From Byron to Bin Laden: A History of Foreign War Volunteers by Nir Arielli

Author:Nir Arielli
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, Military, General, Modern, Political Science, International Relations, Political Ideologies, Public Policy, Military Policy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2018-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

In conclusion, while de jure there was, and still is, an international norm of preventing the departure of foreign volunteers, de facto the situation has been, and remains, much more complex. Several states took measures to limit foreign volunteering to show the international community as well as their domestic public that the issue was being addressed. However, considering all the vying interests, the result has often been attempts to bring the flow of foreign volunteers under control rather than seriously preventing it.

Furthermore, in some cases governments were very sympathetic toward citizens who wished to serve causes that were perceived as justified, as the Swedish policy regarding volunteering for Finland in 1939–1940 illustrates. There is also some evidence to suggest that, on a few rare occasions, some governments saw the outbreak of an ideologically charged conflict abroad as an opportunity to get rid of troublesome extremists. A number of Jewish communists who left Palestine to fight in the Spanish Civil War testified that the British Mandate police had released them from prison on the understanding that they would go to Spain.113 According to Milton Bearden, who served as the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan between 1986 and 1989, “a number of Arab states discreetly emptied their prisons of homegrown troublemakers and sent them off to the jihad [in Afghanistan] with the fervent hope that they might not return.”114 In other words, under certain circumstances, the departure of foreign volunteers was seen as a blessing rather than a problem.

In the 1820s the state was smaller than it is today and had far less information about its population. In theory, this made foreign volunteering easier, but travel was much more costly and time consuming. In the 2010s more intrusive governments use the latest technology in an attempt to catch up with the opportunities created by cheap and fast travel. In October 2014, for instance, the FBI managed to intercept three Syria-bound teenage girls from Denver in Frankfurt, Germany. They had reportedly stolen some money from their parents to pay for their flights and were apprehended because the FBI flagged their passports.115 Governments sometimes win in this competition between transport and surveillance technology, but sometimes, from their perspective, they also lose. One is reminded of the apprehension that gripped many in Britain in the 1930s about the dangers and destruction that a future air war would bring. The Conservative leader and future prime minister Stanley Baldwin famously warned in 1932 that, whatever precautions were taken, “the bomber will always get through.”116 The same can be said of committed foreign volunteers who are prepared to try time and again to reach their destination. This raises the question, which the next two chapters address: is the threat they pose really so great?

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