Martyrs without Borders: Iraq's Foreign Fighters and the Third Generation of Global Jihad

Investigator:

Mohammed M. Hafez

(1) Historical case studies of international “volunteers” following participation in conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kosovo, including classification of returnees from conflicts into specific categories based upon their post-return behavior: (a) Integrationists, Jihadists who seek to go back to non-militant lives; (b) Opportunists, Jihadists who serve as foot soldiers for existing regimes or for security services entangled in internal civil wars or regional competition; (c) Revolutionaries: Jihadists who seek to play a militant role in opposition politics to secular states, or (d) Transnational Jihadists: Individuals who seek to join other radical movements outside their home countries or become active participants within regional or global terrorist networks. and (2) collection and analysis of event-based data on successful and failed attacks launched by groups with links to Iraq-based terrorists and insurgents (done in conjunction with the Global Terrorism Database project) to determine trajectory of post-Iraq behaviors.

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