Foreign Fighters behavior and complexity of the phenomenon (Paola Giannetakis)

Foreign fighters, as always existed in relation to different historical and political realities and war, in the last two years this phenomenon is subject of increasing attention, commonly there is an association between the term Foreign Fighter to an individual who shares a "ideology" and fights for the Islamic state; this attention has grown as a result not only of noticing and detecting the migratory flow of this type of subjects to Syria or at least to the conflict scenarios where ISIL has been active, but also because some of the FF return (returnees) as organized and collaborating in the planning and implementation of terrorist attacks in some European countries and continue to pose a threat in the immediate future for proselytizing and recruitment, as well as for the organization of more terrorist attacks.

This is a phenomenon, that, for historical continuity, for the strong transcultural and idiosyncratic pattern that emerges, is not easily analyzed, is difficult to produce a unique and decisive responses of the same phenomenon, one of the critical elements is represented by the very composite motivational component, motivation complexity in a definition. The same data are represented with strong approximation, biased by origins of data and difficulty in collecting and sharing, indeed speaking about numbers, there is a dramatic flow between 2014 to 2015 that drops down in 2016, such drop estimated by the Pentagon that announced in late April 2016 that the number of FF declined by almost 90%.

The representativeness of the phenomenon feeds the data, estimated several thousand of individuals who for diverse etiologies embrace a violent nature of extremism.
The great part comes from metropolitan areas or suburbs, about 17% are women, many are from the same district to highlight not only the strength of the context but also the pre-existence of the recruitment networks that emerge in those neighborhoods. In some cases, groups of friends and acquaintances and family members who together are contaminated, nationality is very heterogeneous and this varies very significantly from country to country.

There is not a unique and representative profile of European Foreign Fighter. A typical jihadist is a male, ranging in age between 18 and 30 years, although there are exceptions, some over 30 years of age and it is not uncommon to find minor combatants than 17 years. Indeed in a late report published by the American Military Academy, in a population of 4600 FF, 400 were under 18 yaers old.

The pattern of individuals both from a cultural point of view, educational and social background are very diversified and prevent as mentioned above to locate a valid profile, in particular, however there are elements that emerge more frequently. This implies that more profiles need to be delineated.

The factors related to motivation appear to be central to understand where to work, where to intervene, where it is possible to predict a certain type of behavior, in facts a motivational analysis outlining the behavioral profile could be useful to highlight the risk factors and signs that deserve investigation and special attention.

Motivation is often individualized in FF and is closely linked to the individual's typical behavior. The different motivational models translate from the religious sphere, to the humanitarian, to the the sense of belonging, to look for a place and a role in life, to escape from criminal records, looking for new experiences and new adventures, to the feeling of revenge, the need to act violently, to the need of having to do justice in response to an injustice.

There was much discussion upon conversion and radicalization, identifying in these processes the cause of violent extremism. Between 6% and 23% of FF are coverts. In the conversion are placed important elements of vulnerability that can assist a path towards fundamentalism, this also because they lack knowledge of Islamic foundations and this form of conversion is based on a distorted learning and appears to be manipulated in origin. It also appears, from a recent study of Europol that at least 20% have suffered of some form of psychological distress.

Some individuals, for a variety of circumstances related to the personality, the emotional fragility or given an altered mental structure, can be more easily involved and fascinated by strong ideologies, but it is not only in cases of psychological distress that we identify the susceptibility to extremist ideologies , even as these take an important place in people's minds, introducing an extreme coherence space given by the clarity of a well-defined message with no shades of gray in subjects not psychologically but disadvantaged strength even in those who have an 'identity formation may become pervasive. Le Bon defining the beginnings of the concept of deindividuation as a mechanism of identification with the group capable of crushing personal predispositions, highlights the complexity of these dynamics because on one hand we have the strength of the group, on the other we often sees complex personalities, comprising both the fragility and the search for an identity. Therefore behavioral radicalism that expresses itself through a violent extremism is actually the final stage, the cognitive radicalism is a precursor, the steps leading to cognitive radicalism has a starting point, the individual and his or her motivational sphere that is strongly characterized by his personal identity as a product of cultural, environmental factors and the individual's own. Finally it appears that a unique profile is not possible, multiple and multidimensional models to analyse the phenomenon are necessary.

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