Comparison Of Al-Qaeda's Goals And Tactics

Goals and Tactics Al-Qaeda has very specific anti-American goals. They want to drive Americans and American influence out of all muslin nations. They also aim to destroy Israel and overthrow pro-western dictatorships in countries around the Middle East. In order to achieve their goal, Al-Qaeda uses a number of different terror tactics including suicide bombing, car bombing, roadside bombing, hijacks, and paramilitary. They focus their attacks on civilian and military targets. They aim to cause extensive amounts of economic, physical, and political damage in hopes that the United States will have to pull out of the Middle East. The leadership in Al-Qaeda recognizes that it does not have the resources to wage war on the United Sates. They rely heavily on their affiliates to attack the United States bases in the Middle East. Figure 1.7 displays the wide reaching effect of Al-Qaeda and it affiliates have across the Middle Eat and North Africa. Al-Qaeda affiliates itself with the other Terror organization that this paper has discussed.
Conclusions: Similarities and Differences.
From Examining the origin, goals, and tactics of Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Boko Haram, ISIS, Al-Qaeda one can draw general similarities and differences between these terrorist organizations.
Obviously all of these organizations are Sunni Muslim extremists. Hamas, Lashkar-e-taiba, and Boko Haram were all formed as the results of a partition of the country. Pakistan was partitioned by the Muslims Palestine and Nigeria which were partitioned by colonial powers. Hamas became an organization because of the creation of the Jewish state of Israel whereas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Boko Haram were formed because of the creation of a Muslim State. Al-Qaeda was formed because of the United States involvement in the Middle East. The Islamic State of Syria and Iraq was an offshoot of
Al-Qaeda. Each of these organizations has similar goals. Their original goals are to reclaim what areas of their respective countries belong to the Muslim population. They dislike the western influenced governments and lifestyle that has taken hold. The over arching or long term goal is to create an Islamic state in all the countries that are have historically been Muslim. How they obtain these goals is also very similar. They aim to instill fear and cause intimidation among those not loyal to them in hopes that they will pledge alliance. They use random attacks on civilian areas with suicide bombs, car bombs, mass shootings and rockets. The major difference in attacks is in the organizations of Lashkar-e-Taiba and ISIS. Lashkar has Islamic scholars argue that taking your own life in the name of Allah is not permitted in the Islamic faith, which is different from all the other organizations discussed in this paper. ISIS uses videos in order to expand their recruitment and propaganda.