In correlation with the wars in Syria and Iraq, the number of jihadists travelling from abroad has increased more than ever. The phenomenon has been observed in Sweden and all of the Western world. In January 2015, the Swedish Security Force suspected that 300 individuals from Sweden have traveled to Syria or Iraq to participate in jihadist missions, and out of these cases 130 were confirmed.
The debate surrounding the reasons why so many Westerners choose to give up their safety and security in order to participate in jihad is ongoing in Sweden and abroad. The resulting explanations, however, have been greatly simplified and are, for the most part, lacking academically grounded theories. In reality there are no single explanations, but actually several that cooperate on many levels.
In the briefing “Foreign Fighters or Transnational Insurgents?” Leila Ghanbari contributes to clarifying the discussion on how to combat the acute problem of transnational insurgents.
Leila Ghanbari, 33, is a former intern at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and master student in international politics at Uppsala University. Leila has a bachelor’s degree in Arabic from Stockholm University and has also studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). During the spring semester 2015 she is interning at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. as one of the Stockholm Free World Forum’s Capitol Fellows.