Much hand-wringing has gone on in world capitals since ISIS’ collapse about whether and how to bring back citizens who left to join ISIS... Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing…

… read about who we think of as ‘foreign fighters.’

Much hand-wringing has gone on in world capitals since ISIS’ collapse about whether and how to bring back citizens who left to join ISIS, — so-called “foreign fighters” — to their countries of origin. There seems, however, to be a hand-wringing double standard. A new study reports [[link removed]] that, among the over 17,000 mostly Russian foreigners who have entered Ukraine to participate in the conflict there, there are well over 1,000 non-Russian white supremacists from around the world. Those foreign white supremacist fighters, more than 30 of whom are Americans, are recruited through online networks utilized by both sides of the conflict. Yet, because these networking groups and individuals have not yet been designated as foreign terrorist organizations, they are subject to much less scrutiny than those associated with ISIS.

Radioactive ostriches

After the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, everything was abandoned in the power plant’s immediate vicinity. Homes and businesses were lost, including — it turns out — an ostrich farm. Workers in the exclusion zone around the plant would occasionally see ostriches wandering through abandoned towns, a wild monument [[link removed]] to a quixotic attempt to increase tourism to Fukushima, shortly before the disaster.

As with cats, dogs, pigs and other animals abandoned in the exclusion zone, the ostriches became feral and roamed wild behind the wire. People returning home for short visits were alarmed to find them and complained to authorities, who trapped six of them.

Those six ostriches became assets to science, showing researchers how wild animals process radiation over time. The only radioactive materials the birds retained in their bodies was cesium, which is absorbed into muscle tissue rather than organ tissue, suggesting animals can overcome many forms of environmental radiation.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] How Gulf influence works in Washington

It is easy to find people in Washington who, behind closed doors, will complain about the pervasiveness of funding from foreign governments — and especially from the Gulf kingdoms — in the think tank sector. Less common are publicly available stories about the effect of that funding, like the one told [[link removed]] by analyst Hassan Hassan last week on Twitter. Hassan, a friend of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, spoke out in print about the Saudi regime’s clear responsibility for Khashoggi’s death. After that, the pressure started.

Hassan writes for The Atlantic and, at the time, worked at The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. After receiving angry calls about Hassan’s writing on Khashoggi and other issues from a “senior” official from a Gulf state, the Program on Extremism director emailed The Atlantic directly, demanding that the Program be removed from Hassan’s bio on the articles.

Hassan left The George Washington University rather than allow the Program on Extremism to continue to pressure him, but he complains in his thread about the difficulty of finding another institutional home in Washington that is safe from Saudi and Emirati pressure.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] MIDNIGHT OIL

This week’s Midnight Oil guest is Sara Polo, a lecturer in the government department at the University of Essex. Her recent article on how refugee movements do and do not drive terrorism, co-authored with Julian Wucherpfennig, won the award for best paper from the conflict processes section at the 2019 meeting of the American Political Science Association.

WHAT IS THE HARDEST PROBLEM YOU WORK ON?

Why, how and under what conditions do groups employ terrorist tactics to accomplish political goals? This is the central concern of my research. Within that question, one of the themes I engage with is how processes of diffusion, emulation and external interventions affect nonstate actors' adoption of terrorist tactics. This part of my research studies what I call the “external” (as opposed to the domestic) causes of terrorism. A key objective is to understand whether and how terrorism spreads from one country or group to another following a process of diffusion or contagion. For example, to what extent is a group’s decision to resort to terrorism influenced by the choices of similar groups elsewhere? Do nonstate actors emulate and learn each other’s tactics? If so, how? What role, if any, do refugee movements play in the diffusion of terrorism?

Answering these questions requires a specific theoretical and methodological effort. Recognizing the interdependence of groups’ tactical choices forces us to look for the causes of terrorism outside of the local context; we need to take into account the complex network of relationships and channels that connect actors and provide them with the inspiration, motivation and means to conduct terrorist attacks. Despite the challenges, studying the diffusion of terrorism is incredibly fascinating. My projects on this topic (including the article that won the APSA best paper award) are probably my favorite, although also the most difficult ones I have undertaken so far.

HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT TRYING TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?

Methodologically, my research is based on quantitative statistical analyses. Those analyses require reliable data, but for many of my projects, the data needed to test my theoretical arguments did not exist. Therefore, as part of my research, I have embarked upon several data collection efforts. For example, for my project on the relationship between refugee flows and the diffusion of terrorism, my co-author, Julian Wucherpfennig, and I collected data on the countries of origin of all terrorist organizations in the Global Terrorism Database that conducted at least one transnational terrorist attack. These data, combined with data on refugees’ origin and destination countries, have allowed us to examine whether terrorist groups originate from the same countries as the refugees and whether they use refugee streams to conduct attacks in host countries. For the same project, we have also matched the nationality of the targets of terrorist attacks in each country with data on the nationality of refugees hosted in those countries.

All of these data, in combination with a novel methodological approach, have allowed us to demonstrate that, in developed countries, terrorism does not diffuse through the infiltration of refugee flows. In other words, refuges are not a “Trojan Horse” for terrorism. At the same time, it is the case that refugee-hosting countries often experience an increase in terrorist attacks. These terrorist attacks, however, are conducted by local groups against refugees and other migrants and are driven primarily by security concerns. This pattern is particularly strong in developed host countries. Current policy responses to the refugee crisis, which frequently monger rather than reduce fears, are therefore not only ill-suited, but even counterproductive by heightening the overall risk of terrorism.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Shirin Jaafari tracked [[link removed]] the evolution of massive anti-government protests in Iraq. At least 70 people associated with the protests have been killed since the start of the month, mostly from sharp crackdowns from state security forces. Protesters decry poor governance, joblessness and breakdowns in service provision and the firing of popular army commander Lt. Gen. Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, had added fuel to the fire.

Peter T. Charles reflected [[link removed]] on the decline of “China Hands” — self-taught students of Chinese politics, often from the business world, who long dominated American policymaking toward China. Henry Kissinger himself is the classic example: prone to gaffes when dealing in a language he didn’t speak, but lauded for engaging with China at a time when few Americans did. Today, however, though some China Hands cling to relevance, real expertise is a prerequisite for young policymakers to enter the field.

Tania Karas reported [[link removed]] on a new set of bilateral deals between the Trump administration and Central American governments that would commit those countries to accept asylum-seekers who arrived in the United States from neighboring countries. Honduras, for example, would accept asylum-seekers from Nicaragua who made it to the US only to be sent back to the region they were fleeing. The deals will allow the US to evade even more of its duty under international law to protect asylum-seekers who arrive at its border.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

These [[link removed]] golf balls are very expensive, will make you late for your tee time, and sometimes, for reasons no one quite understands, you’ll hit them and they’ll end up lodged in your throat. They do have the radar signature of an F-35 though.

The meddling goose [[link removed]] from “Untitled Goose Game” got loose at China’s National Day military parade! Luckily, a reporter was on the scene [[link removed]].

It’s hard to find a more perfect encapsulation of the difference between how historians and political professionals view the lessons of last week’s impeachment discussions than this tweet. [[link removed]]

To quote [[link removed]] the great William Wallace from Braveheart, “AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH.”

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between PRI’s The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX, BBC, and WGBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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