Competitive Jihad: Global Jihad vs ISIS

The rise of the Islamic State has brought on major competition to the members of Global Jihad. Prior to the introduction of ISIS on the world stage the closet and wannabe jihadists of the world were attracted to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and their affiliates such as Al Shabaab in Somalia.

ISIS has stepped onto the world stage with a guerilla marketing campaign aimed at squashing their rivals and stealing all of their customers and employees. While AQ and friends have used a strategy of slowly weakening the west in order to meet their end goal of creating an Islamic State, ISIS has cut straight to the chase by enforcing strict sharia in the areas they control and declaring an Islamic State and Caliphate right away in Syria and Iraq.

Osama Bin Laden had a plan and that plan was to make the west spend money and engage in multiple fronts until they were bled financially and could no longer fight. Once they reached this stage Al Qaeda would declare their Caliphate. The documents found during the Bin Laden Raid referred to as the "Abbottabad Docs" showed how Bin Laden would advise his commanders and leaders in different areas to not engage the west directly or not to do anything that would bring a full attack from the US and her allies. He would go on to explain that they did not have the man power or resources in place yet to get into an overt war with the US so he would advise them to continue recruiting and working with the locals to assure that they are on their side.


ISIS has again taken the opposite approach. They have gone into direct conflict with multiple nations now by beheading their citizens and threatening to launch attacks against the west. They also did not use the Bin Laden policy of making sure the locals are on your side. Instead they use fear and intimidation by executing locals and raping and enslaving their wives and daughters. These tactics will be the cause of their eventual demise.


The good news for the west and civilized people all over the world is that this competition has caused strife among the jihadist ranks. Beyond that it has also caused all out war between many of these groups and they have used a lot of their resources to combat each other. Meanwhile as they fight each other the US coalition and their allies on the ground are striking ISIS & AQ killing over a thousand of their terrorists and pushing them back from territory that they occupied in Syria and Iraq.