revistaieee7

Alberto Caballero Díez
European foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq:...
METHODOLOGY
Sampling
The sampling frame was generated through a comparative analysis among those countries
with the higher number of foreign fighters, namely France, United Kingdom, Belgium
and Germany. France has particular interest because it has suffered the deadliest
jihadist attacks since 2012 (161 fatalities) and the highest number of attempted or successful
attacks to date (seven plots). 16 For the purposes of this paper, the definition of ‘foreign
fighter’ used refers to those individuals who join the insurgency in the Syrian Civil War or
the Iraqi insurgency and lack citizenship of these states. Moreover, to avoid recurrences, the
term ‘citizen’ included both nationals and residents of a given country. The study therefore
focuses on the threat those foreign fighters pose to their respective countries, not to other
Member States. However, it is also considered that the likelihood that returnees perpetrate
attacks abroad is related with both cooperation among security services and EU legislation.
In addition, when the number of returnees arrested is mentioned, it does not refer to individuals
just held for interrogation, but those also charged with terrorist offences. All in all,
the countries were analysed by studying a series of factors in terms of perceived capability,
intent and opportunity of their foreign fighters and returnees to become a threat to the national
security. The table below shows key-parameters (nº of individuals abroad, returned,
monitored and arrested / sentenced) detailed for each of the countries studied.
Variable definitions
First of all, ‘capability’ is defined as the ability returnees have to commit an attack,
either on their own, in a casual group or in a cell already established in the country.
16 Data obtained from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD).
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