SyriaWith massive presence of foreign fighters, Syrian conflict resembles 1980s Afghanistan war

A new report by the Soufan Group estimates that in just three years, 12,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria to support various rebel groups fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. and Israeli intelligence previously estimated that there were 7,000 foreign fighters in Syria at the start of 2014. Security experts are comparing the situation to the influx of foreign fighters into 1980s Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, which saw 10,000 foreign fighters battle the Soviets in the decade-long conflict that spawned al-Qaeda.

Security officials are especially concerned about the 3,000 foreign fighters from Western countries, as these fighters may join Islamic extremist groups and use tactics learned on the battlefield against their home countries when they return.

“Leaving aside what may happen in Syria, if al-Qaeda can maintain a network of even a small number of motivated returnees, or recruit fighters to its terrorist agenda while they are still in Syria, it may once more pose a significant global threat,” the report says.

Last May’s attack in Belgium, in which a French citizen and former Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) fighter in Syria, killed three people at a Jewish museum, is the only known attack outside Syria by a foreign fighter. As rebel forces in Syria begin to resemble the rebels in 1980s Afghanistan, the report says, “the Syrian war is likely to be an incubator for a new generation of terrorists.”

According to Time magazine, the majority of the foreign fighters in Syria arrived from Arab countries, with 3,000 from Tunisia and 2,500 from Saudi Arabia. Western governments have their own estimates of foreign fighters with 700 thought to have traveled to Syria from France, 400 from the United Kingdom, and 250 each from Belgium, Australia, and Germany. The most recent FBI statement claims seventy fighters from the United States have traveled to Syria, and the conflict witnessed its first known American suicide bomber when Moner Mohammad Abusalha detonated the truck he was driving in an attack for al-Nusra Front, an extremist Sunni force.

Study author Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence official and UN specialist on al-Qaeda, notes that the leaders of rebel groups which attract most foreign fighters — al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and ISIS — were former al-Qaeda operatives. The operational knowledge these leaders gained from working with al-Qaeda may have helped with their recruitment of Western fighters. Indoctrination via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks has helped young vulnerable would-be fighters reinforce their views on the Syrian cause.

“The progression from foreign fighter to terrorist is not a linear one, nor is it inevitable, and the majority of people who return from the fighting in Syria may pose no terrorist threat,” Barrett writes. “But the difficulty remains how to distinguish those who will from those who won’t.”