Understanding Jihadist Terrorist Networks: Differences and Commonalities in the Network Structure of Al-Qaida and the Islamic State

Jihadist terrorist networks are a crucial manifestation of political violence and continue to be a key challenge to peace in many parts of the world. Al-Qaida and the Islamic State are among the networks constituting the greatest tests for countering political violence. To successfully address political violence associated with Al-Qaida and the Islamic State, it is key to analyze and compare their organizational structures. However, there has been little comparative research on similarities and differences in their network structures. This article conducts a comparative social network analysis of Al-Qaida and the Islamic State using a novel dataset generated from the Security Council ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida sanctions list. The findings underline three key arguments. First, terrorist networks differ remarkably in their organizational structure depending on the stage of their life cycles. We find that established terrorist networks like Al-Qaida tend to organize themselves in an operational security structure while younger terrorist networks such as the Islamic State display a scale-free structure. Second, brokers that connect different terrorist networks play an important role in understanding network growth and structure. Such brokers might also lead to escalation between networks as they compete for them. Third, measures to counter terrorist political violence need to take the different life cycle stages of Jihadist terrorist networks into account to disrupt these networks preventively and effectively. Such measures also need to consider relevant brokers between different networks.