Networked Insurgencies and
Foreign Fighters in Eurasia
Recent wars in Eurasia have foregrounded the flows of foreign fighters between distinct insurgent battlefronts. Since 2011 thousands of individuals have travelled from the Caucasus and Central Asia to fight in Syria and Iraq. Caucasians have also appeared in the fighting that followed Ukraines Euromaidan Revolution in 2014. Resolutions of these conflicts promise further movements as foreign fighters return home. This collection of articles presents for the first time in one volume a cross-regional comparative perspective on the trajectories of foreign fighters between the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and Ukraine. Drawing on extensive primary sources, contributors theorize the life cycles of foreign fighter waves and the respective roles played by pre-existing insurgent networks, transnational ideologies such as global jihad and Eurasianism, and propaganda framing by insurgent groups such as the Islamic State. They examine regional state responses to the security threat posed by foreign fighters, showing how current security governance regimes can reinforce insurgent ideologies attracting violent militants. Finally they investigate the motivations for foreign fighters to return to their home states in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Arguing for the networked character of insurgencies in Eurasia, this book offers a unique overview of the foreign fighter phenomenon across the continent.
This book was originally published as various special issues of Caucasus Survey, Terrorism and Political Violence and Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.
Jean-Franois Ratelle is Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Laurence Broers is Research Associate at the Centre for the Contemporary Central Asia and Caucasus, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.
Networked Insurgencies and
Foreign Fighters in Eurasia
Edited by
Jean-Franois Ratelle and
Laurence Broers
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Chapters 1, 2, 3 & 5 2018 Taylor & Francis
Chapter 4 2018 Cerwyn Moore. Originally published as Open Access
Chapter 6 2018 Mark Youngman. Originally published as Open Access
Chapter 7, 8, 9 & 10 2018 International Association for the Study of the Caucasus
With the exception of Chapters 4 and 6, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. For details on the rights for Chapters 4 and 6, please see the chapters Open Access footnotes.
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ISBN 13: 9781138296978
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Publishers Note
The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen during the conversion of this book from journal articles to book chapters, namely the possible inclusion of journal terminology.
Disclaimer
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.
Contents
Citation Information
The chapters in this book were originally published in various special issues of Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism and Caucasus Survey. When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:
Chapter 2
Foreign Fighter Mobilization and Persistence in a Global Context
David Malet
Terrorism and Political Violence, volume 27, issue 4 (2015), pp. 454473
Chapter 3
Foreign Fighters and the Case of Chechnya: A Critical Assessment
Cerwyn Moore and Paul Tumelty
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, volume 31 (2008), pp. 412433
Chapter 4
Foreign Bodies: Transnational Activism, the Insurgency in the North Caucasus and Beyond
Cerwyn Moore
Terrorism and Political Violence, volume 27 (2015), pp. 395415
Chapter 5
The Impact of Jihadist Foreign Fighters on Indigenous Secular-Nationalist Causes: Contrasting Chechnya and Syria
Ben Rich and Dara Conduit
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, volume 38 (2015), pp. 113131
Chapter 6
Between Caucasus and caliphate: the splintering of the North Caucasus insurgency
Mark Youngman
Caucasus Survey, volume 4, issue 3 (November 2016), pp. 194217
Chapter 7
North Caucasian foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq: assessing the threat of returnees to the Russian Federation
Jean-Franois Ratelle
Caucasus Survey, volume 4, issue 3 (November 2016), pp. 218238
Chapter 8
The Islamic State and the connections to historical networks of Jihadism in Azerbaijan
David Lonardo
Caucasus Survey, volume 4, issue 3 (November 2016), pp. 239260
Chapter 9
Building resilient secular citizens: Tajikistans response to the Islamic State
Edward J. Lemon
Caucasus Survey, volume 4, issue 3 (November 2016), pp. 261281
Chapter 10
Same sides of different coins: contrasting militant activisms between Georgian fighters in Syria and Ukraine
Michael Cecire
Caucasus Survey, volume 4, issue 3 (November 2016), pp. 282295
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Notes on Contributors
Laurence Broers is Research Associate at the Centre for the Contemporary Central Asia and Caucasus, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK.
Michael Cecire is a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, USA.
Dara Conduit is Associate Research Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Education at the Alfred Dean Institute, Melbourne Burwood Campus, Australia, and a PhD candidate at Monash University, Australia.
Edward J. Lemon is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Columbia University, USA.
David Lonardo is an independent researcher.
David Malet is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia.
Cerwyn Moore is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, UK.
