What’s Al-Qaeda’s Next Move?

Tore Refslund Hamming, War On The Rocks: With Islamic State in Decline, What’s Al-Qaeda’s Next Move?

In the past five years, only one attack in a Western country — the Kouachi brothers’ attack against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 — can be connected to al-Qaeda. Why did the once infamous and feared group halt its terror campaign in the West? Part of the explanation is that al-Qaeda has indeed suffered from targeted killings of senior operatives, making it harder for the group to plan and execute international attacks, and that regional events in the Middle East have enhanced the attractiveness of a local focus as opposed to conducting attacks in the West. Equally important to understand al-Qaeda’s changing priorities, however, is the rise of the Islamic State as a competing jihadi outfit and its ensuing terror campaign in the West. Intra-jihadi dynamics affect rival jihadi groups’ priorities for attacks. I outlined this argument in a recent article, Jihadi Competition and Political Preferences, which contends that intra-jihadi competition has played an important role in the changing enemy hierarchies of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State since 2014. Now, with the decline of the Islamic State, will al-Qaeda once again focus on launching attacks in (and not just against) the West?

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WNU Editor: The problem that Al-Qaeda has is that while it continues to proclaim to be the leader of global jihad, it does not have anything to show for it. Unless they pull-off a major terror attack in the forseeable future, they will continue to be eclipsed by more radical groups, and their decline will continue.