Revisiting the Crime -Terror Nexus: The Unusual Path of “Tunisian Foreign Fighters Returnees”

The crime-terror nexus has been extensively studied in the past decades through the prism of either terrorist groups linking with criminal ones for financial or logistical purposes, or criminal offenders being recruited by terrorist groups. While there was a widespread assumption that, once ideologically radicalized, foreign fighters of the Islamic State (IS) could become a domestic security threat in case they return to their home countries, little attention has been paid to the alternative path, i.e former IS fighters relapsing into criminal activities and becoming criminal offenders. The paper thus focuses on this “unusual path”, building on extensive interviews conducted in Tunisia with former fighters, lawyers and officials. It argues that the largest share of Tunisian returnees from IS, rather than relapsing into Jihadism, appear to relapse into drug, alcohol and criminal activities. These findings show that the methods of mass recruitment used by IS, the quality of religious indoctrination in IS camps, and the lack of valuable reintegration strategies by the Tunisian state – that is, the absence of reconciliation policies, unlike the cases of Algeria and Morocco – highly exposes the IS returnees to (re)become criminal offenders.