Jihadisation of Insurgencies: A Corollary of Civil Wars

Abstract

Large scale destruction and surfeit chaos that accompany civil wars have provided a platform to several insurgencies operating in the setting to compete in a struggle for increased power and territorial occupation against their depraved regimes and each other. It is during this power struggle that several insurgencies make a jump from a purely nationalistic agenda of the civil war to a larger religious goal by complying with jihadist organisations thriving in the region. Although the topic of civil war and religious radicalisation has been on the international agenda as well as the academic community for many years now, proselytizing and hijacking of national agenda of insurgencies by religious extremists is also of growing concern. Thus, this research will seek to find if jihadisation of insurgencies is a direct consequence of civil wars by using the Afghanistan and the Syrian Civil wars as case studies. The approach adopted here is to dwell into the factors behind the adoption of jihadist ideologies by insurgencies in war zones. These factors would then be applied to both the case studies. The paper will incorporate insights from previous qualitative studies conducted on geo-referenced terror, the role of religion, and ideologies in civil wars in the aforementioned countries to arrive at the...