numbers of fanatics. It feeds on the dysfunctions of the Muslim world, the sense (real and imagined) of humiliation at the hands of the West, and easy access to technologies of violence. And yet, does it rank as a threat on the order of Germany’s drive for world domination in the first half of the twentieth century? Or Soviet expansionism in the second half? Or Mao’s efforts to foment war and revolution across the Third World in the 1950s and 1960s? These were all challenges backed by the power and purpose of major countries, often with serious allies, and by an ideology that was seen as a plausible alternative to liberal democracy. By comparison, consider the jihadist threat. Before 9/11, when groups like Al Qaeda operated under the radar, governments treated them as minor annoyances, and they roamed freely, built some strength, and hit symbolic, often military targets, killing Americans and other foreigners. Even so, the damage was fairly limited. Since 2001, governments everywhere have been aggressive in busting terrorists’ networks, following their money, and tracking their recruits—with almost immediate results. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, the government captured both the chief and the military leader of Jemaah Islamiah, the country’s deadliest jihadist group and the one that carried out the Bali bombings in 2002. With American help, the Filipino army battered the Qaeda-style terrorist outfit Abu Sayyaf. The group’s leader was killed by Filipino troops in January 2007, and its membership has declined from as many as two thousand guerrillas six years ago to a few hundred today. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia—Al Qaeda’s original bases and targets of attack—terrorist cells have been rounded up, and those still at large have been unable to launch any new attacks in six years. Finance ministries—especially the U.S. Department of the Treasury—have made life far more difficult for terrorists. Global organizations cannot thrive without being able to move money around, and so the more terrorists’ funds are tracked and targeted, the more they have to resort to small-scale and hastily improvised operations. This struggle, between governments and terrorists, will persist, but it is the former who have the upper hand.
In Iraq, where terrorist attacks have declined, a complication that is revealing has weakened Al Qaeda. In its original fatwas and other statements, Al Qaeda made no mention of Shiites, condemning only the “Crusaders” and “Jews.” But Iraq changed things. Searching for ways to attract Sunni support, Al Qaeda morphed into an anti-Shiite group, espousing a purist Sunni worldview. The late Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, bore a fierce hatred for Shiites derived from his Wahhabi-style puritanism. In a February 2004 letter to Osama bin Laden, he claimed, “The danger from the Shia . . . is greater . . . than the Americans. . . . [T]he only solution is for us to strike the religious, military, and other cadres among the Shia with blow after blow until they bend to the Sunnis.” If there ever was a debate between him and bin Laden, Zarqawi won. As a result, a movement that had hoped to rally the entire Muslim world to jihad against the West was dragged into a dirty internal war within Islam.
The split between Sunnis and Shiites is only one of the divisions within the Islamic world. Within that universe are Shiites and Sunnis, Persians and Arabs, Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners, and, importantly, moderates and radicals. Just as the diversity within the communist world ultimately made it less threatening, so do the many varieties of Islam undermine its ability to coalesce into a single, monolithic foe. Some Western leaders speak of a single worldwide Islamist movement—absurdly lumping together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon, and Sunni jihadists in Egypt. In fact, a shrewd strategist would emphasize that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies, and friends. That would rob them of their