European Eye on Radicalization
In an interview with European Eye for Radicalization, terrorism researcher Cholpon Orozobekova, discusses her book Foreign Fighters and International Peace, where she addresses important and timely questions regarding the need for states to repatriate their citizens currently stuck living in camps in northern Syria, as well as the repercussions of inaction.
Below are some excerpts from the interview:
European Eye on Radicalization: What inspired you to write this book and can you elaborate on your researching process?
Cholpon Orozobekova: The book was the result of almost two years research, and it addressed the current situation with ISIS fighters and their family members who fell into the custody of Kurdish forces after the defeat of ISIS. About 40,000 people, who represent more than 60 countries across the globe, traveled to the Middle East to join terrorist groups. It was the first time the world witnessed such a high mobilization of foreign fighters.
After the defeat of ISIS in 2019, thousands of fighters and their family members were left with nowhere to go and are now living in the desert in camps in northeast Syria. The Syrian Democratic forces are guarding them, and the UN has been calling on states to repatriate them.
In 2018 and 2019, I met several self-returnees in Kyrgyzstan. They went to the Middle East, became disillusioned, managed to escape ISIS, came to Turkey and then somehow reached Kyrgyzstan.
Even before the fall of ISIS, countries started receiving self-returnees. I met returnees and their stories were striking. I understood that people who joined ISIS should be studied.
In 2014, we learned that hundreds of women had left to join ISIS. This so-called family jihad intrigued me. How can a woman bring her children to a conflict zone? How did thousands of women and children join this ‘caliphate’?
After the defeat of ISIS in 2019, we saw the consequences of the so-called family jihad, as about 60,000 women and children fell into the hands of the Syrian Democratic Forces and have been held in camps guarded by Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.
I started to question how it was possible to handle these people and how will they deal with consequences of family jihad. That’s when I decided to research and write a book. By that time, in 2019, coincidentally, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan had already repatriated their citizens.
I was also motivated by my childhood when I lived under the Soviet Union. I remember Soviet soldiers who went to Afghanistan to fight Arab fighters. As a child, I did not understand why our soldiers were dying there and who these Arab fighters were.
Later, the main issue became how these Arab fighters were left without disarmament, demobilization and reintegration efforts after the withdrawal of the Soviet Army. This led to their further networking, radicalization, and mobility, resulting in the emergence of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Arab fighters became nomadic moving to new conflict zones such as Bosnia, but also Algeria and Egypt. At that time, jihadism was not yet global, but the internationalization process was just emerging.
EER: In your book you mention that it’s important to understand the circumstances that foreign fighters endured prior to radicalizing and traveling. Why do many of these foreign fighters reject their home countries to live in an ‘Islamic State’?
CO: Each foreign fighter, including their family members, have their own story. Behind those stories, more profound problems of the contemporary world are hidden. Profiles of those who joined ISIS sent the world one important message: they rejected the political system where they lived and fled their countries to find another system to live in. They burned their national passports after reaching Syria or Iraq. They wanted to erase their previous lives and start on a blank page. They rejected society and the entire political state system, even abandoning their parents and loved ones.
Each person has own story. We cannot generalize, and there is no universal profile. There are, however, general trends that we need to analyze.
People saw an alternative in an Islamic state, even though it is a utopian concept based on a radical religious ideology. The failure of secular states to address people’s political and economic grievances, to build effective institutions, and eliminate corruption has become the primary driver of the quest for a caliphate.
The world needs to understand that people have become disillusioned with existing political systems and have started seeking alternatives.
General global events such as colonization, globalization, modernization, and migration have all caused insecurity and discontent among people. In a rapidly developing world, people, especially those who live in developing countries, feel unprotected, weak and that they are losing control over their destiny.
Those who joined ISIS had various grievances — from poverty and unemployment to personal grievances, such as conflicts with their family members, loss of loved ones, childhood trauma, divorce or domestic violence.
I argue in my book that grievances matter and are significant. Foreign fighters are products of our societies. Thus, states cannot ignore their grievances.
Bad governance is also responsible for their radicalization as their grievances emerged from failure of governments to tackle existing problems.
There are other responsible factors such as lack of critical thinking and education, but these are also the outcome of bad governance. Girls and women should especially be given access to education. Most of the women whom I interviewed were married early and were not given the chance to get an education. Most of them never worked and stayed at home.
Empirical evidence that I gathered from the interviews with returnees showed that people eventually switched from their personal grievances to group grievances. Most of them believed that Muslims are being humiliated and mistreated in the world. Dozens of fighters, whom I interviewed, referred to the Iraq war, the Palestinian crisis, and the Afghan war, saying that Islam and Muslims have been in danger due to the colonial behavior of Western countries.
Some fighters believed that ‘infidels’ were killing Muslims in Syria; thus, they had a duty to protect them. Another line of discourse was about the evil secular state system. They referred to corruption, injustice, unemployment and poverty in their countries.
Instead of securitizing the issue, we should zoom in on what drives people to travel abroad and join terrorist groups. People have long-standing grievances that are both individual and collective. Fighting terrorism should start from the root causes.
EER: Do states have responsibilities toward foreign fighters and their associates trapped in Syria?
CO: The issue of dealing with returning foreign fighters is complex for two reasons. First, both the scale of global travel to ISIS-held territory by fighters from over 60 countries and the substantial percentage of women and children who joined them were unprecedented. The international community had never witnessed the mobilization of foreign fighters on this scale.
The second complication stems from fighters trapped in the territory of Syria, which is currently being administered by a non-state actor and the absence of state authority. This lack of state authority is a source of ambiguity states refer to when they refuse to repatriate or take other concrete actions.
Many states maintain a firm position that former ISIS fighters and their associates should be brought to justice on the territory where they committed their crimes. However, in northeast Syria, there is no state authority to bring them to court and no tribunals where evidence concerning the committed crimes can be presented. States do not consider the SDF to be a legitimate negotiating actor; thus, other options have been considered, such as creating an ad hoc tribunal or transferring all captured foreign fighters to Iraqi prisons. As for the latter, the judicial system of Iraq has proven to be inadequate with many shortcomings in its judicial system and Western countries cannot hand over their citizens to such a system.
The only appropriate legal solution is repatriation and bringing fighters to justice in their home countries. Why? Because states have responsibilities. First, states have legal responsibility under UN Security Council resolutions as a UN member state. There are at least two main UN SC resolutions 2178 and 2396 that address returning foreign fighters, and states have a responsibility to comply with them.
The next issue is about extra territorial jurisdiction. The legal analysis conducted by two UN Special Rapporteurs is an important document which explains why states have obligations to repatriate their citizens from Syria and how states can exercise extra-territorial jurisdiction. Even though a state’s jurisdiction under human rights law is primarily territorial, a state may also have jurisdiction in respect of acts which are performed, or which produce effects, outside its national borders. The UN Special Rapporteurs stress that a state should consider extraterritorial jurisdiction “to avoid allowing a state to perpetrate violations on the territory of another state, which it could not perpetrate on its own.”
In other words, countries that know foreign fighters have committed crimes and will continue to do so if necessary actions are not taken, should take appropriate preventative action. Knowing that former foreign fighters may flee prisons and camps in Syria and continue carrying out terrorist acts should push states to take necessary measures to repatriate, try, and bring them to justice.
Among international legal experts, there is consensus that states have a shared responsibility in resolving the current crisis in the camps in Syria and repatriate their citizens.
The narrative about international peace is very important here. The shared responsibility of states is about maintaining international peace by ensuring joint efforts to prevent terrorism and armed conflicts and by complying with the requirements of UN resolutions and other international norms.
Finally, all UN member states have primary responsibility for their own nationals, and, at the same time, international human rights law stipulates that all persons have the right to return to his or her country of nationality. The very purpose of such principles is to protect the most marginalized.
Thus, the UN is urging states to seriously consider the following regarding the prosecution of associates of ISIS fighters: i) Criminal responsibility is individual. No person should be detained or prosecuted for crimes committed by family members. Many women and children come into contact with UN-listed terrorist groups through family links and should be treated by the principle of the presumption of innocence, ii) Children should be treated first and foremost as victims and their treatment must be determined with the best interests of the child as the primary consideration, iii) Member States should accept their nationals and children born to their nationals, grant those children nationality, and take actions to protect them from statelessness, iv) Criminal justice processes must be gender-responsive and female survivors of violence, abuses and other human rights violations must be provided with all possible support. In the current situation with all fighters and their family members, countries should comply with their state obligations, bring back their citizens, prosecute them in their home countries, treat children as victims, and, of course, there should be individual assessments for all adults.
EER: You mention that you interviewed 20 women in Syrian IS detention camps about their pre and post IS lives. How did these interviews shape your research and what are some of the most shocking revelations you learned from these stories?
CO: The interviews helped me understand their motivations to join terrorist groups and also how they feel and think. What was striking to me was their black and white mindset. Most of them divide the world into true Muslims and infidels. They consider themselves as true Muslims and call humanitarian organizations that provide assistance to them “infidels”. Other women are realizing their mistakes and are ready go home.
The other shocking discovery was how these women see their children. They look at their sons as future fighters. They say, “our lions are growing up and they will restore our dignity.” Most women spend their time teaching their children to read Quran in camps.
However, I also spoke with women from post-Soviet countries who started teaching the Russian alphabet, math and literature to their children. Those women realized that their children should be ready to be repatriated and already started working on the education gap to prepare them for school.
The most important thing that I realized is the more time they spend in the camps, the more they radicalize. States are losing time to save the minds of these children. There are hardliners in these camps who beat women whom they think are stepping away from the ideology. They come and burn their tents and punish them. So, women are afraid of them and try not to show their wish to be repatriated.
EER: You focus your research on repatriation efforts carried out by Kosovo, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. What are some of the important insights you have learned from these case studies?
CO: There is a lengthy chapter in the book that covers details of the repatriation and rehabilitation in several countries such as Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. As you know, four Central Asian countries repatriated their citizens from Syria and Iraq. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, in particular, carried out large scale repatriation operations by bringing back hundreds of women and children.
I closely studied their experiences, and my conclusion is that rehabilitation and reintegration of returnees is very difficult, but possible. Children adapt and integrate faster than adults. Of course, there are many risks. Children’s trauma may sleep for many years but return dozens of years later. However, abandoning them in the desert will have a more catastrophic impact on international peace as they may come back to the international arena as the most brutal terrorists in the future.
EER: As fighters and their families have been in SDF-controlled IS detention camps for years now with no clear resolution on their fates, just how tenable is the current situation and do you see any breakthrough happening anytime soon?
CO: Some European countries started repatriating women and children. There is some positive movement. The decision of the European Court of Human Rights was a signal to many countries. As you know, the Court condemned France over its refusal to repatriate French women who traveled to Syria and ruled that Paris must swiftly re-examine requests made by the parents of the two women that they should be allowed to return to France with their children.
Now the priority should be for children and their mothers, then we can talk about male fighters. I don’t think that there will be a breakthrough any time soon in light of other crises in the world, but I am sure that states will eventually have to repatriate their citizens.
