Islamic State is becoming al Qaeda as strategies shift
Islamic State is a taking a leaf out of al Qaeda's playbook. According to U.S. and European counterterrorism officials, the terror group is changing its ways, using lieutenants to orchestrate more coordinate and bigger plots.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials believe that the recent attack in Paris is the next best testament of the group's changing ways. Intelligence and intercepted communications suggest local leaders assigned given directives carried out the attacks while the plots came from Islamic State leaders in Syria and Iraq.
While the Islamic State remains true to their goal of building a caliphate in Iraq and Syria along with campaigns against the West, the Paris attacks point out that the group is well beyond its initial strategy of orchestrating things from a distance. Following the steps of al Qaeda may mean more people involved and more similar tactics. It is easier to detect their plots, according to officials. Nonetheless, there are those who cautioned that even with the operational changes, the Islamic State follows a secretive, flexible and extremely care operational method that makes them effectively dangerous.
Even so, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry believes that the U.S. can neutralise the group faster than it did al Qaeda.
"We began our fight against al Qaeda in 2001 and it took us quite a few years before we were able to eliminate Osama bin Laden and the top leadership and neutralise them as an effective force. We hope to do Daesh much faster than that and we think we have an ability to do that," Kerry said in a conference.
"President Obama has already ordered increased efforts. He has been doing that before the Paris attacks, over the course of the last months -- increased efforts, and we are seeing the results of those in ways," he added. Officials are continuously looking into the matter as more threat ensues including one for New York although authorities downplayed the matter saying there is nothing new about the threat.
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