TerrorismIs it more dangerous to let Islamic State foreign fighters from the West return or prevent them from coming back?
The United states and other countries around the world are dealing with the same question: Should their citizens who join foreign terrorist organizations and fight for them be allowed to return to their home country? Determining which approach makes Western countries safest requires examining the facts about foreign fighters.
The United states and other countries around the world are dealing with the same question: Should their citizens who join foreign terrorist organizations and fight for them be allowed to return to their home country?
Many of the men and women who left their homes in the West to join the Islamic State group or similar terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq as fighters or supporters now want to come home. Their desire to return has coincided with the defeats suffered by IS in the diminishing territory under its control.
The U.S. government argues that countries should take back their foreign fighters and prosecute them rather than allow them to be free to act on the world stage.
But other countries are more concerned with the threat of returnees committing domestic terrorism. And, despite its arguments, the U.S. has recently moved to keep at least one American-born ISIS member from returning.
Determining which approach makes Western countries safest requires examining the facts about foreign fighters.
Inconsistent U.S. stance
Only about 250 to 300 Americans are said to have left the country to join the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The numbers who left Europe are much greater, 5,000 to 6,000, according to a 2018 report from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
The United States and its allies recently split over the Trump administration’s insistence that other governments bring home their citizens who joined the Islamic State.
Syrian rebel groups have detained hundreds of ISIS-affiliated Westerners, but have threatened to release over 3,000 them if the United States withdraws its forces from the region. The Free Syrian Army has already released at least one British foreign fighter, and his whereabouts are now unknown.
But American officials have undercut their position by declaring that Hoda Muthana, a young mother who left the United States to join IS, should not be permitted to return either, illustrating the inconsistency of the American approach to this issue.
Range of national policies
The U.S. was actually the first country in the world to outlaw foreign fighting. Congress passed the initial legislation while George Washington was still president, despite the role of foreign volunteers in the American Revolution.
Under U.S. law, individuals can lose their citizenship for joining a foreign army or armed group as an officer, or for joining forces hostile to the United States.
