Misleading calculations - On the number of foreigners who have left for the Islamic State

ISIS has evolved into a global phenomenon. This is not only to be said because of terrorist attacks in different countries all around the globe, committed in the name of the self proclaimed state in Iraq and Syria, but also due to the fact that mostly young Muslims (their declaration of belief will be of importance for this article) from a wide variety of countries have yet travelled to what they think is the latest Khilafa (caliphate). 

Myriads of reports have been written on this, regularly publishing the numbers of fighters from different country who fulfilled their wish to emigrate into ISIS-held territory; and they are not only coming from Muslim majority countries or those countries which are well known for hosting a particularly pious way of Islam such as Saudi-Arabia. Many of those reports, lists and tables also show the estimated number of people who have left Europe for the life under the black flag and the percentage of emigrants compared to the whole population of a country, e.g. here, here and here. 

But there is one important fact that the authors of these lists above failed to mention: the Muslim factor. To join ISIS, you don’t have to be incredibly smart or strong or skilled in a certain job. The only thing you have to be is Muslim; Sunni Muslim to be fairly accurate. This is why these tables so often (probably unintentionally) falsify the results given. Breaking it down, these calculations include everybody from steadfast Sunni Islamists to Atheists and even devout Catholic monks. We certainly agree on the fact that not all of them are equally likely to become ISIS inhabitants/members.

Let us go into details. The results of this calculations always look quite similar: a country with quite a small population and/or a high amount of Jihadis originating from it is listed on one of the top places of ‘terror-exporting nations’. The following list will be used as a quick example.

Source: Guy van Vlierden

As many may have already expected, Jordan, Tunisia and Saudi-Arabia comprise the top 3 of the list. Depending on which intelligence report is being used, also the Maldives tend to be ranked on one of the first positions as well. All four countries (like many other on the list) have in common that their over-all-population tends to be close to 100% Sunni. That makes calculating Number of Jihadis : population in million = Number of Jihadis per million inhabitants little prone to failure. However, if the religious preconditions vary, it gets more complicated. I will explain this through the example of Belgium. 

Belgium ranks on #10 on the list with about 52 Jihadis per 1m Belgians, making it the first European country on the list. This number comes from dividing the Belgians known to have emigrated to the Islamic State (the author calculated with 550 emigrants) by 11; Belgium has an overall population of about 11m people. 

But this is what can be called misleading. Belgium is home to a relatively high number of Muslims. Roughly 400.000 Belgians, regardless of their ethnicity, follow Islam of which 98% belong to the Sunni branch and just those are the ones who could actively join the ranks of ISIS. So rather than dividing 550 by 11, one should multiply 550 with 2.5! This is how you actually arrive at the total of Jihadis per 1m Muslim Belgians or at least come considerably close to it. It is also a number you can actually work with as it is easily comparable with the result from countries with overwhelming Sunni Muslim majority. I made a table containing some 20 countries which one can consider to be of importance for highlighting the more or less constant flow of foreign fighters into ISIS-held territory:

The result, however, is completely different from the initial one: per 1m Muslims living in Belgium about 1375 leave for the sake of Jihad. In other words: nearly 0.15% of the Belgian Muslims have been / are on their personal Hijrah (emigration) to the warzone. The revised calculation does not only show that Belgium ‘overtakes’ Jordan, Tunisia and Saudi-Arabia on the list but also that it is a distant #2 to Finland which has lost almost two times more of its Muslim community to ISIS than Belgium. However, it certainly is an alarming quantity which does not even include the radicalised persons not willing or not able to go abroad. 

All in all, these alternative comparisons show that Muslim societies in the Western world, and especially in Europe, carry quite a high potential of radicalisation. A fact which can be easily overlooked. Statistics originally should help to disclose this; a task they don’t really fulfil in the cases cited above.

PLEASE NOTE:

All these calculations, lists, tables etc. have in common that they are not hosting complete figures. Numbers, be it of the population and even more of those who have left for the Khilafa, are to a certain extend a matter of speculation which has direct influence on per-capita-calculations. The same goes for the number of Muslims, because some countries like France do not ask their people for information about religion. Others, especially Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Germany, house an unknown, but considerably higher number of Sunnis since the migrant crisis has fully broken out in September 2015. This is why the calculation provided above should not be seen as in any way set or the given numbers as the ultimate truth. Merely, its purpose is to reveal a significant error in the previous articles’ logic and to give an impression of which numbers are at least closer to the real situation.

Commenting on the comments: Will Turkey be facing a war on two fronts?

International media and politics have taken high interest in analysing what is being valled a major turn in Turkish foreign policy in the last few days Politicians and journalists from Arab, European and US media were mostly approving of the attacks that Turkish fighter bombers had conducted on ISIS positions in Syria. However, commentators were also concerned about the fact that, during the following days, military and police forces seemed to focus much more on targeting the PKK on Iraqi and Turkish soil.

The fear that Turkey could be drawn into a war on two fronts was expressed on multiple occasions and became a widely used phraseology even after the top priority target of Turkey’s so called Operation Martyr Yalçın was obvious. (e.g. see here, here and here) But is a two-front war a current threat to the region in general and Turkey in particular? And how reasonable is it to prophesy a specific kind of war, at least two of the three would-be-involved parties are not interested in?

Abdullah Öcalan, source

In fact, the PKK and Turkey have more or less stuck to the plan they had agreed on during multiple meetings in 2012/2013. Clashes did happen since then, but it was no match to the war and terror that spread during the 1990s or mid 2000s. It is hard, if not impossible, to tell what the opinion inside the PKK ranks looks like. Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed but still highly influential leader of the organisation, has not said anything regarding the conflict for months, though it is not known whether this is due to simple inactivity or restriction. It is likely that there are at least factions inside the PKK that are in favour of a wider escalation of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. A full-scale war between Turkey and ISIS as a whole would weaken both contesters and so the PKK could possibly intensify their attacks or at least would not be as much a target as it is by now.

PM Ahmet Davutoğlu and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, source

Turkey, or better said: Erdoğan, meanwhile sees this conflict more from a domestic point of view. The battle against the PKK is in short term an opportunity for point scoring ahead of expected early elections and a fight against a long-time enemy. Erdoğan himself is certainly not interested in being drawn into another conflict whose end nobody could foresee. ISIS has wide networks all over Turkey. A full-scale war could easily set the whole country on fire and especially hit the tourist locations on the southern shore, which would have a devastating effect on Turkish economics. Tunisia and Egypt have already suffered from that fate. Erdoğan’s political success mainly results from his ambition to modernise Turkey and push economical development. 

Airstrikes on ISIS positions at the beginning of Operation Martyr Yalçın were in retaliation for the border attack and an nothing but an alibi for the NATO states. At the same time, they did not provoke ISIS to attack.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, source

ISIS is also not likely to be feverishly looking forward to a war against Turkey. At least not now. The organisation is heavily relying on Turkey as a connecting route for supporters who want to join ISIS coming from overseas. Moreover, nation’s territory is also important for a constant flow of supplies and economical resources in general. All in all, its status quo can be described as the most favourable and profitable situation for ISIS. The Turkish goverment has been giving the terrorists free rein over the last years. Bringing Turkey to a major change in its attitude towards ISIS could not be in the latter's interest right now. Therefore, it is quite unlikely that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's forces will turn against Turkey as long as they need the country to keep up their fight. This is not likely to change.