From Byron to Bin Laden: a history of foreign war volunteers

Abstract

‘Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home’. So said James Mattis, the former US Defence Secretary (p. 228). At times, nations have tried to prevent the phenomenon of foreign volunteering. In Britain and elsewhere, there has been legislation over the past three centuries, but it has been selectively used. Even today, there is a distinct difference between how the state and the public view British nationals who help the Kurdish militia compared to those who fight for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This is a highly topical book as we contemplate the return of Islamist fighters following Islamic State's defeat in Syria. It is also meticulously researched. Nir Arielli has drawn on a wealth of source material to look at the phenomenon of ‘foreign fighters’ from every conceivable angle. The Spanish Civil War features, as does the Winter War in Finland, the 1948 campaign in Palestine, the unification of Italy, Bolivar's war of independence in South America, the Greek struggle against the Ottoman empire, the pan-Slavist conflicts of the nineteenth century, the Balkan imbroglio of the 1990s, the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union, as well as the Crusades and the Napoleonic Wars.