Why Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and Islamic State are Trying to One-up Each Other

Justine Miller

Since the end of October, terrorist attacks around the world have increased in deadliness and frequency. In the one week period of Nov. 13 to Nov. 20 alone, suicide bombers and mass shooters killed 130 people across Paris, an explosion at a fruit market in Yola, Nigeria killed 32 and wounded 80, and attackers killed 22 civilians and took 170 hostages at the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali.

Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and Islamic State, also known as Daesh or ISIS, are just three of the terrorist groups that have claimed responsibility for various attacks over the last month. Each organization has its own respective ideology, goals and interpretation of Islam.

“It’s just demonstrating that you are a bigger or a more violent group,” said Willie Session, former Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who specialized in counterterrorism for 22 years, in a telephone interview. “They’re supposed to be carrying out these attacks to advance their cause but that’s an old paradigm. So what you see is that an act committed by ISIS is followed by something committed by Boko Haram and then you see something in Mali by al-Qaeda.”

The recent rapid execution of deadly attacks suggests that some terrorism organizations may be focused more on one-upping each other than on advancing their beliefs but experts differ over why this competition exists.

In 2014, the total number of deaths due to terrorism rose by 80 percent compared to the year before, according to the Global Terrorism Index, a report released by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and Islamic State have caused more than 40 percent of the 32,685 terrorist-related killings during the year, the report said.

“Absolutely some groups commit the attack to compete because they want to create a more prominent presence,” said Alon Ben-Meir, senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, in a telephone interview.

Others take the groups’ perceived desire for the spotlight one step further.

“There’s a phenomenon called outbidding where groups use violence as a communication strategy to outbid rival groups,” said Max Abrams in a telephone interview. He is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University who researches the motives and consequences of terrorism. “Basically, it’s a form of marketing for the organization. The more violence perpetrated, the more it signals organizational capability so groups try to use violence in order to show that their organization is stronger and more capable than rival groups with the hope that it will attract more recruits because there’s a basic assumption that as bin Laden said, people gravitate to the stronger horse.”

Attracting potential new members is a key element echoed by many researchers.

“The coin of their realm is recruiting,” said Michael Balboni, former New York State Senator and first Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee after 9–11, in a telephone interview. “They’ve got to get people to join them so the more they can instill fear in people, that’s a big deal. The more they can prove their effectiveness, their brand, that’s a useful tool in recruiting.”

Financial gains may also contribute to the competition between terrorism groups.

“The fact is that they are all separatist entities often driven by very local motivations,” said Ryan Cummings, chief analyst for crisis management company Red24, from Cape Town by email. He added, “When splits occur, factions will vie for dominance with the use of violence, often as a litmus test. But perpetrating acts of spectacular violence, particularly among smaller groups, is a salient way of attracting the attention of trans-nationalist terrorist organizations and their donors who may in turn provide groups with patronage should they be seen as being a viable conduit of the former’s agenda.”

Not all researchers said they believed that the competitiveness of these groups is the same from organization to organization, however.

“Yes, there is outbidding, but AQ [al-Qaeda] has not followed ISIS in levels of barbarity,” said Martha Crenshaw, senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, in an email.

The severity of measures taken to one-up each other, however, is not the only factor of competition that differs between groups. Some suggested that Boko Haram’s motives for competition are unique because they operate only in Western Africa and have pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

“Boko Haram is competitive in that it protects its turf and makes sure that al-Qaeda and Daesh aren’t going to take over any territory,” said John Voll, Professor Emeritus of Islamic History at Georgetown University and author of the recent article, Boko Haram: Religion and Violence in the 21st Century, in a telephone interview. He added, ”I think it’s a safe competitiveness. I think that it contrasts the competitiveness between Daesh and al-Qaeda. That’s a deadly one. They are killing each other.”