The law and politics of funding armed groups in Syria: how states (fail to) counter terrorism

Abstract

This article examines the political and legal controversies around a counterterrorism programme conducted by the Dutch government to support the so-called moderate groups in Syria between 2015 and 2018. The controversies centred around the question how the Dutch government was able to define and support armed moderate groups in Syria and distinguish them from terrorist organizations. The objective of the article is to take up this question and unpack how the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs constructed and justified their definition of material support for moderate groups deployed in this programme, against existing definitions of terrorism funding and terrorist groups embedded in European counterterrorism financing regulations. Connecting to the debates around materiality in both International Relations and International Law, this article follows the material-semiotic practices through which definitions of terrorism come into being. The empirical analysis draws on interviews with legal professionals, policy documents and court transcripts, and provides a detailed overview of how multiple and even conflicting definitions of terrorism and terrorism financing are constructed by the Dutch state. Taking this interdisciplinary approach to materiality and based on the empirical analysis, I propose that this controversy on defining terrorism and terrorism financing reflects a Eurocentric assumption about the knowledge and responsibilities of the Western state in the War on Terror. While the empirics are grounded in the Dutch context, my analysis is relevant for multiple European countries who engaged in similar operations between 2015 and 2018, as well as for future counterterrorism efforts targeting terrorist groups.