Road Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad

Byman (A High Price), professor of security studies at Georgetown, examines in this illuminating study the origins, movements, influences, and impact of people who travel to other countries to join violent Islamist organizations. Each chapter profiles a foreign fighter, tracing his background and motivations, and explores the broader historical and political trends that his experience most exemplifies. Byman identifies trends: for example, fighters from Arab nations tend to excel at organization, infrastructure, and fund-raising, and recruits from the West are most useful for their marketing and outreach abilities. (Occasionally the latter can be too successful; he recounts one case in which, “attracted by... propaganda, many foreign fighters came to Somalia with no relevant skills and unable to operate in the harsh environment. [The organization al-Shabaab] had to babysit them, to its dismay.”) Byman also compares those who have traveled to join jihad to the socialist volunteers who flocked to Spain during the Spanish Civil War, drawn by adventure, camaraderie, and a search for purpose. The author has a light touch with his biographies, which are engrossing and frequently humorous—one subject is described as “a jihadist mix of James Bond and Severus Snape.” Byman’s work, one of the few scholarly entries on this topic, is essential for any reader interested in the global nature of Islamism and the forms it is likely to take in the wake of the Islamic State’s defeat in Syria. (June)