Turning The Tide

Fighters from the Islamic State group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. (photo credit: AP/File)

The United Nations warns that thousands of foreign fighters are streaming out of their homes in Europe and North America to swarm into the Islamic State-led conflicts in Iraq and Syria, on "an unprecedented scale". The jihadists streaming into the Middle East come from 80 countries "including ... countries that have not previously faced challenges" of eager young Muslims signing on to the Islamist ideology of jihad as a requirement of all pious Muslims.

Months earlier, a UN security council report stated that 5,000 recruits had travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State and other fanatical jihadi groups like Al Nusra. Anxious to do their duty to respond to the call to arms on behalf of the expanding caliphate. Intent on not missing any of the exciting enticements to be part of history, in taking action that will restore pride and honour to the world of Islam.

And in deciding to turn their backs on the countries that gave their families haven, and in which many young Muslims feel society insufficiently respects Islam -- leaving them with the perception that in living in Europe or Australia, they are not living in a Muslim world, but in a sham world that prides itself on democratic ideals, while shunning the important ideals of Islam -- refusing to adopt Sharia law in representation of the needs of Muslims, their decision is its own reward.

Because of the concerns over the numbers of young Muslim men leaving for the Middle East, a backlash has been spurred aided by additional concerns that the fighting skills and weapons, and ability to produce improvised explosives represent a threat to the homeland, once those aspiring jihadis eventually decide to return from whence they came, countries like Australia, Britain and Canada have enacted new laws to attempt to forestall their leaving, and in the event they do, that they remain under scrutiny.

Some countries have gone so far as to state that those who leave to join the global jihad will forfeit their citizenship, have their passports removed, and will be stateless. For those willing to remain where they end up, where the constant conflict is concentrated and who have decided to settle there permanently to live out their lives or to die as jihadists, this is of little concern. For others, increasingly, finding that the allure of jihad hasn't lived up to its reputation, it is a problem.

Hundreds of foreign jihadists have decided to return to the countries they came from, but find themselves unable to. Some, because active steps are taken to dissuade them, others because those active steps are now including a response so powerful that it leads to death. News has arisen that the Islamic State has taken to executing foreign fighters who attempt to leave the Syrian city of Raqqa. Rumours are that one hundred have been killed so far.

Add those to the hundreds who have been killed in U.S.-led coalition air strikes and ISIS attrition may begin to bite. A verifiable source within Syria, opposed to both Islamic State and the terrorism of the Syrian regime claims that in Raqqa the Islamic State has estabished a military police force for the purpose of identifying and arresting foreign fighters who fail to report for duty. Their homes have been raided, the fighters arrested.

 

In October, according to the British press, five Brits, three French, two Germans and two Belgians attempting to return home when they complained of being tasked with fighting other rebel groups rather than the Syrian regime were being held by the Islamic State as prisoners. An estimated 50 Britons expressed a wish to return, but fearing jail or worse, according to researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization, King's College London, have been restrained.

And nor is it likely that the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham will feel too generously inclined toward foreign fighters who have fought alongside locals and acquitted themselves well, deciding to return home, in light of campaign setbacks they have suffered lately. Where the Kurdish peshmerga is celebrating their victory in breaking the Islamic State siege on Sinjar, formerly trapping Yazidis and Kurdish fighters.

Similarly, news from the Pentagon that a number of Islamic State leaders have been killed in coalition airstrikes must most certainly have ensured that a black fog of ill temper has settled over what remains of the Islamic State leadership. Two thousand air raids taking place in 40 days across October and November succeeded in killing over 500 ISIS fighters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Word does get around, and the new circumstances of coming and going whereby even if success in leaving is realized, return may not be so simple, and those who attempt to may lose their lives in the process at the hands of the very same disgruntled forces they left the comforts of Europe to battle with, may ensure that the tide of willing new foreign recruits will dry up significantly in months to come.

Islamic State (Isis) rebel militant soldiers. According to a UN Security Council report, Isis currently has enough weapons to continue fighting in the middle east for another two years. Photograph: Medyan Dairieh/ZUMA Press/Corbis