Findings from Interviews with Islamic State Members

Two researchers from the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism have published their findings from interviews they conducted with 220 Islamic State defectors, returnees, and prisoners. The purpose of these interviews was to learn about their recruitment history, motivations for joining, travel, experiences inside the group, disillusionment over time, and defection, return, or capture. The most common vulnerabilities to Islamic recruitment for the entire sample were poverty, unemployment, and underemployment. However, motivations for joining differed drastically by location. Foreign males tended to be motivated by a “helping” purpose to provide humanitarian and defensive militant aid, while local men were motivated less by ideology and higher goals and more by employment, fulfilling basic needs and personal and familial safety. In their assessment of the potential threat of fighters returning to their home countries, the researchers state the threat should be countered through deradicalization and rehabilitation programs that address the vulnerabilities, influences, and motivations that drove them toward Islamic State in the first place, as well as the traumas that they experienced while living under the group. Read the report at the Journal of Strategic Security.