ISIS and al Qaeda Race to the Bottom
The Next Attacks
As they watched their vaunted Islamic State (also known as ISIS) lose ground to Kurdish advances over the past month, ISIS fanboys had fewer reasons to cheer or to make their way to Syria and Iraq. But then things started to change. First, in early November, a Russian airliner fell from the sky over Sinai courtesy of an ISIS bomb. Only a few days later, a twin suicide bombing rocked Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then, ISIS’ Paris attacks, an unprecedented multitarget operation, captured the media cycle for days. These events reinvigorated ISIS’ global media machine and sent a clear message to jihadists around the world: “Hurry up!”
In the days since, ISIS terrorists, caught up in a French and Belgian sweep, again detonated suicide belts in Paris. Meanwhile, terrorists loyal not to ISIS but to al Qaeda leader Aymen al-Zawahiri and opaquely connected to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) slaughtered several people at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali. And this past Sunday came the announcement of Boko Haram detonating suicide bombs in Cameroon. Boko Haram was once allegedly connected to AQIM but has since pledged loyalty to ISIS. In short, two rivals, al Qaeda and ISIS, have launched a dangerous new era of terrorist competition, which will only lead to further waves of deadly violence.
CRUEL COMPETITION
Immediately after al Qaeda and ISIS broke up in 2013, the competition between them seemed like a positive development. Their split had been nearly ten years in the making, but things reached
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