Foreign fighters, returnees and a resurgent Taliban : lessons for Central Asia from the Syrian conflict
Abstract
This essay surveys the recent history of Central Asian mobilization to foreign conflicts and insurgencies and offers a discussion potential for a new wave of migration that the fall of the Afghan government and a victorious Taliban insurgency could present for the region. It argues that new developments have increased the importance of understanding the causes of conflict migration from Central Asia to both ensure successful re-integration of returnees and prevent a new wave of conflict migration. This contribution presents evidence that a one-dimensional focus on ideological or theological motivations for past waves of conflict migration is a poor explanatory mechanism for the broader conflict. A complex, localized, and multi-factor approach provides a much better explanatory model for mobilization to both local violence and foreign conflict.
Citation
Tucker , N 2022 , ' Foreign fighters, returnees and a resurgent Taliban : lessons for Central Asia from the Syrian conflict ' , Security and Human Rights , vol. 32 , no. 1-4 , pp. 69-82 . https://doi.org/10.1163/18750230-bja10010
Publication
Security and Human Rights
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1874-7337Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © Noah Tucker, 2022. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
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