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MEASURING AND UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF TERRORISM

2015 Global Terrorism Index Report_0_0

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FOREIGN FIGHTERS<br />

IN IRAQ & SYRIA<br />

The rise of ISIL has brought with it several challenging dynamics for counterterrorism.<br />

One of many concerns is the increasing prevalence of foreign fighters joining armed<br />

groups, especially in Iraq and Syria.<br />

In order to assess the scale of movement of foreign fighters, IEP assembled estimates<br />

from ten different government, media and expert sources. Overall estimates from UN<br />

and government reports indicate that nearly 30,000 foreign individuals have travelled<br />

to Iraq and Syria from roughly 100 countries.<br />

Foreign fighters are not a new factor in violent conflict. As many<br />

as 20,000 foreign fighters are believed to have travelled to<br />

Afghanistan over the course of the conflict with the Soviet<br />

Union, from 1980 to 1992. 8 However, the flow of fighters into<br />

Iraq and Syria since 2011 is believed to be the largest influx in<br />

the last sixty years, with current estimates ranging from 25,000<br />

to 30,000 fighters from roughly 100 countries.<br />

There has been a great deal of debate regarding the number of<br />

foreign fighters that have travelled to and that are currently in<br />

Iraq and Syria. Estimates vary depending on sources, with some<br />

counting total numbers, including those killed in action or those<br />

who have returned home, whilst others try to estimate only the<br />

number of currently active fighters.<br />

The majority of the individuals are fighters travelling to join<br />

armed movements, but figures may also include family members<br />

travelling with these fighters. IEP was able to identify numeric<br />

estimates for 67 countries from which recruits came, totalling<br />

27,371 individuals, including 350 women and girls. IEP identified<br />

an additional 21 known countries from which individuals are<br />

believed to have travelled, but estimates of number of the<br />

number of fighters were unavailable.<br />

Figures 19 and 20 illustrate the various estimates for Muslimmajority<br />

countries and for the rest of the world. The<br />

conservative and high-end estimates from the International<br />

Centre for the Study of Radicalism (ICSR) reflect data published<br />

in December of 2014 based on estimates totalled in mid-2014. 9<br />

IEP further collated individual estimates from more recent<br />

government announcements, press releases, media and expert<br />

reports including those published by The Soufan Group.<br />

BOX 1<br />

BUILDING IEP’S FOREIGN FIGHTER DATASET<br />

Estimating the number of foreign fighters in an<br />

armed conflict is very difficult given the associated<br />

intelligence and human security challenges. As a<br />

result, there are few datasets that capture figures<br />

for more than a handful of countries. The most<br />

authoritative, publically-available datasets to-date<br />

have been those published by security analysts The<br />

Soufan Group (TSG) and the think tank International<br />

Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political<br />

Violence (ICSR), the latter including data for 50<br />

countries. However, the UN and the US government<br />

have repeatedly issued statements estimating that<br />

fighters come from 100 countries. In order to<br />

understand how many fighters are in fact present in<br />

Iraq and Syria and which countries they come from,<br />

IEP has supplemented these two existing datasets<br />

with additional information to account for fighters<br />

from 67 countries.<br />

IEP’s foreign fighter data represent a compilation of<br />

estimates from TSG, ICSR, US government reports,<br />

UN Security Council report S/2015/358, accounts of<br />

individuals by independent researchers and media<br />

reports that reflect individual government estimates<br />

of the number of national’s estimated to be fighting<br />

or joining fighters in Syria and Iraq.<br />

GLOBAL <strong>TERRORISM</strong> INDEX 2015 | Trends<br />

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