On Sept. 12, the CIA revised its official estimate of the total number of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria upward almost threefold to between 20,000 and 31,500 combatants. This new number brings the CIA assessment in line with Stratfor’s long-standing estimate of 10,000 to 20,000 core Islamic State fighters in Syria alone. More important, fighters whose homelands are elsewhere have come to numerically dominate the Islamic State’s ranks. Around 12,000 foreigners, according to the recent CIA assessment, have successfully joined the Islamic State and to a lesser degree other jihadist groups in the region. Of these, 2,000 are Europeans, according to EU estimates.

These foreign fighters possess a degree of fanaticism and, in many cases, combat experience that provides the Islamic State with a powerful weapon, allowing them a major role on the battlefield. The flow of these foreign fighters into Syria and the broader Middle East has been the largest and most important influx into any region since the end of the Cold War. This phenomenon, however, is not new, and in fact has roots stretching back to the earliest recorded history. Islamic State foreign combatants are only the most recent in a long line of individuals with motivations to fight ranging from the religious to the merely economic.

Premium + Digital Edition

Ad-free access


P 80 per month
(billed annually at P 960)
  • Unlimited ad-free access to website articles
  • Limited offer: Subscribe today and get digital edition access for free (accessible with up to 3 devices)

TRY FREE FOR 14 DAYS
See details
See details