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by qrendel
3676 days ago
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Yes, but al-Qaeda existed for years as just a decentralized terrorist network, whereas the legitimacy and appeal of ISIS partially depends on their establishing a caliphate (i.e. formal government and controlling territory). Otherwise they just go back to being another random terrorist group. Which is both why it's slightly more plausible to "defeat ISIS" using a standard military, but it still wouldn't solve the underlying problems. More likely some other group just takes up the ISIS flag again a few years later. |
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Prior to the post-9/11 period, during which, after a brief spike, the value of al-Qaeda's brand fell, the Taliban in Afghanistan wasn't so much a government sponsor of terror as a government sponsored by al-Qaeda, and a key part of al-Qaeda's appeal and legitimacy. Success at establishing territory with a formal government of the style promoted by the ideology has been as much a part of al-Qaeda's appeal as it is for the Islamic State (and the failure of al-Qaeda central to maintain that is a big part of the reason that al-Qaeda in Iraq, with its greater success at that, broke away and became, through a number of steps, "The Islamic State".)