By Thomas Joscelyn, FDD's Long War Journal: “Underscoring the so-called caliphate’s growth outside of Iraq and Syria, the move targets ISIS affiliates in Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines, Somalia, Tunisia and West Africa.”
On January 19, the Pentagon released its new National Defense Strategy, which prioritizes "inter-state strategic competition" from China and Russia over "terrorism." In many ways, the strategy makes sense. However, the threat from ISIS and al Qaeda has not been eliminated. The jihadists are fighting around the globe, everywhere from West Africa to Southeast Asia.
By Bruce Hoffman, The Cipher Brief: “So the assessment is right to say that al-Qaida is systematically building local influences and local capabilities, but that’s only a dimension of al-Qaida’s overall strategy. In my view, as the periphery becomes stronger, so does the center—and conforms to al-Qaida leader Ayman al Zawahiri’s plan.”
- “Reading the part of the written statement that focused on al-Qaida, there seems to be an assumption about the combined staying power of al-Qaida’s five affiliates that this is some natural, evolutionary process whereby these five affiliates somehow individually have become magically stronger on their own.”
- “This is not a coincidence. Rather, it is part of an overall strategic plan and vision that al-Qaida has been implementing, especially as ISIS’s fortunes decline.”
- “I would argue that al-Qaida today is quite consciously letting ISIS take the heat, absorb all of our attention, and preoccupy our counterterrorism efforts… Hand in glove with that, al-Qaida is consciously portraying itself as “moderate extremist” in contrast to the unrestrained ISIS, and therefore as a more palatable or acceptable alternative to ISIS.”
- “The main threat that we still fail to recognize is that al-Qaida itself has a strategy, and it is by no means clear that we necessarily have one to counter it.”