If Islamic State did bring down a packed passenger jet over the Sinai desert, as many US and UK officials believe is a “significant possibility”, then the act would mark a significant escalation of the group’s capabilities and strategic aims, but also underline its continuing regional – rather than global – focus.
One of the key differences between Isis and al-Qaida is that the former has focused its energies almost exclusively on seizing and holding territory. Al-Qaida, the veteran terrorist organisation from which Isis broke away, still, theoretically at least, prioritises spectacular strikes on targets in the west.
Al-Qaida has a long track record of targeting planes. This goes back to 1995 and a plot to bring down half a dozen airliners over the Pacific. Then came the 9/11 attacks, a 2002 attempt to bring down an Israeli airliner with a surface to air missile, a hugely ambitious plot in 2006 targeting transatlantic planes, and several more recent attempts by the Yemen-based affiliate, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, to strike at western air traffic.
Isis has avoided such operations. One reason is that social media and digital technologies mean it no longer needs a spectacular attack killing large numbers of westerners to gain publicity, as was the case when professional news editors or repressive states decided what was broadcast and what was not.
A video of an execution is easily disseminated and provokes shock, horror – and a political reaction – across the globe with only a fraction of the resources of a bigger, mass-casualty strike in the west. A small team of lightly armed gunmen at a hotel or museum in a city somewhere on the Mediterranean shoreline and patronised by Europeans will also gain major publicity.
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