These days, the foreign fighters phenomenon is omnipresent on the agenda of police officers, prosecutors, de-radicalisation experts, researchers, policy makers, municipalities, governments, international organisations and think and do tanks. The problem is too complex and multi-faceted to analyse in just a few pages, so the following commentary, based on a speech presented to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy on 16 March 2015, should merely be seen as a quick and elementary snap-shot, allowing people with little time to swiftly absorb some basic features of the current problem.

This commentary will address four points: 1) General information on the scale of the phenomenon; 2) Root causes; 3) Implications for countries/societies of origin and 4) Responses. The focus will be on the root causes – since we need to understand the phenomenon first – and the responses – because we are all looking for solutions here.