Schmid LinksTerrorismMigration 2016

International Centre for Counter-Terrorism
Links between Terrorism and Migration: An Exploration

Author(s): Alex P. Schmid
International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (2016)
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Links between
Terrorism and
Migration:
An Exploration
This Research Paper explores and questions some assumed causal ICCT Research Paper
links between terrorism on the one hand and (forced and irregular) May 2016
migration on the other. The paper delves into the role that state and
non-state terrorism might have in causing migration as well as Author:
analysing if and how refugees’ camps and the diaspora community Alex P. Schmid
might be a target for radicalisation. One of the findings of the paper is
how migration control for the control of terrorism is a widely used
instrument however, it might hurt bona fide migrants and legal foreign
residents more than mala fide terrorists. Finally, this Research Paper
offers recommendations that can go some way towards disentangling
the issues of (refugee) migration and terrorism.
DOI: 10.19165/2016.1.04
ISSN: 2468-0656
About the Author
Alex P. Schmid
Dr. Alex P. Schmid is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Counter
Terrorism (ICCT) – The Hague, and Director of the Vienna-based Terrorism Research
Initiative (TRI). He was co-editor of the journal Terrorism and Political Violence and is
currently editor-in-chief of Perspectives on Terrorism. Prof. em. Schmid held a chair in
International Relations at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) where he was, until
2009, also Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence
(CSTPV). From 1999 to 2005 he was Officer-in-Charge of the Terrorism Prevention
Branch at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the rank of a Senior Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer. Dr. Schmid has more than 180 publications and
reports to his name, including the award-winning volume Political Terrorism (1984,
1988, 2005). Alex Schmid is editor and principal author of the acclaimed Routledge
Handbook of Terrorism Research (2011) and co-editor and co-author of the forthcoming
‘Terrorists on Trial’ volume, published by Leiden University Press. As Associate
Professor he is supervising thesis-writing at the Faculty of Governance and Global
Affairs of Leiden University’s The Hague Campus. He is a member of the European
Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN).
Judith Tinnes - Bibliographic Assistant
Dr. Judith Tinnes is a Professional Information Specialist and Information Resources

Editor to ‘Perspectives on Terrorism’, the online journal of the Terrorism Research
Initiative (TRI) of which Dr. Schmid is Editor-in-Chief (see: www.terrorismanalysts.com).
About ICCT
The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) is an independent think and do tank
providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical, solution-oriented implementation support on
prevention and the rule of law, two vital pillars of effective counter-terrorism. ICCT’s work focuses on themes
at the intersection of countering violent extremism and criminal justice sector responses, as well as human
rights related aspects of counter-terrorism. The major project areas concern countering violent extremism,
rule of law, foreign fighters, country and regional analysis, rehabilitation, civil society engagement and
victims’ voices. Functioning as a nucleus within the international counter-terrorism network, ICCT connects
experts, policymakers, civil society actors and practitioners from different fields by providing a platform for
productive collaboration, practical analysis, and exchange of experiences and expertise, with the ultimate
aim of identifying innovative and comprehensive approaches to preventing and countering terrorism.
Executive Summary
This Research Paper explores and questions some assumed causal links between
terrorism on the one hand and (forced and irregular) migration on the other:
A. State terrorism as main cause of migration?
B. State failure as cause of terrorism and migration?
C. Non-state terrorism as cause of migration?
D. (Civil) War as major cause of terrorism and migration?
E. Refugee camps and diasporas as causes (and targets) of terrorism?
F. Migrants as terrorists? Terrorists as migrants?
G. Counter-Terrorist operations as cause of forced migration?
Twenty findings emerged from the study:
1. The study of terrorism and the study of migration have been two separate fields.
While there is a huge literature on both, migration and on terrorism, there are no
in-depth studies on the intersection of the two phenomena.
2. International migration is driven not just by political violence, armed conflict and
state repression but just as much by economic and environmental factors. This type
of migration is likely to grow enormously in the years to come due to climate
change and loss of employment opportunities due to globalisation.
3. There are multiple causal relations between (forced/irregular) migration and

terrorism - but these are generally complex.
4. While it is, in concrete situations, difficult to isolate specific factors as being

responsible for migration, a major driver of forced migration is severe state
repression involving attacks on civilian populations that, in cases of (civil) war, often
also amount to war crimes or war-time terrorism.
5. Terrorism by non-state actors with deliberate attacks on civilians is also a major

driver of forced migration; such displacements are sometimes unintended by-
products of insurgent terrorism, and sometimes a deliberate policy.
6. The more incidents of terrorism and the higher their lethality, the more out-
migration from an affected country has be observed.
7. Data from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – and to a lesser extent Pakistan - show that
the number of first-time asylum seekers in Europe is correlated to the number of
deaths from terrorism in the countries of origin.
8. The Islamic State (IS) claims that migration (hijra) to the Caliphate is an individual
obligation for all Muslims. On the other hand, its Caliph considers those who leave
its territory for other countries as ‘infidels’. There are some indications that IS seeks
to tax these emigrants in cooperation with criminal smugglers and also uses the
refugee stream for the infiltration of (returning) foreign fighters into Europe.
9. The Assad regime in Syria has deliberately targeted civilians as an instrument of

warfare in order to deprive the insurgents of a supportive environment. More
internal and external displacement has been caused by the regime than by the IS.
10. The large majority of refugees in the world – 86 percent according to one count –
are to be found in developing countries. Refugee camps are sometimes used by
terrorists for radicalisation and recruitment and as bases from which to launch
attacks. This has been true for Palestinian terrorism as well as for attacks
emanating from refugee camps in places like Pakistan.
11. Refugee camps and asylum centres in developing countries as well as in Europe
have also become targets of terrorist attacks. The arson attacks we have seen on
asylum centres, for instance in Germany or Sweden, clearly serve a communicative
purpose and there is no good reason not to call such attacks also acts of terrorism.
12. Diasporas of people from countries experiencing repression, civil war or terrorism
at home can become places of conspiracy and plotting of terrorist attacks. In the
1990s, London became a crucial hub for jihadist terrorists which made some French
security officials to call it “Londonistan” for its terrorist plotting. More recently,
Molenbeek in Belgium serves as such a hub.
13. Some children of immigrants to Western diasporas, insufficiently integrated into

the host society and being caught between two cultures, have, in a search for
identity and meaning, looked at jihadists as role models and thousands of them
have migrated to Syria to become foreign fighters.
14. Migrants can be terrorists and terrorists can be migrants in a number of ways:
a. migration to the Caliphate is portrayed as an individual Muslim obligation

and has attracted thousands of young Muslims in Western diasporas;
b. some jihadists who cannot return to their country of origin without being
arrested migrate from one jihadist theatre of war to the next (Afghanistan
– Bosnia – Chechnya – Somalia – Syria –Libya);
c. some economic migrants are abducted and forced by terrorists to join their
ranks – a practice they also use for captured children and women, e.g. by
Boko Haram in northern Nigeria;
d. a few foreign fighters have engaged in acts of terrorism, including suicide

terrorism, upon migrating back to their home countries as part of refugee
streams.
15. The arrival of large refugee populations, when not properly handled, increases the
risk of attacks in the recipient country by both domestic and transnational
terrorists.
16. Historically, the number of criminals and terrorists in mass migration movements
has been low - but terrorists often have a criminal background to begin with.
17. Not only terrorism can cause refugee flows and internal displacement but also
counter-terrorist operations can cause large displacements of people.
18. Migration control for the control of terrorism is a widely used instrument. However,
it might hurt bona fide migrants and legal foreign residents more than mala fide
terrorists. It fosters xenophobia and deprives host countries, where and when it
has the effect of reducing migration and hospitality to foreigners, of the many
positive contributions (some types of) migrants can make to a society. There is the
additional danger that instruments of migration control for counter-terrorism are,
further down the line, also used for controlling native citizens.
19. While migrants and refugees have occasionally been instrumentalised by

governments, the thesis that the current migration stream to Europe is a Russian
plot to destabilise Europe is far-fetched and not supported by empirical evidence.
20. The interface between terrorism and migration is a rich field for research that
deserves all the attention it can get so that well- and ill-founded concerns can be
separated and policies can be built on solid evidence. This exploratory study has
sketched some avenues for further research but cannot provide definitive answers.
The Research Paper concludes with two policy recommendations that can go some way
towards disentangling the issues of (refugee) migration and terrorism. One of them
refers to committing migrants to respect the political culture and values of European
countries while the second refers to an obligation of migrants to inform the authorities
on security issues related to terrorism and radicalisation.
Millions of people have fled the territory controlled by terrorist and
violent extremist groups. Migratory flows have increased both away from and
towards the conflict zones, involving those seeking safety and those lured into the
conflict as foreign terrorist fighters, further destabilizing the regions concerned.
UN Report, 24 December 20151
1. Introduction
The present age has, with some exaggeration, been called the Age of Terrorism.2 With
less hyperbole, it might be called the Age of Migration.3 We tend to think of migration
only in terms of people crossing international borders but if we look at intra-state
migration as well, the sheer extent of contemporary human mobility – free and forced,
regular and irregular - becomes evident. About one in seven persons – almost one
billion people – are migrants in this extended sense: 740 million of them are internal
migrants and 215 million international migrants – not counting tourists. 4 These
travelling people are driven by economic, environmental, political and other push and
pull factors. Their number is likely to increase greatly in the years to come, with bad
harvests due to climate change, rising sea levels and political instability and insecurity
being major factors.5
Our main focus here is on forced migration.6 It is a rapidly growing phenomenon: in

just three years the worldwide displacement of people from their homes rose by 40
percent - from 42,5 million to 59,5 million.7 Most of the displaced lead a precarious life,
especially those 86 percent of all refugees who remain in developing countries. 8 The
potential for increased migration is high as 1,6 billion people – one fifth of the world
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
population – are, according to a World Bank estimate, threatened by insecurity in
various forms. 9
What are the main causes of forced migration? Civil war, government repression, state
failure, or (also) something else? How many of the nearly sixty million refugees and
internally displaced persons in the world were driven from their homes by terrorism?
Are the countries most badly affected by terrorism the same countries that also
produce major refugee flows? Are countries receiving large numbers of refugees more
prone to be exposed to terrorist attacks? These are some of the questions which will
be explored in the following pages.
In 2015 the member states of the European Union received 1,9 million new applications
for asylum – nearly half a million of them from Syrians and another half a million from
Afghanis, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Nigerians. 10 The names of these countries of origin
already suggest a causal link to terrorism. However, there is also a more sinister
explanation. Some argue that refugee flows – consisting these days often of mainly
young male Muslims - are deliberately used as a kind of “Trojan horse”,11 being part of
an “organised invasion” of Muslims into the West. Not just some right-wing xenophobic
conspiracy theorists think so; even NATO’s supreme commander in Europe, General
Philip Breedlove, recently made such a claim, suggesting that refugees are ‘weaponised’
by Russia against Europe.12
One thing is certain: both migration and terrorism are potential drivers of international
conflict. Nevertheless, there is, as Yilmaz Simsek noted, “a scarcity of migration
literature directly related to terrorism”.13 Given the paucity of data, this Research Paper
can only have an exploratory character.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
In the following pages the current wave of migration is placed in context and then,
briefly, the same is done with regards to terrorism. Subsequently, the links between
the two phenomena and the causal factors held responsible for them are explored.
2. Refugee Migration Pressure

In early 2015 the “Islamic State” (IS) threatened at one moment to flood Europe with
half a million refugees through Libya. 14 It also claimed that 4,000 jihadists fighters
would be sent to Europe via Turkey.15 By December 2015 between one and two million
people from Syria, Iraq and other countries affected by armed conflict and other
adversities had fled to Western Europe through Libya and Turkey – a sharp increase
over the previous two years when 435,000 people had applied for refugee status in
Europe in 2013 and 626,000 in 2014. 16 The stream continues: in the first ten weeks of
2016 another 150,000 people crossed the Mediterranean: 140,000 from Turkey to
Greece; some 10,000 from Libya to Italy. 17 Given the ongoing crisis situation in the
Middle East, the outlook is, as Yehuda Bauer put it, that “….one has to face the prospect
of a mass migration of up to five million people into Europe within the next few years”.18
In an internal report, the German government made the “technical assumption” that
by 2020 3.6 million people would arrive in Germany alone. 19 If little more than one
million people already put the Schengen zone countries with their more than 420
million people in a state of crisis - what would five million refugees do to the cohesion
of the European Union?20 Given the multiple crises in parts of Africa and the Middle
East, migration pressure towards Europe is bound to rise.
The Schengen border control system de facto broke down in 2015 when Greece and,
to a lesser extent, Italy were unable to maintain an orderly vetting system of those
arriving from Turkey and Libya. 21 This allowed hundreds of thousands of people –
asylum seekers, economic migrants, as well as others - to proceed towards Austria,
Germany, and Sweden, the countries receiving most asylum seekers on a per capita
basis.22 In many cases the true identities and motives of the migrants were not clear.
At one moment in 2015, only 25 to 30 percent of the refugees arriving in Germany were
in possession of passports or other valid travel documents. The German police was
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
able to obtain fingerprints from only a fraction - about 10 percent - of the migrants.
This could have allowed police check on their identity against the Schengen Information
System and other databases.23 In many cases Syrian passports were false or stolen –
according to one source the Islamic State got hold of up to 250,000 of blank Iraqi
passports and equipment to produce individualised originals. 24
The ongoing instability in Northern Africa following the Arab Spring has led to hundreds
of thousands of people trying to escape to Europe. Such a trend was already visible
before the Arab Spring – with dire consequences for many of these irregular migrants.
According to the anti-racist organisation United, 15,551 migrants died between 1988
and April 2011 on that journey, either in the Sahara desert or while trying to cross the
Mediterranean.25 Several thousands more have since then met the same fate. Yet more
than one million others were lucky and made it into what some have termed not so
long ago – erroneously as it now turns out - “Fortress Europe”. Once there, very few of
the asylum seekers and economic migrants have in past years been returned to their
country of origin after their asylum claims were rejected. 26 Many of those arriving in
Europe are not weak young women and children but strong young men who paid
thousands of euros to smugglers to bring them to Europe, leaving behind family
members who might have been more in need of safety and security than those men.
Paul Collier, an expert on the economics of migration, has argued that Europe is
admitting the wrong sort of people.27 Many of them are fortune seekers who invested
up to 6,000 Euros to smugglers to get them into Europe. 28 Those without that kind of
money are generally more in need of protection. The ill-controlled influx of people from
North Africa, the Middle East and countries as far away as Afghanistan has created
widespread apprehension, with some panicky people comparing the present situation
even to the 5th century “barbarian invasions” (also termed “migration of the nations”) -
large scale population movements of Goths, Vandals and other “barbarians”, pushed
west- and southwards by Mongolian Huns since 375 A.D. This eventually led to
repeated sackings of Rome by Goths and Vandals and the ultimate fall of the (West-)
Roman empire in 476 A.D.29 Some populist leaders have reminded national publics that
Islam had been advancing towards Europe three times between the 8 th and the 17th
century and suggest that it is trying to do it again, this time by other means than military
campaigns. The Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, speaking to parliament on 21
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
September 2015, took on the mantle of a defender of Christian-European civilisation,
reminding his audience “that it is Hungary’s historic and moral obligation to protect the
borders of Hungary, that, in turn, is also protecting Europe”. 30 The war in Syria has
internally and externally displaced some 12 million people - half of the country’s
population - while the war in Iraq had sent some four million people abroad – more
than 10 percent of its population.31 While more than seven million people in Syria have
been displaced internally (i.e. moved from an unsafe part of the country to a more safe
part within the nations’ borders), some four million are waiting for a better future
abroad, the majority of them in refugee camps in Turkey (2,620,553 refugees), Lebanon
(1,069,111 refugees), Iraq (245,533 refugees), Jordan (637,859) and Egypt (118,512). 32
The size of this displacement is, in this part of the world, unlike any other since the end
of the Second World War when more than eleven million Germans sought to escape
from the advancing Soviet Red Army or the Communist regimes set up by Stalin in
Eastern Europe. 33 However, sizeable mass displacements surpassing one million
people have been a regular occurrence since the Second World War: by 1994 the
Bosnian war produced close to 1,5 million war refugees and the one in Kosovo in 1998-
1999 made 900,000 persons flee. More than one million people became refugees in
Bangladesh when Pakistan split up in the early 1970s; more than one million fled
Ethiopia in 1979, Afghanistan in 1980, Mozambique in 1989 and Iraq (mostly Kurds) in
1990. The Vietnam war produced about two million refugees and the civil wars in El
Salvador and Guatemala each about one million.34 The separation of India and Pakistan
in 1947/48 surpassed all of this: it displaced more than 15 million people while more
than one million were killed.35 More recently conflicts in Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria
have turned more than one million people into refugees (see Box 1).
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
10
Box 1: Ten Countries with Large Numbers of Refugees (mid-2015)
Afghanistan 2,632,534
Syria 4,194,554
Somalia 1,105,618
South Sudan 744,102
Sudan 640,919
DR Congo 535,323
Central African Republic 470,568
Myanmar 458,381
Eritrea 383,869
Iraq 377,747
Source: UNHCR. Mid-Year Trends 2015. Geneva: UNHCR, 2015, pp. 4-6 & Annex Table 1, pp. 21-24’
http://www.unhcr.org/56701b969.html. – Not listed here is the case of the Palestinian people;
originally up to 700,000 became refugees in 1948/49; currently more than 5 million of them as well
as of their descendants live abroad. For partly political reasons 2nd and 3rd generation Palestinians
who have settled permanently in third countries are still counted as “refugees” in the Arab world
where, in many cases, they have not been allowed to integrate and obtain citizenship.
3. Growing Terrorism Pressure

At the time of the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Centre and the
Pentagon, Al-Qaeda numbered about 300 mujahideen in Afghanistan, supported by the
Taliban regime. Fifteen years of “war on terror’ have made the situation worse rather
than better. One of Al-Qaeda’s successor organisations, the so-called “Islamic State” (IS)
alone numbers tens of thousands of jihadists, with some 30,000 foreign fighters from
more than 100 countries having joining the fight in Syria.36 At the time of 9/11 Al-Qaeda
controlled a few training camps in Afghanistan. Now IS controls an area the size of
Belgium, with 6 to 8 million people and claims to have provinces (wilayats) in more than
half a dozen countries from Nigeria to Afghanistan and the Philippines. In 2014,
according to figures recently released by START, more than 16,800 terrorist attacks took
place, causing more than 43,500 deaths and more than 40,900 wounded, while more
than 11,800 other people were taken hostage. 37 All told, in the last 15 years, more than
140,000 people have been killed in more than 61,000 terrorist incidents. 38
The year 2014 has been particularly bad: acts of terrorism worldwide led to 80 percent
more deaths compared to the year before.39 More than half of them were the “work”
of the Islamic State and terrorist fighters in its provinces abroad. In recent years, much
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
of the killing has been concentrated in four Muslim majority countries: Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and one where the Muslim population constitutes half of the total
population – Nigeria.40 Most recently, the highest number of victims of terrorism were
counted in Nigeria where Boko Haram killed some 20,000 people in Borno state during
the last seven years. 41 These five countries accounted together for more than 70
percent of all deaths through acts of terrorism in 2014 (the last one for which full data
are available). Six more countries with more than 500 fatalities each in 2014 are
Somalia, Yemen, Central African Republic, and three countries with non-Muslim
majorities: Cameroon, South Sudan and the Ukraine. In total, acts of terrorism took
place in 93 countries in 2014. While the United States has been most active in the war
on terrorism, the countries of the democratic West (North America, Australia and the
European countries) themselves have, with the exception of the attacks of 11
September 2001, suffered only 0.5 per cent of all fatalities from terrorism in the last 15
years.42 The majority of countries suffering most from terrorism are Muslim countries
and both perpetrators and victims are mostly Muslims (see Box 2). In general, the
strategy of counter-terrorism laid out since 2001 by the United States has been
counter-productive and, in most conflict zones, increased rather than decreased the
threat of terrorism.43
Box 2: Ten Countries Suffering Highest Numbers of Terrorist Fatalities

(2014)
Percentage of Worldwide Fatalities

Iraq 30.4%
Nigeria 23.0%
Afghanistan 13.8%
Pakistan 5.4%
Syria 5.2%
Somalia 2.5%
Ukraine 2.9%
Yemen 2.0%
Central African Republic 1.8%
South Sudan 1.7%
Rest of the World 11.3%
Legend: 100% (32, 685 fatalities)
Source: Data from START’s GTD, University of Maryland, as quoted in Institute for Economics & Peace.
Global Terrorism Index 2015. Measuring and Understanding the Impact of Terrorism Sidney: IEP,
2015, p. 16, www.visionofhumanity.org.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
12
4. How is Migration Linked to Terrorism?
In recent public discussions there has been much loose talk of terrorists hiding in large
numbers in refugee streams. This has made many people apprehensive about offering
asylum seekers the assistance they are entitled to from countries which have signed
and ratified the 1951 Convention and the 1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the
Status of Refugees.44
The relationship between terrorism and various forms of migration is a complex one. 45
In one sense, it falls under the even broader theme of globalisation. Jamal Al Jassar has
discussed that particular relationship in metaphorical terms as migration of dreams and
migration of nightmares. These migrations he sees as “the merging points of both
globalisation and terrorism”. Writing from a Palestinian perspective, he claims that:
[G]lobalisation contributes to dreams among those who are poor or

oppressed. Dreams enlarge the gap between expectations and
achievements. The gap contributes to violence that often migrates to the
lands of the rich and powerful. It is this cycle of dreams and nightmares
that characterizes our globalised world today. […] [T]he globalization of
violent conflicts has led to unprecedented levels of human suffering.
Terrorism has constituted a necessary component in such conflicts. While
the migration of dreams stems from cultural and technological
globalisation, a different process called the migration of nightmares is a
direct result of global violence and terrorism. As history has shown, the
terrorism of empires as well as regional powers has been the main force
driving the phenomenon. The powerful often terrorize the weak and bring
nightmares into the lives of the helpless. On occasion, the weak and
oppressed carry their struggle into the heartland of their oppressors,
bringing nightmares to those who live there.46
While this interpretation can be challenged on several accounts (e.g. poverty per se is
not the cause of terrorism 47 and current levels of human suffering are not
unprecedented), 48 what is important to note is that some people, especially in
developing countries, believe it to be true - which has consequences of its own for the
real situation - as is also the case with other conspiracy theories.49
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
In the following pages the reader will find an exploration of some assumed connections
where terrorism is said to “cause” 50 migration or where migration is said to “cause”
terrorism or where the two phenomena appear together, “caused” by a third element
such as war. Before we proceed, it is necessary to define the two key terms of our
Research Paper (Box 3).
Box 3: Definitions of Migration and Terrorism
Migration refers to the in-[immigration] or out-movement [emigration] of

(groups of) people from one place to a usually distant other location, with the
intention to settle at the destination, temporarily or permanently. This process
can be voluntary or forced, regular (legal) or irregular (illegal), within one
country or across international borders. Refugees are a sub-group of
international migrants who seek asylum or have obtained protection abroad
under the terms of the UN Refugee Convention of 1951. 51
Terrorism refers to a political communication strategy for psychological mass

manipulation whereby unarmed civilians (and non-combatants such as
prisoners) are deliberately victimised in order to impress third parties (e.g.
intimidate, coerce or otherwise influence a government or a section of society
or international public opinion), with the help of portrayals of demonstrative
violence in front of audiences and/or for coverage in mass or social media.
Terrorism from non-state actors is often a strategy of provocation aiming at
societal polarisation and conflict escalation while state- or regime terrorism
serves the purpose of repression and social control. Terrorism as
psychological warfare is also an irregular and illegal tactic in armed conflict
where it can be used by one or both sides. 52
51 52
The causal chains between terrorism and migration to be explored here are these:
A. State terrorism as main cause of migration?

B. State failure as cause of terrorism and migration?
C. Non-state terrorism as cause of migration?
D. (Civil) War as major cause terrorism and migration?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
14
E. Refugee camps and diasporas as causes (and targets) of terrorism?
F. Migrants as terrorists? Terrorists as migrants?
G. Counter-terrorist operations as cause of forced migration?
While there are many more or less broad general “causes” of migration (see Box 4), the
various likely drivers behind migration and terrorism have yet to be explored in greater
Box 4: Ten Causes of Migration Pressure in the Post- Cold War Period
1. A global wealth imbalance, with the richest 1 percent of the world

population possessing as much of the global wealth as the rest;
2. A demographic explosion coupled with economic stagnation in many

countries, with population increasing faster than the economy,
especially in parts of Africa and the Middle East;
3. Massive global unemployment (currently 200,000,000 people,

according to ILO estimates) and even more massive under-
employment and “working poor”;
4. Environmental destruction (inundations, desertification,

deforestation, water shortage) on a grand scale, leading to resource
conflicts in countries of origin of migrants;
5. Changing tactics of warfare which have made the civilian population

the main target, creating major internal displacements and refugee
flows;
6. The re-emergence of exclusive nationalism and the growth of religious

intolerance, leading to ethnic and religious cleansing;
7. A revolution in transportation, enabling long-distance mass migration;
8. The discovery of smuggling and trafficking in people as a high-yield,

low-risk business by organised crime which provides false papers,
transport, entry and exploitative employment to those willing and able
to pay;
9. The presence of ethnic diasporas in ‘global cities’ abroad that form

bridgeheads for voluntary legal migration (e.g. through family reunion)
and irregular migration (e.g. through trafficking and work as illegal
aliens);
10. Worldwide satellite television and the Internet-transmitted images of

affluence and luxury to poor countries, creating a desire among young
people to migrate to the promising shores of wealth and stability.
Source: Adapted from A.P. Schmid (Ed.). Whither Refugee? The Refugee Crisis: Problems and
Solutions (Leiden: PIOOM, 1996), p. 4; updated with data from Oxfam: “Oxfam says wealth of
richest 1% equal to other 99%”, BBC News, 18 January 2016,
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475.
detail. This is what we shall try to do in the following pages. Subsequently, we will also
raise the issue whether migration control should be used for countering terrorism.
From the list in Box 4, factors 7, 8, 9 and 10 appear to be especially relevant for our
discussion. Yet an even more important driver is probably the one listed as number 5
relating to the widespread disregard for the laws of war. Not on the list in Box 4 is
another major driver: regime or state terrorism. The discourse on contemporary
terrorism focuses mainly on non-state actors as source of terrorism. However, many
authoritarian governments have used and some still use the instrument of terrorism
as well, despite the fact that states possess a broader repertoire for social control short
of intimidating and illegal shows of force. However, theory formation about terrorism
has focused mainly on the causes of terrorism by non-state groups (see Box 5).
Box 5: Ten Causes and Objectives of (Non-State) Terrorism as Suggested in

the Academic Literature
1. To awaken the (alleged) revolutionary spirit of the masses;

2. To gain free access to the world news system as public violence is
always reported;
3. Revenge for injustice, real or perceived, suffered by group with
which terrorists identify;
4. Resistance against repressive authoritarian regimes where
political change by other than violent means appears to be
blocked;
5. Protest against foreign policy (intervention/occupation/support
for local dictators);
6. Provocation of repression against a segment of society to gain
recruits from it;
7. Alienation, marginalisation and humiliation;
8. Reaction to suppression of minority group or majority group in
minority position;
9. To conduct a deniable proxy war against adversary;
10. To influence the behaviour of the target group (not victims
themselves) in ways deemed favourable to the terrorist
organisation.
Source: Adapted from B. McAllister & A. P. Schmid, “Theories of Terrorism”. In: A. P. Schmid
(Ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research (New York and London, 2011), pp. 201-
293.
The reasons given in Box 5 are just some of the motives suggested by researchers. They
do not show much overlap with the causes of migration from Box 4. In the following,
we will look at some aspects of terrorism that appear most closely linked to migration.
At the highest level of abstraction, there are three main reactions to exposure to one
or a series of shocking terrorist attacks: (i) fight; (ii) flight and (iii) hide. The first reaction
is generally not possible for the victims themselves since, by most definitions, terrorism
involves attacks on unarmed civilians (or the threat thereof). The second reaction is the
most likely where it is feasible: flee more or less in panic from the danger zone and
migrate to a safer place. However, terrorism can not only mobilise people to leave
(which might just be what, for instance, terrorists aiming at ethnic cleansing are after).
16
Shocking acts of terrorism can also immobilise people - they are “frozen by fear” and
“stiff with terror” and the best they can do is hide and/or obey. While single acts of
terrorism might only lead to temporary shock, whole campaigns of terrorism by
militant organisations are a different matter, creating chronic anxiety. However, it is
when terrorism becomes a criminal instrument of statecraft, that the effects can be
truly dramatic and traumatic with subjugation into obedience (“hide” – internal exile)
and flight (“migration”) as main responses.53
A. State Terrorism as Main Cause of

Migration?
States claim a monopoly on the use of force but that monopoly has been frequently
challenged in revolts. However, revolts more often than not do not lead to full-scale
successful revolutions but, on the contrary, more often lead to enhanced state
repression, sometimes bordering on regime terrorism. While at the end of the Cold
War many hoped that democracy would become the “new normal’, that hope has been
shattered, especially after the world economic crisis of 2008 and the demise of the Arab
Spring following an initial wave of seemingly successful uprisings in 2011. A recent
survey by the German Bertelsmann Foundation of political systems in 129 developing
countries and countries in transition from Communism revealed that 74 of them were
to varying degrees democratic but 55 others were autocratically ruled; of these, 40
governments are “hard” dictatorships. 54 The general trend worldwide is no longer
towards more democracy and even in established democracies the rise of populist
authoritarianism is a real danger.
While there are many databases that collect information on armed non-state actors
engaging in campaigns of terrorism,55 state or regime terrorism, while usually larger in
scale and more deadly, has received insufficient attention.56 Yet it is arguably one of
the leading drivers behind the flow of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).
According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, which uses the large GTD database
of START (University of Maryland), “[a]round 92 per cent of all terrorist attacks between
1989 and 2014 occurred in countries where violent political terror was widespread”. 57
The reference to “political terror” in this quote is to one of the very few databases on
state terrorism, the “Political Terror Scale”, originally developed in the early 1980s by
Michael Stohl at Purdue University and continued in recent years by Marc Gibney,
professor at the University of North Carolina in Ashville, USA. 58 Gibney and his
colleagues code the annual reports of Amnesty International 59 and Human Rights
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Watch 60 as well as the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of the US State
Department.61 They translate the qualitative assessments of these monitoring efforts
into a quantitative scale that distinguishes between five levels of human rights
observance/disregard, ranging from level 1 (no political repression) to 5 (generalised
political repression). For our purposes, levels 4 and 5 can be considered as
approximations for state (or regime) terrorism:
Box 6: Political [State] Terror Scale Levels
Level I: Countries under a secure rule of law, people are not imprisoned
for their views, and torture is rare or exceptional. Political murders are
extremely rare.
Level II: There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent polit-

ical activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beatings are
exceptional. Political murder is rare.
Level III: There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of

such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality
may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political
views is accepted.
Level IV: Civil and political rights violations have expanded to large num-
bers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture are a com-
mon part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those
who interest themselves in politics or ideas.
Level V: Terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of

these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness with which
they pursue personal or ideological goals.
Source: M. Gibney, L. Cornett, R. Wood, P. Haschke and D. Arnon. 2015. “The Political Terror
Scale 1976-2015”. Data retrieved from the Political Terror Scale website:
http://www.politicalterrorscale.org.
Gibney et al, coding the Amnesty International yearbook for 2014, established that 12
countries fall under level IV: DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea,
Pakistan, Russian Federation, South Sudan, Syria, Turkey and Uganda. Three fall under
the even worse category V: Afghanistan, Colombia and Iraq, with one country, Sudan,
falling between these two categories. 62
There is some overlap in Gibney’s monitoring with the one of Freedom House (Box 7)
which recorded for ten consecutive years a decline of freedom (civil and political rights)
in the world. Over the last decade, a total of 105 countries registered a decline in
freedoms, while only 61 experienced a net improvement. The most significant reversals
were freedom of expression and the rule of law. Ratings for the Middle East and North
Africa were among the worst in the world in 2015. Only 40 percent of the world’s people
(currently 7,315,804,000 persons) are “free”, 24 percent are only “partly free” and 36
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
18
percent of the global population are “not free”.63 Given this state of affairs, and the
absence of rule of law for some four billion people, it is no wonder that we can expect
in many countries continuing revolts and repression, accompanied by terrorism and
migration, at home and abroad.
Box 7: Ten Least Free Countries in the World (2015) and numbers of those
who fled them
Number of Refugees (2015)
Central African Republic 469,314

Equatorial Guinea 173
Eritrea 352,309
North Korea n.d.
Saudi Arabia 629
Somalia 1,105,460
Sudan 634,612
Syria 4,180,920
Turkmenistan 496
Uzbekistan 4,762
Source: “Worst of the Worst countries”, Freedom in the World 2015. (New York: Freedom House, 2016),
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015#.VvGnuGThCHs;
UNHCR., Mid-Year Trends 2015 (Geneva: UNHCR, 2015), pp.21-24, www.unhcr.org/56701b969.html.
Where governments engage in state terrorism or other forms of violence we can expect
refugees. Strange as it may seem at first sight, the arguably worst regime on earth, the
one of Kim Jong-un ruling over 25 million people in North Korea, due to total state
control over both borders and society, produces nearly no refugees. Some other highly
repressive regimes also show relatively low refugee levels for a variety of reasons. In a
number of cases (e.g. Colombia), displacement was more internal than external (more
than six million internally displaced while nearly 400,000 people ended up as
refugees). 64 However, some major refugee producing countries that are a source of
European concern, are on Freedom House’s non-free list and/or on Gibney’s Political
Terror list - for instance, Eritrea (up to 10,000 internally displaced; more than 350,000
refugees), 65 Iraq (3,120,000 internally displaced; 66 377,747 refugees 67 ), and Syria
(6,600,000 internally displaced; 4,180,920 refugees 68).
Of particular interest here is the case of Syria. While Western news media focus mainly
on the atrocities of the so-called Islamic State, it should not been forgotten that the
regime of Bashir al-Assad killed, tortured and expelled many more Syrians than IS.69
Benedetta Berti, an Italian political scientist, noted with regard to the regime’s policies:
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
[F]orced migration is more than a natural byproduct of the violence;
indeed, displacement is occurring by design. A key part of the Assad
regime’s military strategy has been to incapacitate rebel-held areas by
targeting the civilian population, destroying the civilian infrastructure, and
withholding access to basic public goods. This strategy has been
employed from early on in the conflict as a counterinsurgency tool to
separate the civilian population from the rebel factions opposing the
regime, resulting in mass displacement (…) As a result schools, hospitals,
markets, and even refugee camps are some of the most dangerous places
within Syria. Civilians have been … deliberately attacked…. (…) The
displacement of people within Syria should be regarded as a deliberate
instrument of war. In this context, refugees and internally displaced
people should be regarded as two manifestations of the same
phenomena: the purposeful targeting of civilians in the context of war.70
While terrorism in the form of irregular warfare and state terrorism are difficult to
separate when the enemy is internal, and while some forms of political violence and
armed conflict are better subsumed under other labels than terrorism (e.g. crime
against humanity; war crimes, gross human rights violations), it nevertheless can be
said that state terrorism has been a major and perhaps even the main cause of forced
migration in the case of Syria. By mid-2015, some twelve million people - half of the
population of Syria - had been displaced by the atrocities; about two thirds of them
within the country and one third had fled abroad, mainly to Turkey, Lebanon and
Jordan.71
The blind eye of many governments to state terrorism of allied regimes, combined with
the general state fixation on non-state terrorist actors, has contributed to overlooking
one of the most powerful drivers of forced migration – regime or state terrorism. Partly
this has to do with the fact that countries experiencing state terrorism are also
experiencing terrorism by non-state actors. In such cases cause and effect, action and
reaction, are difficult to separate the longer the spiral of tit-for-tat violence continues,
with false flag operations complicating matters further.
According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, “92 per cent of all terrorist attacks
occurred in countries where the Political Terror Scale was very high. Fifteen of the
countries with the highest level of terrorism in 2014 also had very poor Political Terror
Scale scores in 2002”.72
Most of these countries are also producing major internal and external migration (see
Box 8).
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
20
Box 8: Internal Displacement and Refugee Migration
2014 for Countries Scoring 4-5 on Political Terrorism
Scale
Internally Displaced Persons Refugees
Afghanistan (5) at least 847,872 2,690,775

Colombia (5) 6,044,200 396,635
Iraq (5) at least 3,300,000 377,747
Sudan (4.5) 3,100,000 649,300
DRC (4) at least 2,857,400 405,000
Eritrea (4) up to 10,000 363,077
Ethiopia (4) 413,400 86,861
Iran (4) n.d. n.d.
Myanmar (4) up to 662,400 479,706
North Korea (4) n.d. n.d.
Pakistan (4) at least 1,800,000 175,961
Russian Federation (4) at least 25,378 74,357
South Sudan (4) at least 1,690,000 746,900
Syria (4) at least 6,600,000 4,180,920
Turkey (4) at least 954,000 66,607
Uganda (4) 29,800 7,191
Source: International Displacement Monitoring Centre. Data for 2014; see: http://www.internal-
displacement.org/global-figures/. More recent IDCM figures available from 11 May 2016 onwards;
"UNHCR Statistical Online Population Database”, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), Data extracted: 05/05/2016, www.unhcr.org/statistics/populationdatabase. The reader will
note some differences in the figures in Boxes 8 and 9. These are generally due to different moments
in time when estimates were made or different focuses, e.g. on flow of refugees vs. stock of refugees.
The exact chain of causation leading to migration is difficult to establish when both
state and non-state terrorism are involved simultaneously, with other factors like
foreign military intervention also being present. However, somewhat paradoxically, the
absence of a strong state – state failure - can also be a possible cause of both terrorism
and migration, as we shall see in the following section.
B. State Failure as Cause of Terrorism and
Migration?
Fragile, weak or failing states have been associated with terrorism for some time. 73 The
idea that the absence of a strong central authority that enjoys a high degree of
legitimacy with major sections of society and a government that is unable to maintain
law and order allows terrorist organisations to nestle in un- or under-governed
territories and set up their own state-like structures is, on the face of it, a very plausible
assumption. The general decline of the state’s monopoly of violence (which was never
complete) also tends to give rise to vigilantism by private armed militias - groups which
seek to impose order without necessarily having the law on their side. Such vigilante
policies often take recourse to terrorist tactics, including ethnic cleansing, which can
lead to both internal as well as external displacements of people.
Since the end of the Cold War period, but already before, there have been several cases
where central governments have collapsed, leaving territories ungoverned. The prime
example has been Somalia which, since the ousting of Mohamed Siad Barre (who had
been Somalia’s dictator from 1969 to 1991), has drifted from one crisis to the next. The
country, formerly colonised by Italy and Great Britain, broke up into several parts
(Puntland, Somaliland, Jubaland and the Federal Republic of Somalia) and has seen the
rise of al-Shabaab which, in addition to the “work” already done by various warlords,
further devastated the country. After a futile intervention of Ethiopia in 2006, the
terrorist organisation al-Shabaab came out on top and produced further large refugee
outflows, especially in the direction of Kenya where Dadaab, the largest refugee camp
in the world (in fact a complex of three camps, with, as of 2016 330,000 74 refugees –
down from half a million) was in existence since 1991. Despite the presence of UN and
AU troops, al-Shabaab has not been defeated. Other states associated with various
degrees of state failure have been Afghanistan (after 1992) and Iraq (after 2003). Both
Iraq and Afghanistan experience terrorism and other types of armed conflict on a grand
scale and have also produced large refugee flows.
The number of post-colonial states experiencing a (temporary) governance meltdown

of sorts for economic, political or other reasons has been quite large and includes, for
instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Sudan and
South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya, Yemen and the Central African Republic (CAR) and,
most recently, Venezuela.75 Sometimes, it is only one part of a country that becomes
lawless as the control by the central government has weakened or becomes totally
absent. A relevant example is Uganda where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has
terrorised the north but also neighbouring regions for decades. Numbering, at various
times, between 300 and 3,000 “fighters”, it nevertheless managed to displace during its
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
22
existence hundreds of thousands of people across South Sudan, the DRC and the
CAR. 76 At the height of its atrocity campaign, in 2006, some 1,700,000 people in
northern Uganda sought refuge in camps for internally displaced people.
Another well-known case is Pakistan with its tribal areas FATA where Al-Qaeda and the
Afghan Taliban found or were granted shelter in Waziristan.77
Yet on the other hand, there are numerous fragile, weak or failing states that have seen
little or no terrorism and therefore no terrorism-induced migration (economic
migration, however, has often been substantial, e.g. in the case of Zimbabwe where, in
2014, 2,200,000 people were threatened by hunger 78 and remittances of political and
economic emigrants are keeping many of the 14 million inhabitants alive).
In his article “Weak States, State Failure and Terrorism”, Edward Newman 79 looked at
the presence or absence of terrorist groups on the territory of fragile states and found
that the relationship between state strength and the presence of non-state terrorist
groups was not that clear-cut. While he could establish that terrorist organisations
(also) operated in weak and failed states, he found that it was not necessarily that
fragile condition of the state that explained their presence. He conceded that there is
significant anecdotal evidence concerning state weakness and terrorism but also noted
that a significant number of states which perform poorly on all indicators of state
capacity do not play host to terrorist organisations.80 He further noted that
Sometimes, the decisive factor is the hospitality – or support,

or acquiescence – of the local ‘authorities’, rather than the absence of state
structures. Thus, whilst a group may be able to work fairly independently,
a positive relationship with the host government – or ‘powers that be’ – is
important. Weak or failed statehood could never be a satisfactory
explanatory variable in isolation from other factors.81
Failing states generally cannot provide security and essential services to their citizens
which, in turn, tends to favour emigration. If we look at the Fragile State Index, issued
annually by The Fund for Peace, an independent, nonpartisan organisation which
focuses on the problems of weak and failing states, we find indeed many countries with
strong population outflow among the most fragile states. In its 2015 report, The Fund
for Peace ranked 178 countries in terms of their levels of stability, using a dozen
political, social and economic indicators and many more additional sub-indicators. As
indicated in Box 8, countries of concern like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria which currently
produce most refugees, are among the top ten of the worst cases. Box 9 lists 19 fragile
states scoring high on the Fragile States Index. The middle column is taken from the
Bertelsmann Transformation Index which, inter alia, measures on a scale from 1 (bad)
to 10 (good) a government’s effective power to govern. The last column lists external
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
refugees while the first one indexes the severity of terrorism (10 is very bad; 0 is good,
that is, absence of terrorism).
Box 9: Comparison of Indices for 19 Countries Scoring High on Fragile State

Index with Refugees (2014)
Terrorism Index FSI Index BTI Index Refugees
South Sudan 6.712 114.5 2 1,746,900

Somalia 7.6 114.0 1 616,142
Sudan 6.686 110.8 2 659,395
Colombia 6.662 82.5 6 103.150
Congo DR 6.487 109.7 2 516,562
Chad 2.142 108.4 2 14,855
Yemen 7.642 108.1 1 2,628
Syria 8.108 107.9 1 3,865,720
Afghanistan 9.233 107.9 3 2,593,368
Guinea 1.187 104.9 6 15,243
Iraq 10 104.5 3 369.904
Haiti 0 104.5 2 37,161
Libya 7.29 95.3 1 4,194
Myanmar 4.08 94.7 3 233,891
Pakistan 9.065 102.9 3 315.759
Nigeria 9.213 102.4 6 54,537
Zimbabwe 1.71 100.0 2 22,494
Cote d’Ivoire 3.141 100.0 7 71,959
Ukraine 7.2 76.3 6 237,636
Total of refugees in 19 fragile/weak states: 11,094,872
Sources: Based on data from the calendar year 2014. The Fund for Peace. Fragile State Index
2015.Washington D.C.: Foreign Policy magazine, 2015.- For a discussion of its methodology, see:
http://global.fundforpeace.org/index.php; Global Overview 2015. The Bertelsmann Transformation
Index 2015 measures a government’s effective power to govern on a 1 (= bad) to 10 (= good) scale;
see for an explanation of the methodology: http://www.bti-project.org/de/startseite/; Refugee
figures are taken from UNHCR, “Global Trends. Forced Displacement” (Geneva: UNHCR, 2015), pp.
44 – 48, http://unhcr.org/556725e69.html#_ga=1.21035259.1335667395.1458471815 . For the
Terrorism Index, see: Institute for Economics and Peace. “Global Terrorism Index 2015”, pp. 90- 92,
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/sites/default/files/2015%20Global%20Terrorism%20Index%20Re
port_1.pdf. The Terrorism Index is composed of four types of data: (i) total number of terrorist
incidents in a given year; (ii) total number of fatalities caused by terrorists in a given year; (iii) total
number of injuries caused by terrorists in a given year; (iv) a measure of the total property damage
from terrorist incidents in a given year. – For details, see op. cit., p. 95
A comparison of state weakness with the severity of terrorism and refugee numbers
produces no conclusive results – some weak states score low on the terrorism index
and have few refugees (e.g. Haiti and Chad) while some countries that score high on
the Terrorism Index and the two state failure indices, score low on refugees (e.g. Yemen
or Libya). However, there is often a time lag between deterioration of a country’s
situation and decisions to leave the country. This might, for instance, apply to Libya and
Yemen (where some people have fled to Somalia). 82
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
24
A similar inconclusive picture emerges if we look at a country’s net-migration rate
(comparing the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a
country or territory during the year per 1,000 persons, based on mid-year population).
can, however, reveal something about the propensity to emigrate. In 2015, no fewer
than 112 out of 224 countries and territories experienced equal or more emigration
than/and immigration (Box 10).
Box 10: Net-migration of Ten Selected Countries and Territories (2015

estimates)
Country Ranking net-migration rate
Syria 22 19.79
Somalia 211 8.49
Sudan 190 4.29
Chad 186 3.45
Afghanistan 156 1.51
DR Congo 123 0.27
Nigeria 121 0.22
CAR 102 0.00
Eritrea 98 0.00
Venezuela 79 0.00
Source: US Central Intelligence Agency. The World Fact Book (Langley: CIA, 2016), Country Comparison:
Net Migration Rate,
www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-word-factbook/rankorder/2212rank.html.
Some countries on the list in Box 10 have weak states with low growth rates (e.g.
Venezuela) while others have strong states (like Eritrea) with high economic growth
rates. This makes migration balance or imbalance in itself not a conclusive indicator for
measuring state strength or weakness. 83
State failure is often but not always a strong factor in migration but not necessarily one
where terrorism is the main driver behind migration. Terrorists too need functioning
infrastructures to operate. If they cannot create a (proto-) state of their own (as the
Islamic Caliphate managed to do in parts of Syria and Iraq), they prefer a state that is
at least supportive of their cause, as was the case with the Afghan Taliban (1996-2001)
and Al Qaeda. Sometimes a state might not be supportive but tolerates terrorist groups
out of weakness, as is the case in Lebanon with Hezbollah (1982-2016) or, in Libya,
where both Al-Qaeda and IS have a presence since the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in
2011.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
C. Non-State Terrorism as Cause of
Migration?
Terrorist campaigns of blind, indiscriminate violence make many people fear for their
lives and they tend to move away from the source of danger. This might also be exactly
what some perpetrators of acts of terrorism had in mind to begin with. When the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared itself to be a Caliphate of an imaginary
“Islamic State” (IS) in mid-2014 in Iraq’s second largest city Mosul, the majority of people
fled and population declined from 2.5 million to 1 million. Many of those in other
territories taken by IS also fled. As Maya Yahya pointed out:
The sweep of the Islamic State into Iraqi territory in June 2014 has further
intensified this process of identity-based displacement and the recasting
of territories on a sectarian and ethnic basis. […] In the year that followed,
2.57 million people fled as the group targeted entire communities that
had lived on the plains of Iraq for centuries. The Christians of Mosul
forcibly left their ancestral homes, but they fared better than the Yazidis,
Shabaks, Mandaeans, Shia, and Turkomans, many of whom were hunted
down and killed. Fleeing populations scattered to more than 2,000
locations across the country and beyond Iraq’s borders, adding to the
number of Iraqis displaced by previous conflicts.84
Here then we can see one of the most direct links between terrorism and internal
displacement and external migration. Another case where the link between non-state
terrorist incidents and displacement has been studied in detail is Turkey in the early
1990s where the state and the Kurdish insurgents clashed. Yilmaz Simsek explored the
link between terrorism and migration patterns for the years 1992 to 1995 in eastern
Turkey and tested three hypotheses which he all found supported by the evidence (see
Box 11)
Box 11: Three Confirmed Hypotheses on the Terrorism – Out-Migration Nexus:

Turkey, 1992 – 1995
Hypothesis 1: net-migration is higher in areas with high terrorist incidents than those
with low terrorist incidents: Supported.
Hypothesis 2: the higher the terrorist incident rate, the higher the net-migration:
Supported.
Hypothesis 3: the higher the number of deaths causes by terrorism, the higher the
net migration: Supported
Source: Y. Simsek, “Terrorism and Migration in Turkey Between 1992 and 1995”, In: S. Ozeren, I. Dincer
Gunes and D. M. Al-Badayney, eds., Understanding Terrorism: Analysis of Sociological and Psychological
Aspects, (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2007), p. 157, (Table 7).
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
26
When we look at the countries most affected by terrorism in recent years - Pakistan,
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria – we see a direct link between high levels of terrorist deaths
and migration to Europe in three of the four countries (Pakistan being a partial
exception):
Box 12: Correlations between Number of 1st Time Asylum Seeker Applications
to Europe vs. Deaths from Terrorism in Home Country
Source: Institute for Economics & Peace, “Global Terrorism Index 2015”, p. 60. (Figure 33), based on
numbers from START, University of Maryland and Eurostat, http://www.visionofhumanity.org.
When people flee from a terrorist group that takes over their village or town, their
belongings can be plundered – another source of wealth for terrorists grabbing
territory. However, they can profit also in another way: as people flee from zones of
terrorist attacks or conflict, their escape is often dangerous and difficult; they have to
seek the assistance of facilitators, in most cases criminal smugglers, to pass or by-pass
roadblocks in conflict zones and cross international borders. By setting up roadblocks
terrorist groups often directly check and tax those who wish to leave or they force
smugglers to share the profits with them.
In the case of Libya, the Islamic State controls a stretch of nearly 260 kilometres of
Mediterranean costs around Sirte. There is evidence indicating that smugglers of
people have to share their profits with terrorist organisations, including the Islamic
State.85 The kind of money that can be made with smuggling and trafficking of people
is said to be second only to proceeds that can be made from the smuggling of drugs. 86
More than nine out of ten migrants who want to enter the European Union irregularly
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
from North Africa or Western Turkey make use of facilitators - usually criminal
smugglers. According to a recent Europol report, migrant smugglers in Benghazi,
Misrata and Tripoli in Libya, Izmir and Istanbul in Turkey, Amman in Jordan, Cairo in
Egypt and Casablanca in Morocco, Algiers and Oran in Algeria as well as other criminal
hotspots have made, by bringing asylum seekers and economic migrants to Europe,
between 3 and 6 billion dollars in ill-gotten gain.87 In its report on smuggling operations,
Europol expressed concern “that terrorist organisations rely on migrant smuggling as
source of funding”, but did not provide details. 88 Even a small percentage of criminal
gains from smuggling people would be a bonanza for a terrorist organisation if we look
at some figures:
In the year 2014, 219,000 people crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe via Libya;
in 2015 there were 322,000 people in the first eight months. More than 2,500 drowned
in the attempt to do so as they were put on sea in unsafe boats by criminal elements.89
One smuggler advertised on his social media page the costs of the sea journey from
Libya to Italy as US $ 1,000 per adult. For a package involving also a flight from Turkey
to Libya it amounted US $ 3,700, with children costing US $ 500.90 Assuming that the
smugglers of people in Libya had to share their profit with terrorists on the coast of
Libya from where many boats depart and assuming that one third has to be paid to the
terrorists, that would have left the terrorist organisation with more than US $ 100
million in 2015 alone – a conservative estimate. That kind of money goes a long way to
recruit new members for IS and pay for arms, explosives, false travel documents, safe
houses, bribes and whatever else is needed to finance terrorism. Currently 800,000
more migrants are reportedly waiting in Libya for a passage to Italy, since the route via
Turkey and Greece has been made more difficult.91
While the fact that people vote with their feet against staying in territories controlled
by the Islamic State ought to be an embarrassment to those who claim to create a just,
sharia-based society in the resurrected Caliphate, the mass exodus from the terrorist
dystopia can nevertheless be turned into an additional source of income which can be
utilised to strengthen the economy of the terrorist Islamic State. At the same time the
Islamic State tries to engage in damage control by showing videos of desperate
refugees drowning while portraying life under the Caliphate as harmonious and
orderly.92
In sum: terrorist tactics make people fear for their lives which tends to cause avoidance
and emigration. Such migration, in turn, allows, if taxed, the financing of more
terrorism. These impressionistic findings cited above are supported by more solid ones
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
28
from a quantitative analysis by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The chairman of
IEP, Steve Killelea, presenting the Institute’s Global Terrorism Index 2015 noted: “Ten of
the eleven countries most affected by terrorism also have the highest rates of refugees
and internal displacement. This highlights the strong inter-connectedness between the
current refugee crisis, terrorism and conflict.” 93
D. (Civil) War as Major Cause of Terrorism

and Migration?
In the period 1946-2016 there have been 259 distinct armed conflicts.94 De-colonisation
wars and inter-state wars have declined. However, internal civil wars, often
accompanied by foreign interventions, have proliferated. While the number of armed
conflicts declined for more than a decade starting in 1992, that hopeful post-Cold War
downward trend broke in 2003. Since then we have seen between 30 and 50 ongoing
conflicts in any given year. The Armed Conflict Survey 2015 lists 37 high, medium and
low-intensity conflicts with 167,000 fatalities – half of them in the Middle East and a
third of them in Syria. The year before, there had been 42 active conflicts with 180,000
fatalities.95
The conflict in Syria – the deadliest since the end of the Cold War - has, since 2012,
produced more than half (53 percent) of the war casualties worldwide, followed by Iraq
(12 percent) and Afghanistan (12 percent). In 2014, nearly 80 percent of the 104,000
battle fatalities occurred in these three countries. 96 All three wars - Afghanistan, Iraq
and Syria - have been accompanied by terrorism and large population displacements.
Between 1978 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and its withdrawal in 1989,
6.2 million Afghans became refugees in Pakistan and Iran; most of them are still there
after all these years. 97 Four years after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, two
million Iraqis had become refugees and 1.7 million became internally displaced by
February 2007.98 In the case of Syria, by September 2015, the country had 4,1 million
refugees abroad and 6,5 million internally displaced while 1,1 million Syrians had been
injured by war and terrorism and more than 250,000 killed. 99
Foreign interventions often make bad situations worse, prolong the conflict and lead
to the use of asymmetric tactics by resistance groups - terrorism being one of these.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
To discover acts of terrorism in the midst of war is often difficult as independent news
gathering is almost impossible and propaganda operations are widespread. Legitimate
acts of warfare and war crimes occur next to each other. War crimes involve, among
other things, deliberate attacks on non-combatants (e.g. prisoners of war) and
unarmed civilians or on places where civilians are known or likely to shelter. War crimes
resemble acts of terrorism in many cases – so much so that one effort to define
terrorism suggested to extend the definition of war crimes and define an act of
terrorism simply as “the peacetime equivalent of war crimes” – cutting in this way
through the Gordian knot of endless definition debates (since there is a greater degree
of consensus as to what constitutes a war crime in international humanitarian law than
what constitutes terrorism).100
Many internal wars progress from small incidents to more massive forms of violence
in stages. Single, isolated acts of terrorism are, if those responsible for them are not
apprehended or otherwise neutralised at an early stage, often a step to terrorist
campaigns. One or more such campaigns, if successful, might lead to a situation where
a terrorist organisation can start “liberating” part of a country. From such liberated
zones the armed bands can engage in “hit and run” operations, ambushes and other
guerrilla tactics. Ultimately, the goal is to progress from terrorism not only to rural
guerrilla warfare (usually with simultaneous urban terrorism on the side) but to create
a more or less conventional army with which to take state power. Most terrorist groups
never make it to stage II in Mao’s gradualist strategy of People’s War (or Protracted War)
and very few ever manage to create a conventional army as stage III. 101 The role of
foreign interventions also has to be factored in: it can either work in favour of the
aspiring terrorist group (as it did due to a nationalist backlash in Somalia after the
Ethiopian intervention of 2006) or it can lead to its (temporary) demise (as in
Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were forced to flee to Pakistan after
Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001-2002).
Competition can lead to debates, debates to disputes, serious disputes to polarisation

and conflict and conflict escalation to the use of political violence which can take the
form of asymmetric forms of warfare including terrorism and ultimately to full scale
warfare. Several forms of conflict waging can coexist simultaneously and that also
applies to acts of terrorism in the middle of, or on the side-lines of warfare, sometimes
conducted abroad rather than in the main conflict theatre. This is in line with another
statistical finding from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP):
“Terrorist activity historically occurs within nations that are also

experiencing broader internal armed conflict. IEP…found that 55 per
cent of all terrorist attacks occurred in countries in the midst of an
internal armed conflict. Additionally another 33 per cent occurred in
countries that were either experiencing or involved in an internationalist
conflict”.102
In such conflicts, the number of externally displaced persons is sometimes lower and
sometimes higher than the one of those internally displaced. For instance, in 1994/95,
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
30
the 20 most intense conflicts identified in a monitoring project of PIOOM saw at least
634,000 lives lost (cumulatively, since the beginning of these conflicts there were seven
million fatalities), more than nine million refugees and almost twenty million internally
displaced persons. On the other hand, another 55 lower-intensity conflicts and serious
disputes produced, in the mid-1990s, 2.6 million additional fatalities, with six million
internally displaced persons and nine million external refugees (or people in refugee-
like situations)103 - reversing the ratios of internally and externally displaced persons.
Europe experienced the consequences of such a conflict in the 1990s when Yugoslavia
broke apart. At that time the term “ethnic cleansing” entered the vocabulary. It refers
to the terrorisation of sectors of the population, usually a minority, in order to make
them leave the land of their fathers so as to produce greater national homogeneity.
Vamik Volkan, in his book Blood Lines. From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism, defines the
latter as referring to:
“Situations in which terrorist leaders have excessive attachment to their large-group

identity and seek to enhance it through widespread violence and to perpetuate it under
improved political conditions, such as some form of autonomy or statehood for the
group. Ethnic terrorists legitimise their actions by referring to the dominant ethnic or
other group as an occupying, opposing, colonizing, or foreign force.”104
The Bosnian war of 1992 – 1995 produced more than 100,000 persons dead or missing
while two million people were internally displaced or became refugees abroad. 105 War
crimes were committed by all sides but the large majority of them were the doings of
the forces of the Bosnian Serbs (from the Republika Srpska) who were more or less
openly supported by the Serbian regime in Belgrade.106
Not since the Balkan wars has Western Europe seen such large refugee arrivals as in
the case of the Syrian conflict. While the situation was already very bad in Syria by the
fall of 2015, the massive intervention of the Russian air force between late September
2015 and mid-March 2016 on the side of the Assad regime made a bad situation even
worse. Russian bombers engaged in heavy but not very precise aerial bombings (few
of their bombs were “smart bombs”), producing massive additional displacement.
According to Roy Gutman, the Pulitzer prize winning Middle East correspondent, the
Russian air campaign, with more than 8,000 sorties since 30 September 2015, - for 90
percent directed against non-ISIS forces – displaced several hundreds of thousands of
people. 75,000 persons fled from the air bombardments alone in February 2016,
according to a conservative estimate of UNHCR.107
The link between violent conflicts and (civil) wars on the one hand and terrorism on the
other hand is well-established. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, 88
percent of all terrorist attacks occurred in countries that were experiencing, or involved
in, violent conflicts while 11 percent of terrorist attacks occurred in countries that at
the time were not involved in conflict. Less than 0.6 percent of all terrorist attacks
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
occurred in countries without any ongoing conflict nor any form of political terror (using
Gibney’s scale).108
The nexus between conflict-related terrorism and refugee migration is also plausible,
given the refugee levels of countries torn apart by civil wars, with and without foreign
interventions. The five countries with the highest number of terrorist fatalities –
together accounting for more than half of all terrorism-related fatalities in 2014 – were
Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria. They suffered 78 percent of all terrorist
fatalities and 57 percent of all attacks that were registered in 2014. 109
Box 13: Total refugees and people in refugee-like situations mid-2015,

according to UNHCR and cumulative number of Terrorist Incidents
Refugees Terrorist Incidents 1970-2014
Afghanistan: 2,632,534 7,765

Colombia: 346,125 8,049
Iraq: 377,747 16,448
Nigeria: 120,303 2,286
Pakistan: 262,136 11,804
Somalia: 1,105,618 2,557
Syria: 4,194,554 1,390
Source: US Central Intelligence Agency. The World Fact Book. Langley: CIA, 2016, Country
Comparison: Net Migration Rate, www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-word-
factbook/rankorder/2212rank.html
The prima facie evidence for links between (civil) war, terrorism and refugee production
appears to be strong. However, it needs to be fleshed out in more detail through
chronological process analysis in each case – something that would, inter alia, require
the creation of cumulative data also for refugee stocks and flows which is beyond this
exploratory study.
E. Refugee Camps and Diasporas as Causes

(and Targets) of Terrorism?
(i) The Role of Refugee Camps
There are refugee camps in more than 125 countries and while one would like to think
that these are temporary structures, the sad fact is that the average lifespan of a
refugee situation is seventeen years.110 One would also like to think that refugee camps
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
32
are safe places where those who escaped the experience of violence or the threat of
persecution can recover, wait for the end of hostilities and plan how to pick up their
lives upon return. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case: refugee camps tend to be
insecure places as they are generally under-policed. Refugee camps are often
synonymous with misery and lack of perspective for those who have to wait there for
a change to the better. Like prisons, they can become breeding grounds for terrorism.
Slightly more than half of the world’s refugee population is younger than 18 years
old. 111 Young people are more prone to join terrorist groups than older people. 112
Open-ended residence in such camps offers recruitment opportunities for terrorists
and guerrilla fighters.
Brian M. Jenkins, a highly respected analyst of terrorism, asked in a recent blog,

whether the Syrian conflict will produce a new generation of terrorists, in analogy to
the Palestinian conflict.113 There is certainly much going on in refugee camps around
Syria that should be a source of great concern. It is therefore instructive to look back at
the Palestinian experience.
The classic example of how refugee camps can become breeding grounds for terrorist
activities is provided by the fate of Palestinians many of whom were forced from their
homes when Israel was established. Some 700,000 Palestinians fled after Israel took
control of their land between spring 1948 and spring 1949. In 1947, Jewish terrorist
groups like the Irgun and the Stern gangs had attacked both British soldiers and
Palestinian civilians which would ultimately lead to the exodus of hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians.114 The plight of the Palestinians led to interventions of Arab
states to undo the Israeli state formation of 14 May 1948 but it was unsuccessful. A
series of wars followed in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and beyond. The 1967 Six-Day War,
in particular, caused another massive outflow of between 200,000 and 325,000
Palestinian people.115 While most refugee populations shrink after some time, in the
case of the Palestinians there are still some 1,5 million refugees and their offspring in
camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria as these neighbouring states refused to integrate
them fully for political reasons.116 Once it became clear to the Palestinians after the Six-
Day War in 1967 that the Arab states were both unwilling and unable to recover their
land for them, several Palestinian groups resorted to commando operations that
generally took the form of terrorist attacks on Israeli settlements. 117 However, the
bloodiest confrontation was with one of the host countries of Palestinian refugees. In
Jordan, where half of the population consisted of exiled Palestinians, armed Palestinian
formations challenged the Hashemite monarchy and sought its overthrow. After a
series of clashes between September 1970 and July 1971 the Palestinian fedayeen were
decisively beaten and 30,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians in tent camps, lost their
lives.118 Out of this defeat emerged an even more extremist wing of the Palestinian
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
116M. Yahya. “Refugees and the Making of an Arab Regional Disorder”, Carnegie Middle East Center,
http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/11/09/refugees-and-making-of-arab-regional-disorder/ilb0.; A.
Frangi, PLO und Palästina. Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (1982), p.123 p.126 & p. 146;
resistance - Black September. Its first victim was Wasfi Tall, the Jordanian Prime
Minister; he was assassinated by a Palestinian cell in Cairo on 28 November 1971. 119
Most militants of the armed Palestinian resistance had by then moved to Lebanon from
where they launched terrorist attacks while also destabilising Lebanon. By the mid
1970s, their state-in-a-state presence led to the first Lebanese civil war (1975/76) which
would last 18 months and cost 60,000 lives. Palestinian refugee camps had largely
escaped the control of host countries (Jordan and Lebanon) and extremist elements
engaging in terrorism threatened Israel, triggered repression and civil wars in Jordan
and Lebanon, several Israeli interventions as well as one from Syria. Palestinian
militants also engaged in international terrorism in Europe and beyond.120
Today Lebanon again experiences the fallout of a conflict, similar to the experience of
Jordan after 1948. Lebanon’s Syrian refugee population now amounts to almost a
quarter of the country’s total population and it is again facing destabilisation from
refugee camps. In late 2015, Elias Bou Saab, Lebanon’s minister of education, claimed
that at least 20,000 jihadists had infiltrated refugee camps in his country. 121
While there were, in 2015, 1.1 million Syrians in Lebanese camps some 619,000 Syrians
are in Jordanian camps, with more than half of them being under 18 years of age. 122
One aid worker in a UN refugee camp in Jordan noted:
The Muslim gangs come as refugees, but they have their agendas. They
are like a mafia. People are even killed inside the camps….(…)The camps
are dangerous because they have IS, Iraqi militias and Syrian militias. It’s
another place for gangs.(…) They’re killing inside the camps, and they’re
buying and selling ladies and even girls.123
Similar stories about the presence of armed militias reach us from Turkey. Here is the
account of what a Syrian defector from ISIS, Abu Jamal, told two researchers about a
Turkish refugee camp:
Abu Jamal estimated that Akçakale Refugee Camp had approximately

thirty thousand refugees, mostly Arabs. He said that in the Kobani battle
it was found that many of the killed IS members were actually carrying
Akçakale Camp ID’s on their body. He went on to state that there are
around twenty quarters in the Akçakale Camp with each having its own
mosque with its own Arabic imam or some other unofficial preacher.
Jamal stated that some of them recruit for IS inside the camp. As a result
young boys leave the camps to join IS. ‘These sheikhs preach that jihad is
fard ayn [a mandatory individual responsibility] for every Syrian man
according to Islam, as Syria is in war,’ Abu Jamal declared. Likewise he
insisted …that the IS recruiters pressure and threaten men to join without
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
34
the camp authorities knowing they are doing so. “They ensure you that if
you die in battle, that they will take care of your family. If you do not want
to join IS then you have to flee the camp. They will not let you alone.”(…)
Our informants told us several stories of young boys being talked into
joining IS and then running away from their families. They all ended up
dying - carrying out suicide missions.124
Anecdotal evidence also links other refugee camps to terrorist recruitment, e.g. in
Kenya where up to half a million of Somali refugees found shelter. Some of them
become the targets of recruiting efforts of opposing forces in the civil war. In the case
of the terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall on 21 September 2013, one
of the perpetrators was, according to press reports, a refugee from the Kakuma camp.
Another suspect in that attack appeared to made a phone call to someone in Dadaab,
Kenya’s largest camp of Somali refugees.125 67 people died in that attack, while 175
suffered injuries from the four terrorists. Militants from Al-Shabaab as well as some of
those who oppose Al-Shabaab, recruit in camps like Dadaab, sometimes under false
pretenses, making promises to gullible young men which they are not going to keep.
As one researcher from Human Rights Watch, Letta Taylor, put it: ”The boys and men
who are in these camps risked their lives to flee. Now they’re being asked to return to
that (…) Recruitment of fighters in refugee camps undermines their very purpose, which
is to be a place of refuge from conflict”.126
Not only non-state armed groups but also governments have been known to use
refugee camps for the recruitment of fighters.
In a survey of refugee radicalisation, Barbara Sude and her colleagues noted in 2015:
The host country, sometimes with the cooperation of international relief

organisations, also might directly or indirectly encourage radicalisation by
allowing political wings of militant groups to participate officially in relief
efforts or by supporting a faction and/or conducting military operations in
the refugees’ home country”(…)The risk of radicalisation can be higher if
the receiving country is unable or unwilling to provide for the camps and
surrounding area. It is worse if militant groups take over camp security
and/or are able to cross at will into the country of origin for armed
activities.127
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Such situations of radicalisation and recruitment in refugee camps are not uncommon
(see Box 14).
Box 14: Radicalisation in Refugee Camps – Selected Cases
1. Palestinian refugees in Middle East, esp. Lebanon, 1967-1993:

radicalised groups gain control of camps in Lebanon; conduct cross-
border attacks;
2. Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran, 1978-1988: initially minor
radicalisation followed by direct recruitment into militant groups;
3. Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran 1990s: radical recruitment
intensifies and is exported;
4. Somali refugees in Kenya, 1990s-2002: radical groups active in camps at
various periods;
5. Rwandan refugees in DRC, 1990s-2000s: radicalised groups control
camps; conduct cross-border attacks; violence spreads in region
Source: Adapted from: Barbara Sude, David Stebbins, and Sarah Weilant. Lessening the Risk
of Refugee Radicalization. RAND Perspective, 2015, p.3.,
http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE166.html; accessed 28 January 2016.
Radicalisation to violent extremism and recruitment for terrorist groups becomes more
likely where refugee camps are in direct contact with fighters from an ongoing conflict.
The temptation to join the fight rather than wait in despair is real for many young men,
especially when refugees cannot obtain education or employment and are isolated in
camps for years.128
When in the 1980s millions of Afghans fled the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan many
ended up in refugee camps in Pakistan. Some of these camps became recruiting
grounds for the mujahedeen. They also offered recruiting opportunities for foreign
states and intelligence agencies who sought to instrumentalise refugees for their
purposes. In Pakistani camps like the Jalozai camp near Peshawar, young males were
recruited by Pakistani intelligence and the American CIA. 129 In the 1989, after the Soviet
troops had left Afghanistan and put their puppet Mohammad Najibullah’s in their place,
American and Pakistani intelligence officials recruited young men from the Afghan
refugee camps in Pakistan and provided them as fighters to warlords like Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar against the Najibullah regime. As the American diplomat McWilliams later
recalled: “What they wound up doing was emptying the refugee camps….It was a last
ditch effort to throw these sixteen-year-old boys into the fight in order to keep this
thing going. It did not work”.130 Instead of the warlords, Afghanistan got the Taliban in
1996. By mid-2015 Hekmatyar advised his supporters to back the “Islamic State”. 131
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
K. Koser and A. E. Cunnigham Migration, Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Myths and Realities, p.
84. in Institute for Economics & Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2015.Measuring and Understanding
the Impact of Terrorism (2015)
36
The Islamic State has not only tried to set up a new province in Khorasan (the old name
for greater Afghanistan) but also tried to penetrate Palestinian refugee camps in Syria.
One of these is the Yarmouk refugee camp which is only a few kilometers from
Damascus itself. In 2015 ISIS tried to take over the camps, perhaps hoping to gain
willing supporters among the camp’s 18,000 residents (which included, next to
Palestinians, also displaced Syrians).When the Syrian regime counter attacked, ISIS
used the refugee population, including 3,500 children, as human shields. 132 The Assad
regime has also attacked refugee camps in Syria. In one of these attacks on May 5, 2016,
28 people, including women and children got killed in an airstrike while 50 more were
wounded in the Kamouna camp 10 kilometers from the Turkish border. 133
These are not the only instances where refugee camps came under attack.
In more than six years of terrorism and unconventional warfare, Boko Haram forced
more than 2,600,000 to leave their homes. 134 However, that was not the end: Boko
Haram even carried the persecution into the refugee camps. On 9 February 2016 two
young female suicide bombers killed 58 persons and seriously wounded 78 others in
the Dikwa refugee camp, a camp that housed more than 53,000 people, located 85 km
northeast of Maiduguri, the capital of the federal state of Borno, in the north of Nigeria.
The third prospective suicide bomber changed her mind at the last moment, explaining
that she did not want to see her parents (who were refugees in the camp) be killed. 135
For countries receiving large numbers of refugees, the risk of terrorist attacks by
“refugee warriors” and, on the opposite side, by native xenophobic vigilantes targeting
on refugee populations increases. A cross-national, time-series data analysis of 154
countries covering the period 1970–2007 found that countries with many refugees are
more likely to experience both domestic and international terrorism. 136 Another study
found that “Refugee flows significantly increase the likelihood and counts of
transnational terrorist attacks that occur in the host country, even when controlling for
other variables”.137
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
K. Koser and A. E. Cunnigham Migration, Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Myths and Realities, p.
84. in Institute for Economics & Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2015.Measuring and Understanding
the Impact of Terrorism (2015)
http://www.myjoyonline.com/world/2016/March-9th/buhari-says-mtn-fuelled-boko-haram-
insurgency.php.
(ii) The Role of Diasporas
While refugee camps are usually closed areas far from the population centres of
hosting countries, some of those exiled from their country for political reasons live
legally in hosting countries and form diasporas, mainly in urban areas. They are joined
by compatriots who come to the West as family members (e.g. through arranged
marriages enabling migration to the West), as students or in some other capacity.
When leaving their country of origin, migrants are rarely able to leave their past behind.
Animosities that led to conflict in the home country are often continued in the new host
country – conflicts have, as it were, become portable. For instance, many Indians and
Pakistanis have brought the conflict between their home countries with them to the
United Kingdom. When the British colonial power left India in 1947/48, it had arranged
a partition that displaced more than 15 million people and led to the slaughter of
between one and two million Indians and Pakistanis in the process,138 leaving traumatic
scars in the people on both sides. Many Pakistanis and Indians, even those abroad, still
treat each other as quasi-enemies.139
Where state repression rather than war has driven people abroad, refugees often try
to mobilise third parties against their enemy at home, e.g. seeking the support of the
host government, political parties or sectors of civil society as allies (e.g. the anti-Castro
Cuban lobby in Florida). Sometimes economic migrants and political refugees from
both sides of a conflict at home are present in the host country and continue their
conflict. Such has, for instance, been the case in Germany between Turks and Kurds.
The Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) has used Germany for fund-raising and for the
recruitment of young activists who have been sent as fighters to the mountainous
region in northern Iraq as well as to eastern Turkey. At the same time Kurdish militants
have repeatedly launched attacks in Germany, both against Turkish embassies and
against German citizens.140
In diasporas we also find newly arrived students from the home country who often
engage in political activism. They might have become radicalised only in the host
country, as a result of visiting Salafist mosques or after meeting Afghan veterans. Such
was the case with the Hamburg group that formed the core of the attack team of Al-
Qaeda on 11 September 2001. Hamburg with its al-Quds mosque was not the only
center of conspiracies by terrorists in European diasporas. Many jihadists were
groomed in London, so much so that the British capital was dubbed “Londonistan”. To
quote from Petter Nesser’s history of Islamist Terrorism in Europe:
London was at the heart of the jihadis sub-culture in Europe. From the
British capital a critical mass of radical preachers who had spent time in
Af-Pak [Afghanistan-Pakistan], Bosnia and other conflict zones acted as
leaders and recruiters within a growing jihadi scene. These veteran
militants also acted as religious guides for foreign armed groups. French
security officials invented the name “Londonistan” in part because of the
many jihadis in London, and partly because the city became a transit
station for recruits heading for training camps in Afghanistan.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
.
38
“Londonistan “ became slang for the tendency of the British authorities to
turn a blind eye to extremism and to offer sanctuary to terrorists. (…)
However, while the significance of London cannot be overstated, jihadi
networks also emerged all over Britain and the rest of Europe. 141
These networks persist to this day and some have grown stronger as Muslim diasporas
in the West have grown in size (e.g. Molenbeek, a district of Brussels). While the first
generation of Muslim immigrants to Europe – in many cases labour migrants - was
mainly conservative and often apolitical, their children - the second generation - found
themselves often unable to integrate into the host society. Yet these sons of Muslim
fathers from North Africa and the Middle East also found it difficult to identify with the
traditional views of their fathers. 142 Thousands of them radicalised and began to
identify with the jihadis in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, Somalia and Syria. These
conflicts often touched a responsive chord with rebellious young Muslims and with
recent converts to Islam, especially when the host country and the authoritarian
government of their fathers’ homeland were on good terms with each other, as was
(and is), for instance, the case with Great Britain and Saudi Arabia. 143 Satellite-based
news media and Internet-based social media allow young Muslims in the West to link
up with those who fight against repressive regimes in the Muslim world. 144 While the
American intervention in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks drew some of
them to militant jihadism, the unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003 convinced many more
that Islam itself was under attack and needed to be defended at home and abroad. The
Arab Spring of 2011 raised political awareness even more and when popular mass
protests in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world were brutally repressed, many
became convinced that non-violent change was not possible. Vivid accounts of the
atrocities of the Assad regime strengthened in many young Muslims in the West the
conviction that the Sunni uprising needed to be supported with more than just words.
While a first wave of foreign fighters made it to Syria already in 2012 and 2013, it was
the proclamation of a new Caliphate in mid-2014 that made the numbers of those who
travelled from Western diasporas to Syria increased tremendously (see Box 14 below).
Those foreign fighters from Western diasporas (6,000+) were even more numerous
than those who departed from the territories of the former Soviet Union (4,700) or
Southeast Asia (900), though they were fewer than those originating from the Maghreb
(8,000) or the Middle East (8,245). 145 What brought them together was a powerful
ideology (“Islam is under attack and it is every Muslim’s duty to defend it”) and the
existence of an organisational cristallisation point (the new Caliphate) awash with cash
looted from Mosul’s central bank. Therefore a large-scale migration of young Muslims
to Syria took place, with foreign fighters originating from more than 100 countries. As
their arrival in Syria and Iraq exacerbated the fighting, more people began to move in
the opposite direction, migrating towards Europe to escape terrorism and warfare.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
(iii) Host Country Xenophobia as Cause of Terrorism
Once asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants have reached a host country in large
numbers, local xenophobic resistance is sometimes triggered. It takes two directions:
targeting the asylum seekers and economic migrants on the one hand and targeting
liberals and social-democrats who welcome them on the other. Xenophobic resistance
against economic migrants and asylum seekers in Europe has mainly taken the form of
arson attacks by Molotov cocktails on asylum centers. Firebomb attacks and similar
ones involving iron rods, axes and knives have taken place in Austria, Bulgaria,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Macedonia, the Netherlands,
Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.146 Sweden which in 2015 alone received more
than 160,000 asylum seekers (including 35,000 unaccompanied minors) has seen some
50 attacks against asylum seekers – more than in the previous foru years combined .147
The German authorities reported for 2015 more than 900 xenophobic incidents – 30
percent more than in 2014. Almost 700 people were injured in such incidents. 148 Is this
right-wing and xenophobic political violence terrorism? The term terrorism is often
reserved in the public discourse for Islamist jihadist attacks only. Yet there is no good
reason to call many of these attacks anything other than acts of terrorism. Robin
Schroeder (Kiel University) has compared the elements of the most widely used
definitions of terrorism as well as the one used by the German government with the
characteristics of some of these attacks on asylum centres – more than 200 arson
attacks on refugee centers in 2015 in Germany alone 149 - and concluded:
When one compares …the core elements of scientific definitions of

terrorism with the...actual arson attacks on refugee housings, one arrives
at the following conclusion: the goal of the attacks is a political one, the
selection of victims is random and the purpose of the attacks, namely to
communicate xenophobic messages, is very clear. The message is
directed as a threat to the social group of refugees, as a violent message
of resistance it addresses the political decision-makers and as a call to
mobilisation it aims at the politically like-minded in society. That the call
strikes a responsive chord is shown by the rising number of arson attacks
on inhabited refugee homes. This makes it clear that this deed can, from
a social scientific perspective, be called a terrorist act. 150
The lack of compassion in some sectors of host societies with those who have escaped
civil war, state failure, state repression or insurgent terrorism in their countries of origin
is a worrying issue. Its deliberate exploitation by demagogic right-wing leaders and
populist politicians makes matters worse.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
40
Sometimes lone actors and right-wing groups attack not only the refugees themselves
but also those (usually social-democrats and liberals) who are most willing to welcome
them are willing to give them shelter. The worst example of this has been the double
attack of Anders Behring Breivik, a lone actor, in Norway on 22 July 2011. After
exploding a car bomb in the government district of Oslo (which killed eight people), the
right-wing perpetrator proceeded to the island of Utoya where he killed 69 young
people of the Workers’ Youth League at gunpoint, while wounding 66 more. As reason
for the massacre he stated that its purpose was to save Norway and Western Europe
from a Muslim takeover, and that the Labour Party had to "pay the price" for "letting
down Norway and the Norwegian people."151
In the past there have also been fights between right-wing groups and left-wing anti-
fascists in various European countries. So far few of these have been directly motivated
by the immigration issue. However, as the demographic composition of host societies
in some urban areas changes under the impact of irregular immigration, polarisation
between nationalistic and more internationalist groups might yet lead to more acts of
“horizontal” terrorism between them.
Having looked at some of the possible causes of terrorism and migration, let us now
look at the direct relationship between migrants and terrorists.
F. Migrants as Terrorists? Terrorists as

Migrants?
Human rights organisations warn us that we should not confuse or associate refugees
with terrorists since they are often the very opposite, namely victims of terrorism. This
is a valid point and by and large true but, as usual, reality is more complex. Migrants
can become terrorists (or refugee warriors) and vice versa or be both at the same time.
Some examples of this complexity:
(i) Migration in the Footsteps of the Prophet
When the Caliphate was proclaimed in mid-2014,the Islamic State’s leader, Abu-Bakr al-
Baghdadi reminded Muslims that the Prophet had migrated from Mecca to Medina for
his faith. The Arabic word for that migration is hjirah. The new Caliph claimed that it
was now the duty of every Muslim to make a similar migration to the Caliphate and
assist in the construction of the Islamic State.152 His call has been heard and thousands
of foreign fighters (and female supporters of the Caliphate) have migrated to Syria and
Iraq. In total some 30,000 foreign fighters from more than 100 countries have gone to
Syria since 2012.153 Somewhat surprisingly, a sizeable portion of those who moved to
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
the Caliphate had a criminal record before they departed from Europe although few of
them had engaged in terrorism at home. 154In recent years more than six thousand
young men (and women) have migrated from Europe to Syria and Iraq (see Box 15) to
join organisations that have been labeled “terrorist”.
Some 1,500 of the more than 6,000 men and women who had gone to Syria from
Western countries have, after a “tour of duty”, returned from the Caliphate. A few of
them have in the meantime engaged in acts of terrorism at home. They are hijrah
Box 15: Foreign Fighters from Twenty European Countries Who Left for
Syria and Iraq
France: 1,700
Germany: 820
United Kingdom: 760
Belgium: 470
Bosnia: 330
Netherlands 315
Austria: 300
Sweden: 300
Kosovo: 232
Macedonia: 146
Spain: 135
Denmark: 125
Albania: 90
Italy: 87
Norway: 80+
Finland: 70
Serbia: 70
Switzerland: 57
Montenegro: 38
Ireland: 30
Total: 6,155
Source: Alex P. Schmid. Foreign (Terrorist) Fighters with IS: A European Perspective. The Hague:
ICCT, December 2015, p. 25, http://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ICCT-Schmid-Foreign-
Terrorist-Fighters-with-IS-A-European-Perspective-December2015.pdf .
migrants who turned into terrorists or at least joined a jihadist organisation which
engages in acts of terrorism. Those of them who returned to Europe not out of
disillusionment but with the intent to conduct attacks in their country of origin are
returnee migrants turning terrorists, serving as a fifth column of the Islamic State in the
West. One of the strategy papers captured from the Islamic State made clear that the
refugee streams towards Europe was to be used to infiltrate terrorists. 155 The real
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
42
refugees who flee Syria rather than join the Islamic State are regarded as “infidels’ by
the leaders of IS.
(ii) Migration from one Jihadist Theatre of Conflict to the Next

by Professional Jihadists
The rise of global jihadism in the last 30 years has led to a situation where some
jihadists move from one conflict to the other, e.g. from Afghanistan to Bosnia and from
there to Chechnya and further on to Syria. They are wandering terrorists, partly
because their country of origin would arrest them if they returned home and partly
because jihad has become for them a way of life. 156 The number of these migrants
might increase after the names of thousands of jihadists with the Islamic State have
been made public in March 2016 by a leak from a disillusioned jihadist, allowing their
arrest when they try to return to their home country. They will have nowhere else to go
unless states offer them amnesties. Many of these foreign fighters might therefore
become perpetual migrants, going from one jihadist hotspot to the next until they die.
(iii) Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters
Foreign fighters are by definition migrants but a number of them are returning
migrants who have often been further radicalised in the conflict zones of jihad. When
back home some of them are sleepers who sooner or later will get involved in plots. An
analysis by Petter Nesser of 75 IS plots in the West revealed,
At least one-third of ISIS-linked plots against the West involved a foreign

fighter - an individual who has gone abroad to train or fight in a terrorist
safe haven. However, this figure is probably low, as extremists are
increasingly taking steps to hide their communications, and in recent
cases the involvement of a foreign fighter was often not clear until weeks
or months into an investigation. These experienced jihadists were
suspects, accomplices, or instigators in two-dozen identified cases.
Roughly half of these cases involved “returnees,” foreign fighters who
came home from ISIS safe havens to launch the attacks themselves. This
includes the Paris attackers, the assailants responsible for killing Western
tourists at a Tunisian museum and beach resort, the suspect behind the
shooting at a Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014, and more. 157
Some 1,500 of the more than 6,000 European foreign fighters have, according to press
reports, returned to Europe.158 Returning foreign fighters use various routes to come
home. Some use their own passports, some falsified travel documents and some come
with stolen identity papers while a few travel without documents, hiding in the stream
of irregular migrants and asylum seekers that moved to Europe since the fall of 2015.
159
Their number is small – so far not much more than a few dozen suspected jihadists
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
posing as Syrian war refugees have been discovered among the hundreds of thousands
escaping Syria or the refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon. However, their presence
among genuine refugees has raised alarm in the intelligence community and, even
more so, among populist right-wing politicians. Some of those who hide in the stream
of refugees are, however, not returning foreign fighters but other Syrian or Iraqi
jihadists. A few of them have been registered and finger-printed at the borders of
Greece or Turkey or carried residence papers from refugee centers in Germany. Nabil
Fadli, a suicide bomber who killed ten German tourists on Istanbul’s Sultan Ahmet
Square on 12 January 2016, for instance, had entered Turkey one week earlier and had
himself registered as asylum seeker. Abdel Majid Touil, one of the alleged perpetrators
of the Bardo Museum massacre in Tunisia had crossed among ordinary asylum seekers
the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy but was caught (but later released for lack of
proof). 160A Tunisian man named Walid Salihi (he has several other identities as well)
who attacked a police station in Paris on 7 January 2016 – the anniversary of the Charlie
Hebdo attack – had registered in the asylum center of Recklinghausen in Germany. He
wore a fake explosive belt but carried a real meat cleaver and shouted “Allahu Akhbar”
when he attacked. He was shot before he could do any harm. Two of the terrorists who
attacked sites in Paris on 13 November 2015 had entered Europe hidden among the
refugees stream, carrying false Syrian passports. 161 How many more such disturbed
and dangerous jihadists are among the refugees we do not yet know. The German
Federal Migration Office had to admit at one time that the identities of up to 400,000
people in the country were not known. 130,000 asylum seekers who had entered
Germany somehow “disappeared”, with some of them probably moving to other
countries.162
The Islamic State profits both from the returning jihadists and regular asylum seekers.
According to Bernard Cazeneuve, the French Minister of the Interior, IS has formed an
entire “industry” in fabricating passports stolen in Syria and Iraq. As indicated above,
two of the terrorists responsible for the massacres in Paris on 13 November 2015 were
reported to have re-entered Europe with probably false Syrian passports. How many
ISIS terrorists have been sent to Europe is not known. One source involved in the
smuggling of people, claimed that ISIS had sent “some 4,000 fighters to Europe” – an
unverified and, in all likelihood, highly exaggerated number. 163 According to the Dutch
immigration Minister Klaas Dijkhoff, about thirty war crimes suspects – one third
among them Syrians – were found among 59,000 people applying for political asylum
in the Netherlands in 2015.164 Similar low numbers have been found in earlier refugee
flows. Among 25,000 or more Algerian asylum seekers reaching the United Kingdom
since 1980, only 44 were thought to have been involved in terrorism. In the case of
Somali refugees in the United States, only 36 out of 85,000 were suspected oforlinks to
terrorism. 165 Such figures of 0.2 percent or less indicate that fears about “refugee
terrorists” are largely unfounded.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
44
(iv) Economic Migrants Turning Foreign Terrorist Fighters.
There is another way in which migrants can become (terrorist) fighters: The Islamic
State province in Libya has plenty of enemies and only limited manpower – between
4,500 and 6,000 men, all but some 800 of them non-Libyans. In order to boost its ranks,
IS in Libya has begun abducting economic migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and West Africa
en route through the Sahara to Europe. One Nigerian plumber who was kidnapped
together with a group of Sudanese and Ghanian migrants in Benghazi was brought by
IS fighters to a desert camp where they were made to recite verses from the Qu’ran.
Those who could not recite verses were considered to be Christians and their heads
were cut off before the eyes of the abducted Muslims. Subsequently, this Nigerian man
and other Muslims were sent to a training camp and after several weeks of military
instructions considered ready for combat. This particular Nigerian witness managed to
escape and tell the story but lives in constant fear of being rounded up again by the
Islamic State:
At times I have entered mosques here in Libya to ask Allah to make my

death fast and easy. Now, I think about leaving here and try to shut out
what I saw in the desert that day – how those men just cut of the heads of
other men, like they were chopping vegetables, like it was nothing’… When
I have enough money, I will take the boat to Italy. I have survived so much
already, maybe I will also survive crossing the sea. 166
(v) Migrants’ Offspring Radicalising into Terrorism
There is yet another way migrants can turn terrorists. If they are not fully integrated in
host societies, they might develop resentment and with some that anger might become
so strong that they – or more likely, their children – turn against the host society. That
has been one of the reasons why so many of the foreign fighters from Europe were the
sons of immigrants. The short-term likelihood that recent refugees arriving in Western
Europe become radicalised is, however, very low. However, there is a danger that some
irregular migrants who stay illegal in the European Union might be recruited by either
criminal or terrorist (or hybrid) networks. Their personal resentment against a society
that is unwilling to accept them might motivate some of them to engage in acts of
political violence.
Yet the overwhelming majority of migrants have nothing to do with terrorism. There
are figures to illustrate this. Between the fall of 2001 and early 2016, the United States
accepted more than 800,000 refugees in its resettlement program. Only five persons
of those who were vetted in the framework of the resettlement program have been
arrested on terrorism charges, according to the State Department and the Migration
Policy Institute”.167 With regard to the situation in Europe, Peter Neumann, Director of
the ICSR in London, has noted that of the 600,000 Iraqis and Syrians who arrived in
Germany in 2015 “only 17 have been investigated for terrorist links.”168
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
To sum up: international terrorists are often migrants and migrants (or their children)
in refugee camps and diasporas can at times but very rarely become terrorists (or
refugee warriors) if governments fail to provide them with better perspectives.
G. Counter-Terrorist Operations as Cause

of Forced Migration?
Terrorism is often a strategy of provocation. Those who engage in it seek to provoke
an overreaction. The less intelligence a government has about the location and identity
of the perpetrators of acts of terrorism, the more likely it is that the law enforcement
and security forces use a heavy-handed approach that targets the entire sector of
society that the terrorists are associated with. That is often part of the terrorist calculus:
the repression, they argue, will open the eyes of the people and then the people will
see that the government is “evil” which should make more people turn towards the
terrorists, providing them with support and new recruits. It is a cynical calculus to
provoke repression against the very sector the terrorists claim to defend - but such is
the lack of morality and cunning strategy of many insurgent terrorists. 169
Provoked over-reactions by the state has costs tens of thousands of lives and caused
hundreds of thousands of refugees. After 11 September 2001, the American attacks on
Afghanistan not only led to an exodus of 300 or so Al-Qaeda members to Pakistan, it
also displaced thousands of others. In the tribal territories of North Waziristan the
Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other jihadists found a safe haven. Pakistan sought to utilise
some of them for its foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir but in the
end became a target itself. After the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and after
suffering a number of direct attacks from the Pakistani Taliban, the army decided to act
decisively. In 2014, the Pakistani military began to conduct major attacks against the
safe havens of the Pakistani Taliban and elements of Al Qaeda in Waziristan. In this
process over one million civilians were displaced from their homes. 170 The saddest
thing about this displacement caused by counter-terrorist operations was that
someone in the Pakistani security apparatus sympathetic to the objectives of the
jihadists had apparently warned the terrorist leadership in advance, so that the large-
scale operation missed many of its targets as many of the tipped off militants had
already moved across the border into Afghanistan to wait for the storm to be over.171
As so often the common people pay the largest price.
In Syria, the Assad government has tried to sell its generalised repression of Sunnis
under the label of countering terrorism, a label that it not only used against the Islamic
State and al-Nushra (the Al-Qaeda group in Syria) but also against more moderate
fighters resisting the near-genocidal regime. The Syrian government has been greatly
helped by Iran and, from late September 2015 onwards, by the Russian air force which,
unlike the American one, hardly uses smart precision bombs. As a result, civilian
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
46
casualties of the Russian counter-terrorism campaign in Syria are high. When in
February 2016, the Russian air force increased its bombardments on Aleppo to enable
the advance of Syrian government troops, at least 15,000 Syrians fled the fighting in
northern Aleppo with many of them gathering at the Bab al-Salam border crossing to
Turkey where they were not allowed to proceed. 172
The Russian intervention from the air and the stronger engagement of Iran on the
ground in Syria turned the tide as the Assad regime had by September 2015 lost more
than 80 percent of the territory of Syria. This new intensification of the repression
convinced hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in camps in Lebanon and Turkey
that they had hoped in vain for a victory of the popular insurgency and that a return to
a devastated Syria still ruled by Assad was no longer an option. By that time more than
eighty percent of the Syrian refugees in camps in Jordan and Lebanon lived lives below
the poverty level threshold. When Western donors reduced their contributions to
UNCHR in 2015, the situation of these refugees became hopeless. The combination of
these factors: having, after the Russian intervention, given up hope that Assad would
fall and the war would end soon, the growing poverty in the refugee camps as a result
of the further reduction of aid to UNHCR, made hundreds of thousands of them decide
to risk the perilous journey to Europe since the German chancellor Angela Merkel
indicated in 5 September 2015 that Germany would welcome them.
The effects of state over-reaction to insurgent terrorism have, sadly, often been worse
than the damage done by insurgent terrorists. The over-reaction of the United States
with its intervention in Iraq in 2003 (where Saddam Hussein was wrongly accused of
supporting Al-Qaeda and of possessing weapons of mass destruction) alone, directly
and indirectly, led to the death of between 137,000 and 165,000 civilians and the
internal displacement of 1,300,000 people while more than 1,400,000 became
refugees.173 The American intervention in Afghanistan and attacks across the border
into Pakistan following the 9/11 attack cost the lives of 26,000 and 21,500 civilians
respectively, not counting those who were armed and directly involved in the
fighting. 174 The Afghan refugee population in Pakistan consists of 1,500,000
documented refugees and about one million more undocumented ones, the latter
partly a result of the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan in 1978.175
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
H. Migration Control for Counter-
Terrorism?
The European Union with its 28 member states counts some 510 million people, while
the Schengen area consists of twenty-six countries with a combined population of more
than 420 million people. 176 The Schengen Agreement of 1995 allows Europeans to
move freely across a political space of 4,312,099 square kilometers, with a common
external frontier made up of 42,672 kilometers of land border and 8,826 kilometers of
coastline.177 Frontex, the organisation for European border control, however, had, until
recently, to do with merely 310 personnel and an annual budget of 114 million Euros.178
Border control is still largely the prerogative of national governments. However, as a
chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the Schengen borders are only as strong as
those of its Mediterranean members, in particular, Italy and Greece. Originally
conceived for controlling illegal immigration, border controls have since 9/11
increasingly been used for countering terrorism, especially in the United States.
To keep out terrorists is a legitimate objective but the effectiveness of border controls
is limited by the fact that many terrorists are “homegrown” or are foreigners with legal
residence permits. Sometimes terrorism is imported not by foreigners but by citizens
who got (further) radicalised while abroad. That puts a limit at what migration control
can do to stop terrorism. Nevertheless, migration control has increasingly been used
as an important instrument for terrorism control. On the other hand, anti-terrorist
legislation can impact negatively on migration and be especially detrimental for
refugees seeking asylum. Writing in 2014, Nazli Avdan concluded, looking at Schengen
area data from 1980 to 2007, that “….the humanitarian principles underpinning asylum
recognition have not been eroded by terrorism”. 179 Today, nne years later, migration
policies have been securitised in Europe as well, as they were in the United States after
2001.
H. Cinoglu and N. Atun have asked “why despite the fact that there is no organic link
between international migration and terrorism”, both the United States and EU
countries are focusing on migration and border control policies in the fight against
terrorism?180 They noted some of the disadvantages:
Creating an artificial link between the immigrants and terrorism creates

anxiety and rage in the immigrant societies and increases the hostile
feelings against the state. In these situations, hostility against foreigners
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
48
(xenophobia) rises along with the possibility of clashes between societal
groups. Creating a balance between the human rights and security is not
an easy task for the countries which seek more security. Immigrants
usually have a disadvantaged position in their countries and terrorist
groups can abuse this situation or the boundary policies of the
countries.(…) The strict policies and practices adopted within the
framework of combating international terrorism might cause a gradual
decrease of positive contributions of migration to the receiving
societies.(…) Targeting specifically certain categories of immigrants and
foreigners for the sake of prevention of terrorism can be reconciled
neither with the theories of liberal democracy that the West has been
defending for many years nor with the preached approach of combating
terrorism within the limits of respect for human rights.181
One additional danger of using controls of migrants for countering terrorism is that the
enlarged toolbox which governments acquire in the process of controlling the
movement of foreigners will also be extended for the control of its own citizens. David
Cole, in his book Enemy Aliens, has argued “….that it is in our interest not to trade
immigrants’ rights for citizens’ purported security because the rights we deny to
immigrants will almost inevitably be denied to citizens later and because double
standards undermine security by impairing the legitimacy of the war on terrorism. 182
Stretched to its limits, migration- and border-controls will close open cosmopolitan
societies and ordinary people will pay a high price for the crimes of the few. There are
other ways of combatting terrorism with fewer negative side- effects. Attacking the
ideology of terrorists and their organisational infrastructures is a more promising route
than the control of all individuals in their movements in the hope to catch some
terrorists among them.
5. Conclusion
Since the fall of 2015 European public opinion has been stirred by graphic pictures of
victims of terrorism in Paris and Brussels on the one hand and by video footage of long
trails of migrants making their way through the Balkans to Austria, Germany, Sweden
as well as other European countries on the other hand Two issues - terrorism and
migration - have been combined in public discourse so that the impression has been
created that terrorist and migrant populations significantly overlap and that we are
dealing with one and the same problem. For instance, in the fall of 2015 when ten
thousand people a day arrived in Central Europe via the Balkan route, both the Czech
President Milos Zeman and the Slovak Prime minister Robert Fico had suggested that
terrorists would use the cover of refugee streams through the Balkans for infiltration
to set up “sleeper cells” in host countries. 183 However, the very few instances of
terrorists posing as refugees should be seen for what they are – exceptions.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Peter Neumann, the director of the ICSR in London was right when he said
People who have just escaped civil war, oppression or poverty are unlikely
to be interested in attacking the very society that has given them safety
and the opportunity for a fresh start. I know of no empirical evidence that
would demonstrate that first generation immigrants are particularly
rebellious or receptive to extremist messages. Instead, the historical
record suggests that they tend to be busy building a new existence for
themselves and their children and have little time for politics or religious
extremism. Even if radical Salafists like the German preacher Pierre Vogel
have started targeting refugees, their message is likely to fall on deaf
ears.184
That is a sound judgment, also supported by Europol 185 - although since late 2015 a few
more suspected jihadi terrorists have been found disguised as refugees coming from
Turkey and Libya to Europe. 186
As indicated earlier, the massive trek of an additional half a million refugees to Europe
in late 2015 was caused by a variety of push and pull factors, including signals of
welcoming from Sweden and Germany, in particular Chancellor Angela Merkel’s speech
of 5th September 2015. When donors of the UNHCR cut back their contributions to
refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan in 2015 and when the hope for an early victory
over the Assad regime waned with the Russian intervention, many Syrians in Turkey
and Lebanon decided to head for Europe rather than spend many more years in
refugee camps (It should be remembered in this context that an average refugee
situation lasts 17 years). No wonder that many refugees after some years had enough
of the misery of under-resourced and under-policed refugee camps.
If the member states of the European Union could have agreed on a fair burden-
sharing scheme, taking into account its recipient country’s carrying capacity, the
reception of more than a million of refugees in countries with more than 500 million
inhabitants would not have been a major problem. Europe’s own uncoordinated and
erratic policies contributed to the refugee crisis.187 The failure of Greece to manage the
refugee stream was visible for a long time but no decisive steps were taken to save the
Schengen system from collapsing. To this day, the members of the Schengen Accord
still have no comprehensive and seamless system of monitoring people entering and
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
50
leaving the Schengen. 188 The exchange of intelligence on terrorist movements in
Europe remains deficient.
However, technical solutions go only so far in de-linking migration and terrorism. What
is at least as important for the management of migrants and the countering of terrorist
are two measures that need to be taken:
(i) those who seek asylum in Europe ought to make a solemn public commitment
to respect the host countries’ laws of the land, their political culture and Europe’s
core values (democratic majority rule with respect for rights of minorities, rule
of law, human rights, separation of state and religion, gender equality, freedom
of thought and religion, social solidarity, pluralist acceptance of diversity and
mutual tolerance); and
(ii) those who come to our shores to seek protection from prosecution and
terrorism, should be obliged to assist the lawful authorities in identifying
terrorist recruiters, facilitators and operators in their midst as well as report on
those who are seeking to join jihadist networks.
Such commitments from refugees and other migrants to hosting countries are a small
price to pay for being offered an opportunity to rebuilt their lives on a continent that,
after centuries of religious conflicts and hegemonic power struggles, has successfully
overcome these historical scourges and wants to keep it that way.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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62
Links between Terrorism and Migration: an Exploration
Alex P. Schmid and Dr. Judith Tennes

May 2016
How to cite: Schmid, A.P. “Links between Terrorism and Migration: an Exploration” The International
Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague 7, no. 4 (2016).
About ICCT
The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) is an independent think and do tank
providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical, solution-oriented implementation support on
prevention and the rule of law, two vital pillars of effective counter-terrorism.
ICCT’s work focuses on themes at the intersection of countering violent extremism and criminal justice
sector responses, as well as human rights related aspects of counter-terrorism. The major project areas
concern countering violent extremism, rule of law, foreign fighters, country and regional analysis,
rehabilitation, civil society engagement and victims’ voices.
Functioning as a nucleus within the international counter-terrorism network, ICCT connects experts,
policymakers, civil society actors and practitioners from different fields by providing a platform for
productive collaboration, practical analysis, and exchange of experiences and expertise, with the ultimate
aim of identifying innovative and comprehensive approaches to preventing and countering terrorism.
Contact ICCT
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Links between Terrorism and Migration: An Exploration

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A. State terrorism as main cause of migration?

B. State failure as cause of terrorism and migration?

C. Non-state terrorism as cause of migration?

D. (Civil) War as major cause of terrorism and migration?

E. Refugee camps and diasporas as causes (and targets) of terrorism?

F. Migrants as terrorists? Terrorists as migrants?

G. Counter-Terrorist operations as cause of forced migration?

Twenty findings emerged from the study:

3. There are multiple causal relations between (forced/irregular) migration and

4. While it is, in concrete situations, difficult to isolate specific factors as being

5. Terrorism by non-state actors with deliberate attacks on civilians is also a major

9. The Assad regime in Syria has deliberately targeted civilians as an instrument of

13. Some children of immigrants to Western diasporas, insufficiently integrated into

a. migration to the Caliphate is portrayed as an individual Muslim obligation

d. a few foreign fighters have engaged in acts of terrorism, including suicide

19. While migrants and refugees have occasionally been instrumentalised by

UN Report, 24 December 20151

Our main focus here is on forced migration.6 It is a rapidly growing phenomenon: in

2. Refugee Migration Pressure

3. Growing Terrorism Pressure

Box 2: Ten Countries Suffering Highest Numbers of Terrorist Fatalities

Percentage of Worldwide Fatalities

Legend: 100% (32, 685 fatalities)

[G]lobalisation contributes to dreams among those who are poor or

Box 3: Definitions of Migration and Terrorism

Migration refers to the in-[immigration] or out-movement [emigration] of

Terrorism refers to a political communication strategy for psychological mass

A. State terrorism as main cause of migration?

1. A global wealth imbalance, with the richest 1 percent of the world

2. A demographic explosion coupled with economic stagnation in many

3. Massive global unemployment (currently 200,000,000 people,

4. Environmental destruction (inundations, desertification,

5. Changing tactics of warfare which have made the civilian population

6. The re-emergence of exclusive nationalism and the growth of religious

7. A revolution in transportation, enabling long-distance mass migration;

8. The discovery of smuggling and trafficking in people as a high-yield,

9. The presence of ethnic diasporas in ‘global cities’ abroad that form

10. Worldwide satellite television and the Internet-transmitted images of

Box 5: Ten Causes and Objectives of (Non-State) Terrorism as Suggested in

1. To awaken the (alleged) revolutionary spirit of the masses;

A. State Terrorism as Main Cause of

Box 6: Political [State] Terror Scale Levels

Level II: There is a limited amount of imprisonment for nonviolent polit-

Level III: There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of

Level V: Terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of

Number of Refugees (2015)

Central African Republic 469,314

Internally Displaced Persons Refugees

Afghanistan (5) at least 847,872 2,690,775

The number of post-colonial states experiencing a (temporary) governance meltdown

Sometimes, the decisive factor is the hospitality – or support,

Box 9: Comparison of Indices for 19 Countries Scoring High on Fragile State

Terrorism Index FSI Index BTI Index Refugees

South Sudan 6.712 114.5 2 1,746,900