3 Lessons from London

The name--al-Qaeda, the base--hasn't made sense in years, at least not since al-Qaeda training camps were incinerated in the post-9/11 strikes on Afghanistan. But jihadism is an especially centrifugal force, flinging adherents across borders until what we still notionally call al-Qaeda exists everywhere and nowhere, more an impulse than an organization. Men and boys with small lives and big hopes for the afterlife visit jihadist websites, meet like-minded rejects at the local mosque, pay a visit to one of the overseas imams known for radical preaching and then--well, no one can say for sure. Some return home--to Lodi, Calif.; to Casablanca; to London--each the site of recently captured jihadist suspects. Others go to Iraq to join the insurgency. Many are captured and killed; others resolve to sleep for a few years before striking. And so al-Qaeda seems--still--both fearsome and diaphanous.

Those who track jihadists can't tell you where or when the next strike will come, not least because the West's war on terrorism has deprived al-Qaeda's "leaders"--even Osama bin Laden (especially Osama bin Laden)--of the ability to move or communicate effectively. U.S. intelligence officials say 75% of al-Qaeda's top bosses have been killed or captured. Today, says French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard, "the most militant groups are forming on their own initiative, on the margins of the movement ... They certainly aren't going to wait for the fatwas permitting attacks on civilians. They figure the previous ones are all they need." It's a free-for-all.

After London, however--as after Madrid before it and Casablanca before that and Riyadh and Bali--we do know a bit more about the al-Qaeda movement's capabilities and priorities. A clear picture of who carried out the attacks may take days to come into focus. But the location, targets and timing of the 7/7 bombings do, to differing degrees, provide lessons about the nature of the threat posed by al-Qaeda today--and how it's changing. Here are three of the big ones:

Lesson #1

EUROPE IS BURNING

The attacks on 7/7 were a reminder that Europe is, more than ever, a center of the threat. That's partly because European nations like Britain have a tradition of welcoming immigrants from North Africa and Pakistan. The children of those immigrants--many of them jobless and ghettoized in insular suburban tracts or city centers--often feel alienated from the ambient permissiveness of London or Paris. Alienated and bored: Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc., wrote in the New York Times last week that the unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-old Muslim men in Britain is 22%. He cited a British government report leaked to the Sunday Times in London last year that estimates between 10,000 and 15,000 British Muslims support al-Qaeda and similar groups.