Foreign Fighter Integration and Its Consequences For International Security: An Examination of Foreign Fighters in the Soviet-Afghan and Afghan Civil Wars

Abstract

The Soviet-Afghan and Afghan Civil Wars (1979-1992) mark a critical juncture in the global jihadist movement. Some of the most recognisable figures within the jihadist movement had their first experience of conflict in Afghanistan during this period. The resulting constellation of armed groups--referred to as the Afghan Network--has been responsible for the most well-known acts of terrorist and civil war violence since the 1990s and continues today with its members still holding senior positions in armed groups. Yet, most foreign fighters that travelled to the conflict stayed for a short period and had limited exposure to combat. How, then, did these foreign fighter veterans come to represent such a significant threat to international security? This thesis proposes that the answer lies in the specific conditions of how this generation of foreign fighters participated in the Afghan conflicts. I introduce a framework of foreign fighter integration that locates foreign fighters as embedded, partitioned, and isolated vis-a-vis local armed groups. I argue that because foreign fighters were isolated from local Mujahideen fighters, the Afghan conflicts provided them protection from state security apparatus, protection from conflict itself, and acted as a site of mass convergence. This thesis examines how these conditions altered the processes of network formation, expertise development and socialisation that transformed the Afghan Network into a site for knowledge exchange, innovation, and resource sharing. The Afghan Network was able to continually draw on valuable expertise, increasing their effectiveness as conflict actors, while building network resilience. I propose that these outcomes are unique to the experiences of isolated foreign fighters. Embedded and partitioned foreign fighters, due to their exposure to combat, pose different, not lesser, threats to international security.