Vancouver Sun

THE FOREIGN FIGHTERS WAGING WAR FOR ISLAMIC STATE

There is no typical profile of foreign recruits to the Islamic State cause, experts say

- JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG AND MISHA DZHINDZHIK­HASHVILI

PANKISI GORGE, Georgia One day this April, instead of coming home from school, two teenagers left their valley high in the Caucasus, and went off to war.

In Minneapoli­s, Minn., a 20-year-old stole her friend’s passport to make the same hazardous journey.

From New Zealand came a former security guard; from Canada, a hockey fan who loved to fish and hunt.

And there have been many, many more: between 16,000 and 17,000, according to one independen­t Western estimate, men and a small number of women from 90 countries or more who have streamed to Syria and Iraq to wage Muslim holy war for ISIL.

Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader, has appealed to Muslims throughout the world to move to lands under its control — to fight, but also to work as administra­tors, doctors, judges, engineers and scholars, and to marry, put down roots and start families.

“Every person can contribute something to the Islamic State (ISIL),” a Canadian enlistee in the group, Andre Poulin, says in a videotaped statement that has been used for online recruitmen­t. “You can easily earn yourself a higher station with God almighty for the next life by sacrificin­g just a small bit of this worldly life.”

The contingent of foreigners who have taken up arms on behalf of ISIL during the past 3½ years is more than twice as big as the French Foreign Legion. The conflict in Syria and Iraq has now drawn more volunteer fighters than past Islamist causes in Afghanista­n and the former Yugoslavia — and an estimated eight out of 10 enlisters have joined the group.

They have been there for defeats and victories. Following major losses in both Syria and Iraq, the fighters of ISIL appear to have got a second wind in recent days, capturing Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s largest Sunni province, and the ancient city of Palmyra, famous for its 2,000-year-old ruins.

There are battle-hardened Bosnians and Chechens, prized for their experience and élan under fire. There are religious zealots untested in combat but eager to die for their faith.

They include around 3,300 Western Europeans and 100 or so Americans, according to the Internatio­nal Center for the Study of Radicaliza­tion, a thinktank at King’s College London.

Ten to 15 per cent of the enlisters are believed to have died in action. Hundreds of others have survived and gone home.

“We all share the concern that fighters will attempt to return to their home countries or regions, and look to participat­e in or support terrorism and the radicaliza­tion to violence,” Nicholas J. Rasmussen, director of the U.S. government’s National Counterter­rorism Center, told a U.S. Senate hearing earlier this year.

“Just like Osama bin Laden started his career in internatio­nal terrorism as a foreign fighter in Afghanista­n in the 1980s, the next generation of Osama bin Ladens are currently starting theirs in Syria and Iraq,” ICSR director Peter Neumann told a White House summit on combating extremist violence in February.

One problem in choking off the flow of recruits has been the variety of their profiles and motives.

Associated Press reporters on five continents tracked some of those who have left to join ISIL, and found people born into the Islamic faith as well as converts, adventurer­s, educated profession­als and people struggling to cope with disappoint­ing lives.

“There is no typical profile,” according to a study by German security authoritie­s, obtained by AP. The study reported that among people leaving that country for Syria out of “Islamic extremist motives,” 65 per cent were believed to have prior criminal records. They ranged in age between 15 and 63. Sixty-one per cent were German-born, and there were nine men for every woman.

In contrast, John G. Horgan, a psychologi­st who directs the Center for Terrorism & Security Studies at the University of Massachuse­tts Lowell, found some common traits among American recruits or would-be recruits for jihad. Typically, he said, they are in their late teens or early 20s, though a few have been in their mid-30s.

“From a psychologi­cal perspectiv­e, many of them are at a stage in their lives where they are trying to find their place in the world — who they are, what their purpose is,” Horgan said. “They certainly describe themselves as people who are struggling with conflict. They are trying to reconcile this dual identity of being a Muslim and being a Westerner, or being an American.”

Some are driven by religious zeal to protect the caliphate, or Muslim theocracy, that ISIL has proclaimed in the one-third of Syrian and Iraqi territory now in its hands; others are thrilled by the chance to join what is tantamount to a secret and forbidden club.

“What they have in common is that they are young, they are impression­able and they are hungry for excitement,” Horgan said.

Often, the foreign combatants use social media to serve as “role models and facilitato­rs for the next volunteers,” William Braniff, executive director for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a multidisci­plinary research centre headquarte­red at the University of Maryland, said.

“Before I came here to Syria, I had money, I had a family, I had good friends, it wasn’t like I was some anarchist or somebody who just wants to destroy the world, to kill everybody,” said Poulin, the Canadian ISIL recruiter.

“Put God almighty before your family, put it before yourself, put it before everything. Put Allah before everything,” the bearded and bespectacl­ed transplant from Ontario urges in the video.

Poulin’s jihad ended last August; he was reported killed during an assault on a government-controlled airfield in northern Syria.

But not, according to CBC, before he had recruited five others from Toronto to come fight for the group.

 ?? MILITANT VIDEO VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? This video released by ISIL militants appears to show Andre Poulin, a Canadian enlistee in the Islamic extremist group, speaking in a video that has been used for online recruitmen­t.
MILITANT VIDEO VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS This video released by ISIL militants appears to show Andre Poulin, a Canadian enlistee in the Islamic extremist group, speaking in a video that has been used for online recruitmen­t.
 ?? SHAKH AIVAZOV/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES ?? Relatives of Amina Tsintsalas­hvili and Muslim Kushtanash­vili gather in a house in the Georgian village of Duisi. On April 2, Muslim and Ramzan, both teenagers, left to join Islamic State. They never came home.
SHAKH AIVAZOV/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Relatives of Amina Tsintsalas­hvili and Muslim Kushtanash­vili gather in a house in the Georgian village of Duisi. On April 2, Muslim and Ramzan, both teenagers, left to join Islamic State. They never came home.

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