Returning Indonesian Fighters from Syria and Iraq: Learning from the Past
Synopsis
Indonesian fighters with the self-declared Islamic State (IS) recently posted a video threatening to bring the armed struggle home. Indonesia can learn a lot from past handling of former foreign fighters who returned from the Afghan and Mindanao battlefronts.
2015: A World Confused
Norms and even basic tenets of international behavior have been scattered left and right in recent years: the annexation of Crimea by Vladimir Putin’s little green men and his stealth invasion of Ukraine by Russian soldiers “on vacation” with their tanks; the Islamic State’s combination of medieval mores and modern capabilities to govern as well as fight; China’s on-again, off-again provocations in the East and South China Seas; and, in Syria, the ruin of a recently functional state with the world unable to stop the human and physical destruction.