For years now, the global jihadist movement centered in the Middle East has been split into two broad factions, represented by the al-Qaeda franchise on the one hand, and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) on the other. The latter is rooted, in part, in the Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group founded by the Jordanian Bedouin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which was once a rival of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. In the original vision of bin Laden and his lieutenant, the Egyptian cleric Ayman al-Zawahiri, sensational terror events, including those targeting civilians (as in the East Africa embassy bombings of 1998 or the 9/11 attacks), would provoke a general confrontation between the...
↧