{"id":10680,"date":"2016-01-14T11:57:08","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T17:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=10680"},"modified":"2016-01-14T11:57:08","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T17:57:08","slug":"isis-vs-al-qaeda-the-war-within-the-jihadist-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/14\/isis-vs-al-qaeda-the-war-within-the-jihadist-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS vs Al-Qaeda: The War Within the Jihadist Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Understanding your enemy and more importantly your enemies weaknesses is key to dismantling their infrastructure and eventually their organization and then plnating them in the ground where they belong.-SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"ISIL\"<\/p>\n

The post-Arab Spring period has seen extraordinary growth in the global jihadist movement. In addition to theIslamic State<\/a> seizing a vast swathe of territory spanning Syria and Iraq and al-Qaeda establishing itself as a potent military force in the Syrian civil war, instability and unfulfilled expectations in numerous countries \u2014 including Egypt, Libya, Mali, Tunisia, and Yemen \u2014 have presented jihadists with unprecedented opportunities.<\/p>\n

But even as the jihadist movement experiences rapid growth, it has also endured unprecedented internal turmoil. The Islamic State\u2019s emergence marks the first time that leadership over the global jihadist movement has been seriously contested. Since that group\u2019s expulsion<\/a> from the al-Qaeda network in February 2014, a fierce competition between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda has defined the militant landscape. The United States has an opportunity to exploit and aggravate fissures within the jihadist community, but to do so successfully, it is essential to understand the differences in the modus operandi<\/em> of these two rival jihadist groups.<\/p>\n

Two Models of Revolutionary Warfare<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though al-Qaeda and the Islamic State share the same ultimate goal \u2014 establishing a global caliphate ruled by an austere version of sharia<\/em> (Islamic law) \u2014 each group maintains a distinct approach to revolutionary warfare. Al-Qaeda has come to favor covert expansion, unacknowledged affiliates, and a relatively quiet organizational strategy designed to carefully build a larger base of support before engaging in open warfare with its foes. By contrast, the Islamic State believes that the time for a broader military confrontation has already arrived, and has loudly disseminated its propaganda to rally as many soldiers as possible to its cause. The group combines shocking violence with an effective propaganda apparatus in an effort to quickly build its base of support.<\/p>\n

The Maoist and focoist schools of revolutionary thought provide a useful framework for understanding these groups\u2019 differing strategies. Al-Qaeda exhibits a revolutionary strategy that is both implicitly and explicitly<\/a> based on the works of Mao Tse-tung, while the Islamic State\u2019s approach is more consonant with the focoist writings of Ernesto \u201cChe\u201d Guevara and R\u00e9gis Debray<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Understanding your enemy and more importantly your enemies weaknesses is key to dismantling their infrastructure and eventually their organization and then plnating them in the ground where they belong.-SF The post-Arab Spring period has seen extraordinary growth in the global jihadist movement. In addition to theIslamic State seizing a vast swathe of territory spanning Syria…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2280,1583,1704,74,2004,475,2378,2450,2413,2726,2933,2990,1894,1898],"tags":[3801,2097,1083,3802,3803,3804,1567],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}