Cutting Off ISIS Foreign-Fighter Pipelines

Cutting Off ISIS Foreign-Fighter Pipelines

07/01/14

James Jay Carafano

Terrorism, Counterinsurgency, Security, Iraq

"While the notion of outsiders joining armed groups isn’t an innovation, integrating the practice into building a global Islamist terrorist network has become the scourge of the twenty-first century."

Foreign fighters—outsiders recruited or who volunteer to fight in another country for somebody else’s cause—are nothing new. What’s new is that they have become a staple of the Al Qaeda cohort.

It’s called the “pipeline” problem. Ferrying warriors to the war and also returning them home to spread the war elsewhere has become part of the stock and trade of how transnational terrorists do business. The new front in Iraq creates new opportunities for another wave of attacks against the West, either from “lone wolves” or cells organized or supported by the veteran extremists.

Rallying to fight for a cause has deep historic roots. Teddy Roosevelt rallied his “Rough Riders.” During the Spanish Civil War, Americans joined the Lincoln Brigade to fight the fascists. In 1947, West Pointer Mickey Marcus served as military adviser to David Ben-Gurion and the Haganah, fighting for Israeli independence.

While the notion of outsiders joining armed groups isn’t an innovation, integrating the practice into building a global Islamist terrorist network has become the scourge of the twenty-first century.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 proved a transformative moment for the nascent Islamist activist web that seeks to stitch together the like-minded. The shadowy Haqqanis in Pakistan, write Vahid Brown and Don Rassler in Fountainhead of Jihad¸ “introduced an innovation in their appeals to the Arab world that would have fateful consequences in years to come… the Haqqanis made direct calls for foreign fighter volunteers.” Then they helped establish the logistics network to turn the call into action. They brought Osama bin Laden into the fight.

When bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, as the 9/11 Commission documented, he established training camps for foreign fighters. “Many of the operatives in the African Embassy and Cole attacks attended training camps in Afghanistan, as did all nineteen of the 9/11 hijackers,” the reported noted.

Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/cutting-isis-foreign-fighter-pipelines-10783