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The French Foreign Legion is a corps of the French Army that consists of several specialties: infantry, cavalry, engineers, airborne troops. It was created in 1831 to allow foreign nationals into the French Army. It formed part of the Armée d’Afrique, the French Army's units associated with France's colonial project in Northern Africa, until the end of the Algerian war in 1962.
Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians including recruited children, use ambushes, sabotage, terrorism, raids, petty warfare or hit-and-run tactics in a rebellion, in a violent conflict, in a war or in a civil war to fight against regular military, police or rival insurgent forces.
The International Brigades were military units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existed for two years, from 1936 until 1938. It is estimated that during the entire war, between 40,000 and 59,000 members served in the International Brigades, including some 10,000 who died in combat. Beyond the Spanish Civil War, "International Brigades" is also sometimes used interchangeably with the term foreign legion in reference to military units comprising foreigners who volunteer to fight in the military of another state, often in times of war.
Foreign Legion most often refers to:
The Bosnian War attracted large numbers of foreign fighters and mercenaries from various countries. Volunteers came to fight for a variety of reasons including religious or ethnic loyalties, but mostly for money. Generally, Bosniaks received support from Muslim countries, Serbs from Eastern Orthodox countries, and Croats from Catholic countries. The numbers, activities and significance of the foreign fighters were often misrepresented. However, none of these groups constituted more than five percent of any of the respective armies' total manpower strength.
The international response to the Spanish Civil War included many non-Spaniards participating in combat and advisory positions. The governments of Italy, Germany and, to a lesser extent, Portugal contributed money, munitions, manpower and support to the Nationalist forces, led by Francisco Franco. Some nations that declared neutrality favored the nationalists indirectly. The governments of the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, France and Mexico, aided the Republicans, also called Loyalists, of the Second Spanish Republic. The aid came even after all the European powers had signed a Non-Intervention Agreement in 1936. Although individual sympathy for the plight of the Spanish Republic was widespread in the liberal democracies, pacifism and the fear of a second world war prevented them from selling or giving arms. However, Nationalist pleas were answered within days by Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and António de Oliveira Salazar. Tens of thousands of individual foreign volunteers travelled to Spain to fight, the majority for the Republican side.
The Mujahideen in Chechnya were foreign Islamist Mujahideen volunteers that fought in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus.
Foreign fighters have fought on all four sides of the Syrian Civil War, as well both sides of the War in Iraq. In addition to Sunni foreign fighters, Shia fighters from several countries have joined pro-government militias in Syria, leftist militants have joined Kurdish forces, and other foreign fighters have joined jihadist organizations and private military contractors recruit globally. Estimates of the total number of foreign Sunnis who have fought for the Syrian rebels over the course of the conflict range from 5,000 to over 10,000, while foreign Shia fighters numbered around 10,000 or less in 2013 rising to between 15,000 and 25,000 in 2017.
Russian separatist forces in Ukraine, primarily the People's Militias of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), were pro-Russian paramilitaries in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. They were under the overall control of the Russian Federation, and were also referred to as Russian proxy forces. They were active during the war in Donbas (2014–2022), the first stage of the Russo-Ukrainian War. They then supported the Russian Armed Forces against the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the 2022 Russian invasion. In September 2022, Russia annexed the DPR and LPR, and began integrating the paramilitaries into its armed forces. They are designated as terrorist groups by the government of Ukraine.
The Azov Assault Brigade is a formation of the National Guard of Ukraine formerly based in Mariupol, in the coastal region of the Sea of Azov, from which it derives its name. It was founded in May 2014 as the Azov Battalion, a self-funded volunteer militia under the command of Andriy Biletsky, to fight Russian-backed forces in the Donbas War. It was formally incorporated into the National Guard on 11 November 2014, and redesignated Special Operations Detachment "Azov", also known as the Azov Regiment. In February 2023, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that Azov was to be expanded as a brigade of the new Offensive Guard.
The Prizrak Brigade (Russian: Бригада «Призрак», romanized: Brigada "Prizrak", lit. 'Ghost Brigade'), founded by Aleksey Mozgovoy, is an infantry unit of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), one of the self-proclaimed breakaway states located in the Donbas. It has been officially designated Prizrak Mechanized Brigade and 4th Territorial Defense Brigade (Alchevsk). According to Amnesty International, the unit is one of the separatist units known for brutal treatment and torture of prisoners of war.
The International Freedom Battalion, commonly abbreviated as IFB or EÖT, is a revolutionary socialist armed group consisting of leftist foreign fighters fighting for the People's Defense Units in the Syrian Civil War in support of the Rojava Revolution and against the Turkish Armed Forces, the Syrian National Army, and Islamic State. The formation of the IFB was announced in June 2015 in Ras al-Ayn. Inspiration for the group came from the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. The political ideologies of the fighters include anarchism, Marxism–Leninism, Hoxhaism, Maoism, and anarcho-communism.
Ukrainian volunteer battalions were militias and paramilitary groups mobilized as a response to the perceived state of weakness and unwillingness of the regular Armed Forces to counter rising separatism in spring 2014. They trace their origins to the "Maidan Self-Defense" militias formed during the Euromaidan in 2013. The earliest of these volunteer units were later formalized into military, special police and paramilitary formations in a response to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Most of the formations were formed or placed under command of the Ministry of Internal Affairs — as "Special Tasks Patrol Police" — and Ministry of Defence — as "Territorial defence battalions". A minority of battalions were independent of state control.
The Georgian National Legion or Georgian Legion is a military unit formed by mostly ethnic Georgian volunteers fighting on the side of Ukraine in the war in Donbas and the Russo-Ukrainian War. The unit was organized in 2014, and in 2016 it was made part of the Ukrainian Army, under the 25th Mechanized Infantry Battalion "Kyiv Rus".
The combatants of the war in Donbas included foreign and domestic forces.
The International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine, or the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, is a military unit of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine composed of foreign volunteers. It was created on 27 February 2022 by the Ukrainian government at the request of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fight against the Russian invasion of the country.
The Russo-Ukrainian War has seen foreign volunteers participate on both sides of the conflict. Most foreign fighters joined the conflict during one of two waves. The first wave happened from 2014 to 2019 during the War in the Donbas and consisted of approximately 17,241 foreign fighters. The second wave is considered by researchers to have been much larger and began in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
References
- ↑ Asal, Victor; Malet, David (2021). "Nobody More Terrible than the Desperate: Conflict Conditions and Rebel Demand for Foreign Fighters". Studies in Conflict & Terrorism: 1–19. doi:10.1080/1057610X.2021.1961715.
- ↑ Cragin, R. Kim (2017). "The Challenge of Foreign Fighter Returnees". Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. 33 (3): 292–312. doi:10.1177/1043986217697872.
- ↑ Malet, David (2015). "Foreign Fighter Mobilization and Persistence in a Global Context". Terrorism and Political Violence. 27 (3): 454–473. doi:10.1080/09546553.2015.1032151.
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