Sarah Weilant

Lessening the Risk of Refugee Radicalization: Lessons for the Middle East from Past Crises

A s of June 2015, the four-year-old civil war in Syria had forced more than 4 million people to flee their homes for neighboring countries. The impact of this outflow on Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey—which has received the largest number of refugees at nearly 1.8 million 1 (UNHCR, 2015b)—has received significant press coverage. Discussion in the media of the crowded camp settings in particular—more than 200,000 are in Turkish camps and more than 100,000 are in Jordanian camps—as well as about clashes inside Lebanon between armed Syrian opposition groups, has focused on the risk that the refugees are likely to radicalize and supply militants to such groups as the self-styled Islamic State. However, our review of academic research on historical cases of populations fleeing armed conflict, plus the experiences of refugee experts interviewed for this analysis, 2 illustrate that radicalization—meaning the process of committing to political or religious ideologies that espouse change through vio-lence—and related armed militancy are not inevitable. Rather, the risk can be mitigated if the main stakeholders adopt comprehensive policies that extend beyond immediate life-saving needs and address such issues as the refugees impact on the countries that host them. Such policies—integral to the planning for the Syrian crisis—were rare in past major humanitarian crises and even today can be difficult to implement and sustain. However, in the words of a university specialist we spoke with, there is no [mere] humanitarian solution, particularly when a crisis lasts for years. For this exploratory essay, we looked for how radicalization happens—internal and external factors and motivations, including crisis management—rather than trying to tackle the more elusive issue of why individuals opt to become militant. Most of our historical data focuses on groups, leaving personal motives vague. Some recent literature from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) touches on individuals, but the motives appear to differ little from the reasons nonrefugee individuals radicalize (Mercy Corps, undated). In most cases in which refugees lived in geographically