Written by Dr Mohammed Ilyas   

Westerners fighting in Syria: Blowback

Since the beginning of the ‘War on Terror’ Western security services have become increasingly concerned with Western Muslims traveling to conflict zones in order to engage in battle with Western and Muslim government forces.

But Western Muslims fighting in foreign conflicts is not new, despite the impression created by sensationalized reporting by the media, and ‘insightful’ commentary provided by international relations and terrorism experts.

According to media and security reports Western Muslims over the last few decades have fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, Iraq, and Somalia. Following this trajectory it should be no surprise to anyone that Muslims from London, Paris, Brussels, Oslo, and Berlin are finding their way to Syria. Perhaps the difference between the Syrian and previous conflicts is that there are media reports suggesting Muslim women from Western countries are also taking part. If it can be evidenced that these women are playing more than a supportive role, then the dominant ‘gendered’ narrative and understanding of those Muslims fighting in Syria needs to be revised.

Western government investment into the ‘radicalization process’

Despite the millions invested by Western governments into identifying and trying to develop pathologies with the help of ‘ex-extremists’ to why Western Muslims become what think tanks, security services, policy makers and terrorism experts call ‘radicalized’, they still have not come up with a reasonable explanations beyond ‘Islam, discrimination, education and poverty’. Neither have they unearthed the ‘kernel’ that would explain why some Muslims choose to leave the comforts of their Western homes and go and fight in countries and conflicts with which they have little or no ‘familial, ethnic, or national’ connections.

This raises several questions, but two are imperative to pose, given the financial and humanitarian cost, and the vast loss of civilian life-

1. One, are terrorism experts asking the right research questions?

2. Two, is the influence of policymakers, ex-extremists and government funding ‘skewing’ the production of knowledge and possible solutions, as well as public understanding of extremism and terrorism?

The Western concern

Western governments seem not to be very concerned about members of their Muslims communities fighting in foreign conflicts and being killed. In one sense this ‘lack of concern’ is understandable because it means that governments have fewer extremists to worry about. But on the other hand, the media are claiming that Western Muslims are going on ‘Jihad tours’, coming back to recuperate and then returning to re-engage in battle. This mimics how conventional armies rotate their soldiers during conflicts in order to reduce battle fatigue. However, Western Muslims that are engaging in ‘Jihad tours’ occupy a lofty position in the psyche of some Muslims.

What is making Western governments become ‘hot under the collar’ is the ‘blowback’ phenomenon. The term pertains to the ‘unintended consequences suffered by a population of a country because of their governments official or unofficial foreign policies’. Blowback has been taking place for many decades in Muslim majority and Western countries. For example, Egypt, Algeria, France and the UK experienced blowback during the 1990s. But blowback has only become a worry for Western governments because of 9/11 and 7/7. The threat to Western countries is that, ‘battle hardened’ Western extremists will return back from arenas of conflict, having cultivated international networks with other like minded folk, and as one terrorism expert noted in the media –

They (extremists) will become even more radicalized, and on their return they will start to nurture the next generation of extremists and compel them to engage in violence at home and abroad.

Likely future outcomes

Blowback is unlikely to end in the short, medium or the long term because Western governments deem that double standards over human rights abuses, maintaining unequal economic relations with the global south, as well as backing dictatorships and monarchies, engineering revolutions, and militarizing the world will bring about peace and security at home and abroad.