Why foreign warriors opt for Islamic State?

As there is much talk about “Koreans who possibly joined the Islamic State (IS),” Sunni Islamist militant group, people’s interest began to grow on the IS’s true nature. Among non-IS, Russia, the U.K. and France are said to have many followers. East Asian countries such as Korea, China and Japan rarely have its members but no one can say that for sure. In October 2014, the Washington Post cited the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), reporting that the IS has some 100 Chinese upholders and a few Japanese members. There was no comment on Koreans.

Those Chinese members are known to be an Islamic minority, not the mainstream Han Chinese. In September 2014, Toshio Tamogami, former chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Force, said, “There are nine Japanese who are participating the IS,” adding that he was informed of this by a high-ranking official from Israel. In October 2014, Japanese police arrested a male college student in his 20s at an airport who was going to Syria to get a job there.

Rumor has it that there are Korean followers for the IS. In December last year, Charles Lister, an analyst at Brookings Doha Center, tweeted a picture of “a Korean IS fighter,” creating considerable disturbance. Fortunately, it turned out that the photo was posted on a now-closed website that upholds Jihadist for a few months but the figure in it was not a Korean nation.

In September last year, CNN aired an interview with Saudi Arabian IS fighter Hamad al-Tamimi (aged 19), who was caught alive in northern Iraq and said that the IS had many nationalities from Korea, Norway, America, Canada and China.” Back then, Korea`s National Intelligence Service (NIS) announced, “We have tried to confirm the fact but, in reality, it is impossible.” Some presumed they might be North Koreans.

The U.S. Department of State estimates that some 18,000 foreigners from 90 different countries are currently upholding the IS and the number is growing by an average of 1,000 every month. Some even see that there would be approximately 200,000 IS fighters with non-Islamic nationalities. They usually go to Syria because of their ideological and political tendency but economic reason is another important driver.

The IS is known to be “the richest terrorist group in history,” which provides monthly salaries and houses to its fighters with oil money from dozens of oil fields. At a conference held in last September in the U.S., Abdullah II of Jordan said that the IS pays as much as 1,000 dollars each month and it is similar to or higher than what a middle-income family in Jordan is paid.

Unlike Al-Qaeda, the IS freely utilizes social network services (SNS) such as Facebook, YouTube and Tweet to recruit its followers and disseminate its ideas, Islamic doctrine and fighting tactics. Its fighters go online and exchange questions and answers on the SNS in real time. When the identity of anyone online is confirmed, the group is known to make an immediate one-on-one contact through mobile messenger application.

The biggest problem is that those IS newcomers usually become “anti-Western terrorists” and in many cases are involved in terror attacks. Amedy Coulibaly, French-born hostage-taker at a grocery store in Paris, was said to have voluntarily worked for the IS and been financially supported by the group. Experts analyze that IS fighters are following the process of “Decide → Travel → Train & Fight → Return → Plot.” Jeremy Shapiro, a fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, said that about half of 2,000-3,000 American and European IS fighters are believed to return to their home countries.