Marco Nilsson

Foreign Fighters and the Radicalization of Local Jihad: Interview Evidence from Swedish Jihadists

Modern jihadism has experienced two distinct crises. The present study analyzes recent developments in jihadism, which can be seen in connection with efforts to solve the latest recruitment crisis of global jihad, and is based on comparative interviews with eight Swedish jihadists defined as foreign fighters. The study identifies three new trends evident in the interviews comparing jihadists active in Syria with those who fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia: socialization to global jihad, normalization of jihad, and an increasing use of the doctrine of takfir (i.e., ex-communication). This can be described as indicating the radicalization of local jihad, as the territorially based jihad, championed by Abdullah Azzam, and the global jihad of Osama bin Laden meet in the territorial realities of Syria and Iraq.

Offense-Defense Balance, War Duration, and the Security Dilemma

The systemic offense–defense theory argues that the security dilemma and the risk of war become doubly severe in offense-dominant eras in the state system. However, the theory assumes in support of its main argument that wars are shorter when offense has the advantage. This article empirically tests the expected connection between the systemic offense–defense balance and war duration. A statistical analysis of wars 1817–1992 disconfirms the theory’s expectations. The article then draws different conclusions about the severity of the security dilemma when offense is dominant: both arms racing and the fear of aggression that the security dilemma thrives on should be less severe than offense–defense theorists assume.

Mental Strategies for Fighting the IS: A Field Study of the Peshmerga Soldiers in Northern Iraq

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the war against the Islamic State (IS), specifically on the front in northern Iraq, and the mental strategies that the Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers use to maintain their combat motivation. For this field study, dozens of soldiers of various ranks were interviewed and observed on three fronts outside of Mosul, Erbil, and Kirkuk in February 2014. While some mental strategies are nearly universal, others depend on the characteristics of the fighting force and the threat that they face. The article identifies five distinct mental strategies for dealing with the stress of fighting the IS: simultaneous dehumanization and humanization of the enemy, seeing a larger cause, use of humor, religious identity, and martyrdom. The findings suggest that factors beyond primary group cohesion, on which much previous research has focused, can play an important role in increasing soldiers’ fighting power.

Kurdish women in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict – perceptions, experiences, and strategies

ABSTRACT This study analyzes how Kurdish women experience the violence and other consequences of the armed conflict raging between the PKK and the Turkish state. Interviews conducted in Istanbul, Ankara, and Diyarbakir suggest that Kurdish women experience the conflict both as members of an oppressed minority and as women. The study first focuses on identifying sources of conflict related stress that are specific to women, such as the need to be silent to protect their families, and then analyzes the strategies that Kurdish women use to deal with this stress as women, including networking and education.

Causal beliefs and war termination

This article analyzes the length of interstate wars and the process of reaching a mutually acceptable bargaining solution. Rational choice scholarship has mainly sought to explain long wars in terms of commitment problems and private information. This article complements these rational choice perspectives by arguing that causal beliefs – a variable not considered by previous research – can also prolong wars by increasing expectations of battlefield performance and slowing down information updating. It illustrates the role of religiously based causal beliefs with the case of one of the longest interstate wars of modern time, the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–88. Even though commitment problems were present, they do not identify the root cause of Iran’s high expected utility of continuing the war, as religiously based causal beliefs played a more prominent role in prolonging the war. Religious causal beliefs constitute a real word mechanism that not only creates different priors about expected military capacity, but also slows down the process of updating beliefs, as battlefield events are not seen as credible information. Although the prevalence of religious conflicts has increased over time, the formation of beliefs and their effects on wars remains understudied when applying rational choice to real world conflicts.

Social scientist under threat : Resistance and self-censorship in Turkish academia

ABSTRACT Attacks on academic freedom in Turkey have become increasingly systematic in recent years and thousands of academics have been dismissed. This study reflects on the effects of this worsening repression through interviews with academics in the social sciences, both those dismissed and those still active in their profession. Although the dismissed academics are socially in a very precarious position, they are continuing their scholarly activities in alternative, underground forms. This resistance stands in contrast to the accommodation and self-censorship that seem, according to the interviewees, to prevail in university departments.

The logic of suicide terrorism: does regime type affect the choice of targets?

ABSTRACT Pape [2005. Dying to win: The strategic logic of suicide terrorism. New York: Random House] famously argued that suicide terrorism is specifically designed to coerce democracies. However, also several autocracies have been targeted. This article argues that suicide attacks as a strategy of coercion rely on a general expectation of being able to raise the cost of conflict for the target state. Raising costs may require attacking different types of targets depending on the regime type one seeks to coerce. While the cost of conflict can be raised for democracies by attacking civilian targets, it can be raised for autocratic regimes if the targets are chosen strategically, for example, by focusing on actors that are particularly important for the government. The article then analyzes statically the risk of government targets being attacked with all incidents of suicide attacks in the Global Terrorism Database, 1981–2014. The results corroborate the hypothesis that the more autocratic the regime, the more likely are suicide terrorists to attack government rather than civilian targets.

Interviewing Jihadists: On the Importance of Drinking Tea and Other Methodological Considerations

ABSTRACT The field of terrorism research has arguably long been characterized by a separation of the scholars from their subject of inquiry. Interviews can be used to bridge this chasm, but making contact with potential interviewees, conducting interviews, and analyzing the data pose unique challenges when conducting research into jihadists, especially active ones. This article focuses on the authors experience of interviewing both former and active jihadi foreign fighters. It is specifically intended to contribute to a better methodological understanding of conducting first-hand empirical research into jihadi foreign fighters and builds on fieldwork conducted in Sweden, Iraq, and Lebanon.

Muslims Opposing Violent Radicalism and Extremism: Strategies of Swedish Sufi Communities

Abstract Europe has seen the development of a new research agenda in response to Islamist terror attacks of recent years. Researchers are not only trying to solve the “radicalization puzzle” in order to understand the reasons why young Muslims in Western countries are attracted to extremism, but they are also making proposals for de-radicalizing extremists and creating relationships of trust with Muslim communities. Directly or indirectly, Europe’s Muslim minorities are the objects of the interventions and preventive work under discussion. This study suggests an alternative approach. Rather than regarding Muslims in Europe as more or less passive objects of various anti-extremism interventions, it directs attention toward the strategies developed by European Muslims themselves in fighting Islamist extremism. Using qualitative interviews with leaders of five Sufi communities in Sweden, the study examines a series of strategies for meeting the challenges posed by extremists.

Muslim Mothers in Ground Combat Against the Islamic State: Women’s Identities and Social Change in Iraqi Kurdistan

This study analyzes the experiences and identities of Kurdish women fighting the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq as part of the Peshmerga Army. The case is especially interesting because these women have engaged in ground combat and because there is an empirical gap in knowledge, especially concerning Muslim women’s experiences as soldiers. Wars bring great destruction but can also catalyze social change. While seeking balance between their identities as good mothers and professional soldiers, many Kurdish women see their war participation as a chance to increase their agency and improve equality in society, as combat operations create a window of opportunity to change perceptions of women’s roles. Women soldiers still face prejudices and feel that they must prove their worth as fearless warriors in ground combat. However, interviewed soldiers said that they were not striving for equality but equivalency, stressing those qualities that women in particular can contribute in battle.