Making criminals out of returning ‘foreign fighters’ isn’t the answer — Farish Noor and James Dorsey

SEPTEMBER 23 — Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to criminalise British fighters in Iraq and Syria, and bar them from returning to Britain have come in for sharp criticism from the former chief of counter-terrorism in its intelligence services MI5 and MI6.

Mr Richard Barrett hit the nail on the head when he argued that repentant fighters, who regret taking the fateful step of joining an armed struggle in a war-torn region that has nothing to do with religion, have an important role to play in dissuading others from following in their footsteps.

In fact, Mr Barrett was suggesting that the young men and women, many of whom have been marginalised in British society as a result of their ethnic or religious heritage, could not only be reintegrated into society, but also help break down barriers of alienation in immigrant communities.

Questioning notions of retribution

Mr Barrett’s comments came amid reports that as many as one-fifth of the estimated British fighters in Iraq and Syria were disillusioned and looking for a way to return home.

A man with a 25-year history in British intelligence and diplomacy, Mr Barrett was not motivated by compassion, but by hard-nosed realism rooted in the experience of de-radicalisation programmes in a host of countries, including Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, over a long period of time.

Mr Barrett recognised that, beyond having been there and being able to share with their peers that groups such as the Islamic State are not a solution, repentant foreign fighters are a potential fount of intelligence about the groups’ mode of organisation, funding, tactics and long-term ambitions.

Mr Barrett further understood that in the struggle against radical militants, insider knowledge is of crucial importance and vital for understanding dynamics of radicalisation.

In doing so, he was implicitly calling into question traditional notions of retribution and rehabilitation by arguing that Britain had more to gain from turning repentant foreign fighters into assets than from penalising them.

With the Islamic State having an estimated 12,000 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, Mr Barrett’s argument builds on the more recent experience of Saudi Arabia — a major supplier of the Islamic State’s foreign contingent, as well as of Malaysia in the 1950s.

Saudi officials estimate that of the approximately 3,000 jihadists who have gone through the kingdom’s extensive rehabilitation programme, at most 10 per cent have found their way back to violent militancy.

In rehabilitating the former jihadists, Saudi Arabia included militant clerics, who in the past had supported Osama Bin Laden, in the team of professionals working with the young men to reintegrate them into society.

Two successful models of counter-terrorism

While it may be too early to declare the Saudi programme a success with jihadist violence sweeping the Middle East, enough time has gone by to tout Malaysia’s experience as one.

Former militant guerrillas of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) were persuaded to abandon their struggle and accept rehabilitation to be reintegrated into society. Many did and some provided vital information about the MCP’s tactics, operational capabilities and long-term strategy.

The Malaysian government helped turn the anti-militant campaign into a success by looking into anxieties and frustrations of those who had become militants in the first place.

Like the Saudis after them, they factored in variables such as job opportunities and citizenship rights that pushed young men and women to join the militants.

The experiences of the Saudis and Malaysians are but two models of successful counter-terrorism that took as their starting point the addressing of core problems instead of retribution.

They offer lessons for Europe in coming to grips with its nationals, who join the Islamic State often more as a desperate cry for help because of deep-seated feelings of marginalisation and exclusion that are magnified by their home countries’ unwillingness to act, while a brutal regime in Syria massacred its population.

In many ways, frustration among Europe’s Muslim youth over Syria resembles the anger that prompted European leftists and liberals to join the Republicans against General Francisco Franco’s Nationalists in Spain in the 1940s — which was another instance of ‘internationalism’ and which proves what we are seeing now is neither new nor unique.

With unemployment at its highest in Europe since World War II, thousands of young Europeans, many of them descendants of earlier waves of immigrants, face harsh realities of economic stagnation and homelessness. They have lost faith in future prospects and the capability of governments to create opportunities.

They share the same problems and despair as non-migrant segments of European society, who seek solace in neo-Nazi organisations and right-wing militia. Like today’s foreign fighters, these men and women travelled in the 1990s to Bosnia to fight alongside right-wing ethno-nationalist militia.

The lesson in all of this is that Muslims may be at the centre of the foreign-fighter issue in Iraq and Syria, but that does not mean Europe has a Muslim problem. Europe’s problem is one of transition from traditional relatively homogeneous societies to a plurality of ethnic and religious communities.

That transition has yet to address the lack of political representation, social and economic inequality and the fact that the brunt of these unresolved issues is borne by the young and poor.

Writing in The Guardian, anthropologist Scott Atran noted that the Islamic State’s Western volunteers “are mostly youth in transitional stages in their lives — immigrants, students and those between jobs or girlfriends, having left their homes and are looking for new families”. For the most part, they have no traditional religious education and are “born again” to religion.

What inspires the most lethal terrorists in the world today is not so much the Koran or religious teachings as a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends. Jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer: Fraternal, fast breaking, glorious and cool. It was what they sought in European society, but was unable to access.

As a result, Europe’s foreign fighters largely represent a generation that needs help, not castigation. Mr Barrett’s argument opens the door to approaching them and their peers with the necessary intelligence and sensitivity, recognising that punitive retribution is not the answer.

It was precisely the perception of discrimination, exclusion and society’s lack of comprehension and compassion that drove them out of Europe in the first place. ― Today

* James Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. Farish Noor is associate professor at RSIS and head of the RSIS Doctoral Programme. This commentary first appeared in RSIS Commentaries. 

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.