyn (19), ‘to restore injustice, honour … you have to retaliate [against the culprit]. This is part of who we are as Chechens.’ Some respondents expressed deep frustration over the injustice inflicted upon their parents and grandparents and the pressing need to retaliate for their sake; not least to ‘remain Chechens’. In fact, almost all interviewees had experienced some sort of offence or humiliation because of Russia’s wars in Chechnya that they were neither willing nor capable of forgiving.

Yet, with the insurgency in Chechnya suppressed, interviewees related to Syria and Ukraine as the two principal battlefields where fighting the Russians and their allies was both feasible and legitimate. Having projected their own victimization – as individuals, members of families, and ethnic Chechens – to Syrian and Ukrainian fellow civilians, respondents involved the latter’s sufferings in their retaliation agenda. As summarized by an interviewee, ‘we cannot fight Russians in Chechnya […] we have to fight them elsewhere. The bottom line, we have to fight and avenge ourselves and other brethren [in Syria or Ukraine]’ (Akhmad, 19).

Interviewees made frequent use of the term jihad, referring to both the Syrian civil war and the Donbas war; ethno-culturally anchored anti-Russian sentiments were interlinked with both narratives of personal revenge and religiously laden terminology. Both terms – jihad and revenge – were used nearly interchangeably. This reveals the rather non-theological connotation of the word jihad (or gazavat, in Chechen), which was used as a term for ‘just war’ rather than ‘holy war.’ In the interviewees’ understanding, any war effort aimed against Russia or Russia’s interests – or a war for a righteous objective, regardless of religious connotations – equalled to jihad. This might be related to the tradition of anti-colonial – and largely Islamic-inspired – rebellions against Russian imperial thrust referenced commonly as jihad.

Conclusion

This article theorized and empirically demonstrated that cognitively radicalized members of the Europe-based Chechen diaspora sought to become foreign fighters in Syria and Ukraine due to three main motives: independence, victimization, and revenge. All derived from – in fact mirroring – Chechen master narratives, these motives were centred around the core notions of Russia as a historical archenemy, a source of suffering, and the main target of blood revenge (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Ethno-cultural grievances as drivers of radicalization and foreign fighting within the Chechen diaspora of Western Europe.

Religious motivations were rarely mentioned by participants as motivational drivers of radicalization and foreign fighting. Despite the widespread use of religious jargon, motivations for joining both conflicts – even for religiously-leaning respondents – were rather secular and, at times, nationalistic. For example, the term jihad was frequently used while referring to both the Syrian and Ukrainian wars, for respondents used it as a synonym for just war, as their fathers and grandfathers did throughout the 1990s (Wilhelmsen 2005). The establishment of a caliphate in Syria and the idea of boosting Ukrainian independence were both mentioned as necessary preconditions for liberating Chechnya from Russian occupation.

Conceptually, this article has shown that religious identity – or concomitant grievances stemming from the West’s alleged mistreatment of the ‘Muslim Diaspora’ – may not be the only driver of radicalization. Ethno-cultural motives can play an equally important role in cognitive radicalization processes. For most respondents, it did not make much difference whether the war in Syria was part of a ‘global jihad’ while the one in Ukraine was not. Their radicalization is interlinked with the spillover from the conflict in their land of origin and a result of their belonging, as second-generation immigrants, to an ethno-cultural community with strongly articulated master narratives.

These findings suggest that individuals might be radicalized by different motives than those they admit when they become full-fledged members of extremist groups. Rather, they may embrace extremist ideologies and self-ascribe to the ‘grievance agenda’ of such groups much later after their initial cognitive opening. These considerations point towards the need for further cross-case research into ethno-cultural motives of cognitive radicalization – an effort of timely concern, given the pressing need to optimize programs aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism. A more culturally informed understanding of ethnic diaspora-level motivations might help answer the critical question of why radicalized individuals seek to fight at home, as home-grown terrorists, or abroad, as foreign fighters.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emil A. Souleimanov

Emil A. Souleimanov is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University.

Roberto Colombo

Roberto Colombo is a doctoral researcher in Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow.

Notes

1. While the definition of radicalization is contested, scholars agree that the term describes a ‘cognitive opening’, bringing individuals to accept violence as a legitimate means to achieve social or political change (Neumann 2013; Borum 2011; Hafez and Mullins 2015).

2. Following Hegghammer (2010, 57–58), a foreign fighter is ‘an agent who (1) has joined, and operates within the confines of, an insurgency, (2) lacks citizenship of the conflict state or kinship links to its warring factions, (3) lacks affiliation to an official military organization, and (4) is unpaid’. The process of becoming (jihadi) foreign fighters is interconnected with the concept of (Muslim) radicalization, with both processes often studied jointly (Weggemans et al. 2014; Nilsson 2015).

3. According to recent estimates, about 1.5 million people live in the Republic of Chechnya, whereas about ~ 180.000 Chechens make up the Western European diaspora (Statdata.Ru 2022; Laruelle 2017, 15; Kirilenko 2017).

4. Due to the inaccessibility of respondents in Chechnya, members of the Chechen diaspora in Western Europe have become a valuable source of data relating to violent mobilization and radicalization (Iliyasov 2017).

5. For those seeking to travel to Syria, the progressively tighter border controls by Turkish authorities in collaboration with other European governments constituted a great impediment (Khalil and Shanahan 2016).

6. The age of the respondents is given for the time of the first contact.

7. Amongst those who did not travel to Syria, the beginning of the Donbas war was mentioned as a strong motivation to reconsider initial plans. The Ukrainian authorities’ later efforts to weaken paramilitary groups hosting foreign nationals, including Chechen foreign fighters, was also mentioned as an obstacle to the participants’ engagement in fighting in Eastern Ukraine. The decline of warfare in Donbas from 2017 also seems to have played a role in some respondents’ lessened motivation to travel abroad. Suddenly, the Donbas war was off the headlines.

8. That is, after the group of six interviewees reportedly left for either Syria or Ukraine.

9. Interview with a Chechen political scientist, Prague, June 2014.