Law Fare Blog is associated with the Brookings Institute, see link below.
lawfareblog.com
America’s Anti-Islamic State Volunteers
Shashi Jayakumar
Editor’s Note: The issue of foreign fighters for the Islamic State has received tremendous attention, but numerous foreigners have also gone to Iraq and Syria to fight against the terrorist group. Shashi Jayakumar of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore has studied this issue extensively and finds that more Americans traveled to fight against the Islamic State than volunteered to join its ranks. He details the different motivations of anti-Islamic State fighters and how to think about this challenge more broadly.
Daniel Byman
***
At least 72 Americans have made the journey to Syria or Iraq to join the Islamic State, but an even greater number of Americans made the same journey to fight against the Islamic State. They were moved by ideological convictions or moral outrage at the atrocities committed by the Islamic State, and by personal desires for fulfillment or adventure. Though many of them have now returned quietly to their lives in the United States, their experiences may inform and guide their futures.
I’ve been tracking the issue of anti-Islamic State volunteers since 2014, and my latest study, Transnational Volunteers Against ISIS, is not the first attempt to understand the issue. The investigative website Bellingcat, London’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and academics Jason Fritz and Joseph Young, among others, have also published illuminating studies of this phenomenon.
Read more at: https://www.lawfareblog.com/americas-anti-islamic-state-volunteers
