True, America has not been struck since 2001, but European capitals have been bombed. A number of plots have been averted on both sides of the Atlantic. Al Qaeda and its nebula of like-minded groups still pose the most direct threat to the security of Western countries, and of many others besides.

[Al Qaeda] has built on decades of Middle Eastern terrorism... [One] of the objectives of the September 11th attacks was to provoke the Americans into invading Muslim lands. But if al Qaeda intended to trap America in Afghanistan, its plan went badly awry, at least initially. The Taliban fell quickly in 2001 and al Qaeda’s followers were forced into hiding.

A hubristic America, however, then walked into a trap of its own making by invading Iraq in 2003. It got rid of a dangerous dictator but gave the jihadists a popular cause against American occupiers in the Muslim heartland. For a while the jihadists thought they could carve out a base in Iraq from which to destabilise the region. That danger may now have been averted. Helped by al Qaeda’s excesses, a bloodied America seems to be fighting its way out of the worst of the troubles it created for itself. [Thus] terrorism experts are now debating whether al Qaeda is starting to burn itself out.

Excerpted from an article in ‘The Economist’