Foreign Fighters, Returnees and a Resurgent Taliban

Noah Tucker

doi:10.1163/18750230-bja10010

Abstract

Abstract This essay surveys the recent history of Central Asian mobilization to foreign conflicts and insurgencies and offers a discussion potential for a new wave of migration that the fall of the Afghan government and a victorious Taliban insurgency could present for the region. It argues that new developments have increased the importance of understanding the causes of conflict migration from Central Asia to both ensure successful re-integration of returnees and prevent a new wave of conflict migration. This contribution presents evidence that a one-dimensional focus on ideological or theological motivations for past waves of conflict migration is a poor explanatory mechanism for the broader conflict. A complex, localized, and multi-factor approach provides a much better explanatory model for mobilization to both local violence and foreign conflict.

Highlights

The Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union gained renewed global attention during the Syrian conflict as the source of several thousand conflict volunteers, often referred to as ‘foreign fighters’
This essay surveys the recent history of Central Asian mobilization to foreign conflicts and insurgencies and offers a discussion potential for a new wave of migration that the fall of the Afghan government and a victorious Taliban insurgency could present for the region
Combining with other parts of the former Soviet Union – including the Caucasus region torn by civil war for much of the 1990s and early 2000s – this broader region of which Central Asia is a part surprisingly made up the single-largest source of foreign volunteers who traveled to conflict zones in Syria and Iraq.[1]

Summary

Introduction

The Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union gained renewed global attention during the Syrian conflict as the source of several thousand conflict volunteers, often referred to as ‘foreign fighters’. This essay surveys the recent history of Central Asian mobilization to foreign conflicts and insurgencies and offers a discussion potential for a new wave of migration that the fall of the Afghan government and a victorious Taliban insurgency could present for the region.

Results

Conclusion