Transnational Waves of Jihadism Project (TWP) is a unique database of foreign fighters joining the ranks of jihadist groups since the Afghan War of the 1980s. It is based on open sources and contains biographical and demographical information about jihadist foreign fighters who have participated in civil wars from many different parts of the world. In its pilot version, it covers a sample of 2,200 such fighters. TWP has several distinctive characteristics. First, it has an innovative aspect combining political science and computer science to identify and visualize patterns of jihadist mobilization. Next, it adopts a long-term perspective covering more than three decades of transnational jihadist mobilization. Finally, it enables a series of comparisons among different groups of jihadist foreign fighters (e.g., those from Muslim-majority versus Western countries, those fighting in Syria versus fought in previous battlefields, those joining the self-declared Islamic State versus other groups).
