Part III Important Themes in Armed Conflicts in 2013, 4 Foreign fighters and international law

Foreign fighters2 are hardly a new phenomenon: the Spanish civil war, the struggle in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion, the Bosnian conflicts in the 1990s, and armed conflicts in Chechnya and Dagestan all attracted significant numbers of foreign fighters.3 Historical examples such as the Spanish civil war show that foreign fighters are not a uniquely Muslim or Islamist phenomenon.4 That said, foreign fighters without any other apparent link than religious affinity have been a salient feature of virtually every conflict in the Muslim world since the Soviet...