ISIS Foreign Fighters after the Fall of the Caliphate

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Notes

1 Rodi Said, ‘Islamic State “caliphate” defeated, yet threat persists’, Reuters, 23 March 2019.

2 Jennifer Cafarella with Brandon Wallace and Jason Zhou, ‘ISIS’s Second Comeback: Assessing the Next ISIS Insurgency’, Institute for the Study of War, June 2019, pp. 19–25.

3 United States Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve and Other Overseas Contingency Operations: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, October 1 2018 – December 31 2018’, February 2019, p. 7.

4 Norimitsu Onishi and Elian Peltier, ‘Turkey’s Deportations Force Europe to Face its ISIS Militants’, New York Times, 17 November 2019.

5 Defined as ‘individuals who travel to a State other than their States of residence or nationality for the purpose of the perpetration, planning, or preparation of, or participation in, terrorist acts or the providing or receiving of terrorist training, and the financing of their travel and of their activities’, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178 (2014), p. 2.

6 UNSC Resolution 2178 (2014), p. 4.

7 Deborah Amos, ‘A Smuggler Explains How He Helped Fighters Along “Jihadi Highway”’, NPR, 7 October 2014.

8 UNSC Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, ‘The Challenge of Returning and Relocating Foreign Terrorist Fighters: Research Perspectives’, March 2018, p. 13.

9 Lydia Khalil, ‘Sri Lanka’s Perfect Storm of Failure’, Foreign Policy, 23 April 2019.

10 Anne Barnard and Eric Schmitt, ‘As Foreign Fighters Flood Syria, Fears of a New Extremist Haven’, New York Times, 8 August 2013.

11 Peter R. Neumann, ‘Foreign fighter total in Syria/Iraq now exceeds 20,000; surpasses Afghanistan conflict in the 1980s’, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, 26 January 2015.

12 UNSC, ‘Greater Cooperation Needed to Tackle Danger Posed by Returning Foreign Fighters, Head of Counter-Terrorism Office Tells Security Council’, 28 November 2017.

13 Don Rassler, ‘Situating the Emergence of the Islamic State of Khorasan’, CTC Sentinel, vol. 8, no. 3, 2015; International Crisis Group, ‘The North Caucasus Insurgency and Syria: An Exported Jihad?’, 16 March 2016, p. i.

14 Rohan Gunaratna, ‘The Siege of Marawi: A Game Changer in Terrorism in Asia’, Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, vol. 9, no. 7, 2017; Zam Yusa, ‘Philippines: 100 foreign fighters joined ISIS in Mindanao since the Marawi battle’, Defense Post, 5 November 2018.

15 Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim, ‘ISIS leader Baghdadi urges followers to continue attacks, storm prisons in purported new recording’, Washington Post, 16 September 2019.

16 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, April 1 2019 – June 30 2019’, July 2019, p. 2.

17 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve and Other Overseas Contingency Operations: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, October 1, 2018 – December 31, 2018’, p. 7.

18 Ibid., pp. 32–3.

19 Rik Coolsaet, ‘Anticipating the Post-Daesh Landscape’, EGMONT – The Royal Institute for International Relations, October 2017.

20 Europol, ‘European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2018’, June 2018.

21 ‘Foreign fighters continue to join ISIS in Syria, US Joint Chiefs chair says’, Defense Post, 16 October 2018.

22 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘Dunford: Chiefs of Defense Counter-ISIS Meeting “Historic”’, 25 October 2017.

23 Cafarella with Wallace and Zhou, ‘ISIS’s Second Comeback: Assessing the Next ISIS Insurgency’, p. 23.

24 UNSC Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, ‘The Challenges of Returning and Relocating Foreign Terrorist Fighters: research perspectives’, CTED Trends Report, March 2018, p. 9.

25 Joana Cook and Gina Vale, ‘From Daesh to “Diaspora”: Tracing the Women and Minors of Islamic State’, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, July 2018; Charles Lister, ‘Returning Foreign Fighters: Criminalization or Reintegration?’, Brookings Doha Center, August 2015, p. 2.

26 Between 600 and 900 Dagestanis had reportedly moved to Syria by 2015, while by 2017 the number had increased to 1,200. Figures for Chechen jihadists were 450 in 2015 and 600 in 2017. Mark Youngman and Cerwyn Moore, ‘“Russian-Speaking” Fighters in Syria, Iraq and at Home: Consequences and Context’, Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, November 2017, p. 7.

27 International Crisis Group, ‘The North Caucasus Insurgency and Syria: An Exported Jihad?’, p. 6.

28 Shima D. Keene, ‘Extremist Migration: A Foreign Jihadist Fighter Threat Assessment’, Strategic Studies Institute, May 2019, p. 16. Overall, between 2012 and 2018, 2,600–3,500 individuals attempted to join ISIS in Libya. Aaron Y. Zelin, ‘The Others: Foreign Fighters in Libya’, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, January 2018, p. 3.

29 Cafarella with Wallace and Zhou, ‘ISIS’s Second Comeback: Assessing the Next ISIS Insurgency’, p. 14.

30 Ibid., p. 23.

31 Zachary Abuza and Colin P. Clarke, ‘The Islamic State Meets Southeast Asia’, Foreign Affairs, 16 September 2019.

32 UNSC Resolution 2396 (2017), 21 December 2017; UNSC Resolution 2462 (2019), 28 May 2019.

33 ‘Islamic State captives “must be tried or freed”, says UN’s Bachelet’, BBC News, 24 June 2019.

34 Tanya Mehra and Cristophe Paulussen, ‘The Repatriation of Foreign Fighters and Their Families: Options, Obligations, Morality and Long-Term Thinking’, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 6 March 2019; Kathy Gilsinan, ‘Europe Has Turned Its Back on Its ISIS Suspects’, Atlantic, 5 July 2019.

35 UNSC Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, ‘The Challenges of Returning and Relocating Foreign Terrorist Fighters’, p. 13.

36 Christophe Paulussen and Kate Pitcher, ‘Prosecuting (Potential) Foreign Fighters: Legislative and Practical Challenges’, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, January 2018, pp. 23–7.

37 Loveluck and Salim, ‘ISIS leader Baghdadi urges followers to continue attacks, storm prisons in purported new recording’.

38 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, April 1 2019 – June 30 2019’, p. 23.

39 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve and Other Overseas Contingency Operations: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, October 1 2018 – December 31 2018’, p. 23.

40 UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, ‘Escalating violence and waves of displacement continue to torment civilians during eighth year of Syrian conflict’, 11 September 2019.

41 Karen DeYoung, Louisa Loveluck and John Hudson, ‘US Military Announces Start of Syria Withdrawal’, Washington Post, 11 January 2019.

42 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve and Other Overseas Contingency Operations: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, October 1, 2018 – December 31, 2018’, p. 5.

43 Hwaida Saad and Rod Nordland, ‘Kurdish Fighters Discuss Releasing Almost 3,200 ISIS Prisoners’, New York Times, 20 December 2018.

44 Felicia Sonmez and Michael Brice-Saddler, ‘Trump says Alabama woman who joined ISIS will not be allowed back into US’, Washington Post, 21 February 2019.

45 Cook and Vale, ‘From Daesh to “Diaspora”: Tracing the Women and Minors of Islamic State’, p. 18.

46 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve and Other Overseas Contingency Operations: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, October 1, 2018 – December 31, 2018’, p. 24.

47 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, July 1, 2019 – October, 2019’, November 2019, p. 40.

48 Aki Peritz, ‘The Coming ISIS Jailbreak’, Foreign Affairs, 23 October 2019; Lara Seligman, ‘Turkish-Backed Forces Are Freeing Islamic State Prisoners’, Foreign Policy, 14 October 2019; ‘Former IS militants reportedly join Turkey-backed Syria groups’, BBC Monitoring, 10 November 2019.

49 Carlotta Gall, ‘Turkey Vows to Send ISIS Militants Home’, New York Times, 8 November 2019; Carlotta Gall, ‘Erdogan Warns That Turkey Will Keep Deporting ISIS Detainees’, New York Times, 12 November 2019.

50 David Gauthier-Villars, ‘Turkey’s Erdogan Threatens EU With Wave of Refugees if It Doesn’t Support Syria Offensive’, Wall Street Journal, 10 October 2019.

51 Cook and Vale, ‘From Daesh to “Diaspora”: Tracing the Women and Minors of Islamic State’, p. 17.

52 Dan Sabbagh, ‘Britain must repatriate Isis fighters, warns US defence secretary’, Guardian, 6 September 2019.

53 Dan Sabbagh, ‘Jack Letts stripped of British citizenship’, Guardian, 18 August 2019.

54 ‘U.S. expects every country to take back foreign fighters: Pompeo’, Reuters, 8 May 2019.

55 Ashley Cowburn and Lizzie Dearden, ‘Ministers could be “guilty of rendition” if UK brings back Isis fighters from Syria, says defence secretary’, Independent, 1 October 2019.

56 Colin P. Clarke and Amarnath Amarasingam, ‘Where Do ISIS Fighters Go When the Caliphate Falls?’, Atlantic, 6 March 2017.

57 Keene, ‘Extremist Migration: A Foreign Jihadist Fighter Threat Assessment’, p. 8; Richard Barrett, ‘Beyond the Caliphate: Foreign Fighters and the Threat of Returnees’, The Soufan Center, October 2017, pp. 12–13.

58 Bill Gardner, ‘Britain has “by far the highest rate of returning jihadi fighters in Europe”’, Telegraph, 27 June 2019.

59 Lizzie Dearden, ‘Only one in 10 jihadis returning from Syria prosecuted, figures reveal’, Independent, 21 February 2019.

60 Interpol, ‘Foreign terrorist fighters detected during INTERPOL maritime border operation’, 19 September 2019.

61 Oldrich Bures, ‘EU’s Response to Foreign Fighters: New Threats, Old Challenges?’, Terrorism and Political Violence, advance online publication, pp. 3–9.

62 Zelin, ‘The Others: Foreign Fighters in Libya’, pp. 9–10; Youngman and Moore, ‘“Russian-Speaking” Fighters in Syria, Iraq and at Home: Consequences and Context’.

63 Tarek Amara and Patrick Markey, ‘Border attack feeds Tunisia fears of Libya jihadist spillover’, Reuters, 13 March 2016.

64 R. Kim Cragin, ‘Preventing the Next Wave of Foreign Terrorist Fighters: Lessons Learned from the Experiences of Algeria and Tunisia’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, February 2019.

65 Youngman and Moore, ‘“Russian-Speaking” Fighters in Syria, Iraq and at Home: Consequences and Context’.

66 Europol, ‘North Caucasian fighters in Syria and Iraq & IS propaganda in Russian language’, 10 November 2015, pp. 14–15.

67 Daniel Byman, ‘Measuring the Threat from Foreign Fighters’, in IISS, Armed Conflict Survey 2016 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2016), pp. 34–40.

68 Thomas Hegghammer, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists’ Choice between Domestic and Foreign Fighting’, American Political Science Review, vol. 107, no. 1, 2013, p. 10.

69 Robin Simcox, ‘When Terrorists Stay Home: The Evolving Threat to Europe from Frustrated Travelers’, CTC Sentinel, vol. 12, no. 6, July 2019.

70 Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines, ‘Taking Aim: Islamic State Khorasan’s Leadership Losses’, CTC Sentinel, vol. 12, no. 8, September 2019.

71 Abuza and Clarke, ‘The Islamic State Meets Southeast Asia’; Harsh V. Pant and Kabir Taneja, ‘ISIS’s New Target: South Asia’, Foreign Policy, 2 May 2019.

72 Quinton Temby, ‘Cells, Factions and Suicide Operatives: The Fragmentation of Militant Islamism in the Philippines Post-Marawi’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol. 41, no. 1, 2019, pp. 115–16.

73 Katerine Bauer (ed.), ‘Beyond Syria and Iraq: Examining Islamic States Provinces’, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, November 2016, p. 47.

74 Andrea Beccaro, ‘ISIS in Mosul and Sirte: Differences and similarities’, Mediterranean Politics, vol. 23, no. 3, 2018, pp. 410–17.

75 US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, ‘Operation Inherent Resolve: Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, April 1 2019 – June 30 2019’, pp. 23–4.