NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / World

How Isis is using foreign recruits as cannon fodder

Bloomberg
12 Feb, 2015 06:37 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Islamic state fighters patrol in a commandeered police truck as it drives past burning police vehicles in front of the main provincial government building in Fallujah, Iraq. Photo / AP file
Islamic state fighters patrol in a commandeered police truck as it drives past burning police vehicles in front of the main provincial government building in Fallujah, Iraq. Photo / AP file

Islamic state fighters patrol in a commandeered police truck as it drives past burning police vehicles in front of the main provincial government building in Fallujah, Iraq. Photo / AP file

Aspiring jihadists looking to join the Islamic State army are often lured to the front lines with promises of changing the course of history and reclaiming a lost Islamic empire.

But at least for the less-skilled foreign recruits, the experience of fighting for the new caliphate is often brief and bloody. Kurdish and Iraqi commanders on the front lines of the war whom I interviewed in the last two weeks say that the suicide bombers and first-wave attackers deployed in Islamic State offensives are almost entirely made up of units of foreign fighters.

These highly risky missions mean that the new "immigrants" fighting the infidels end up as cannon fodder, while the more prestigious organizational jobs and less-risky defensive assignments go to Syrian and Iraqi Arabs.

"The ones actively fighting in the first wave of the attacks, they are mostly using central Asian members," said Masrour Barzani, chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, who oversees much of the day-to-day fighting against the Islamic State. "Local Arab forces are used to shore up defensive positions."

General Ali al-Wazir Shamary of the Iraqi army said he had a similar experience in his battles against Islamic State forces in Diyalla Province. "We often see the foreign fighters in the first wave of attacks and then the Arab fighters will come in after an area is cleared," he said.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Some of this has already been described in social media. A Twitter account known as @wikibaghdady, thought to be a whistle-blower with knowledge of the Islamic State's internal operations, said in a series of tweets last summer that foreign volunteers would primarily be used for martyrdom operations.

This information on the order of battle is important, because U.S. intelligence agencies for nearly two years have worried that Western passport-holders who travel to Syria and now Iraq to fight with the Islamic State and al-Qaida's affiliates could return to their home countries, battle-hardened and undetected.

Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow and counter-terrorism expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told me that while it's true many of the Islamic State volunteers won't survive, those that do will pose a particular threat down the line.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"The overwhelming majority of foreign fighters will not return home to commit terrorist attacks," Joscelyn said. "But some of them will. The real risk is that as the number of foreign fighters increases, the talent pool from which terrorist organizations can draw deepens. This increases the chance that terrorist groups will find highly skilled, intelligent and committed fighters who can be repurposed for plots in their home countries."

The process for recruiting foreign volunteers is very structured. Hisham al-Hashemi, a former Salafist from Iraq who is now a consultant for Iraq's Ministry of Defense and some Western intelligence agencies, told me that Islamic State recruiters will examine whether a recruit has special skills such as computer engineering or whether he is more suited for combat. After the initial vetting, the recruit will be funneled into a specific job.

Al-Hashemi said the process was akin to brainwashing. "They will give them new names and make them swear an oath of allegiance," he said. "For the foreign fighters, they will be sent to a safe house before being deployed as a suicide bomber or fighter, and they won't even know where they are or anyone else near them."

This recruitment process is detailed and well-documented. Captured records from a 2007 U.S. raid on the town of Sinjar by the Islamic State's predecessor, al-Qaida in Iraq, show that the group kept precise documentation on their foreign volunteers. Back then, most of the foreign fighters were fellow Arabs from Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria. There was also concern that enlisting too many foreign fighters would detract from the group's efforts to appeal to local Iraqis.

Discover more

World

Isis executes man for 'sorcery'

09 Feb 08:56 PM
New Zealand|politics

Iraq's foreign minister to make historic visit to NZ

11 Feb 04:03 AM
Cartoons

Copenhagen attacks

15 Feb 04:00 PM

Today that pool of foreign fighters has expanded to regions including Europe, North America, Central Asia and even China. Barzani said his Peshmerga fighters have encountered Chechens, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Turks in initial assaults. Al-Shamary told me his troops have fought Uighers, a Muslim minority group residing in western China.

"Foreigners joining the fight in Syria and Iraq are being deployed to the front-lines for a variety of purposes," said Michael Smith of Kronos Advisory, a counter-terrorism consulting firm that tracks online propaganda from jihadist groups. One, he said, it is to prove that they are not working for a foreign intelligence organization or a rival jihadist group.

But using foreign volunteers in first wave or as suicide bombers is also useful for propaganda. "Sending jihadis from the U.S., Canada, Europe or Chechnya off to meet their maker is much less likely to have the effect of degrading the group's capacity to cultivate goodwill among local populations, which the group wants to govern," Smith said. Also, advertising that recruits from all over the world are willing to die for the caliphate can encourage more volunteers.

It's been working so far. But sooner or later, the pool of potential recruits may notice that the Islamic State's volunteers don't live long enough to enjoy the new Islamic empire.

- Bloomberg

Save

    Share this article

Latest from World

World

California battles its biggest wildfire of the year

04 Jul 04:16 AM
Premium
World

Stateless bride's release after five-month US detention battle

04 Jul 04:00 AM
Airlines

'Toxic management': Air traffic strike causes mass flight cancellations

04 Jul 03:41 AM

There’s more to Hawai‘i than beaches and buffets – here’s how to see it differently

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from World

California battles its biggest wildfire of the year

California battles its biggest wildfire of the year

04 Jul 04:16 AM

The Madre Fire broke out yesterday in San Luis Obispo, a rural county in the US state.

Premium
Stateless bride's release after five-month US detention battle

Stateless bride's release after five-month US detention battle

04 Jul 04:00 AM
'Toxic management': Air traffic strike causes mass flight cancellations

'Toxic management': Air traffic strike causes mass flight cancellations

04 Jul 03:41 AM
Why there's little love for lovebugs in South Korea

Why there's little love for lovebugs in South Korea

04 Jul 03:31 AM
From early mornings to easy living
sponsored

From early mornings to easy living

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP
search by queryly Advanced Search