Strategy Page reports that Sunni Arabs are getting steadily more disenchanted with al Qaeda: “In a war of symbols, blowing up Moslem women and children is not a winning tactic.” Islamist terrorism remains endemic in Iraq, of course, where last year slightly more than 30 percent of all such attacks in the world took place - well behind India, believe it or not, where 45 percent of the attacks occurred.

But 2004 was a bad year for us good guys.

2004 marked the highest number of significant incidents of terrorism since the intelligence community started keeping statistics in 1968. (An incident is counted as significant if an attack results in the death, injury or kidnapping of one or more persons or property damage in excess of $10,000). Attacks jumped from 175 in 2003 to 651 in 2004. This surpasses the previous high of 273 significant attacks in 1985.

The bad news kept on coming. One thousand nine hundred and seven (1907) people died in international terrorist attacks last year. This marks the second highest death toll since 1968; falling short of the infamous record of 2001.

To which the Washington Post adds,

The data provided to the congressional aides also showed terrorist attacks doubling over the previous year in Afghanistan, to 27 significant incidents, and in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, where attacks rose to about 45, from 19 the year before. Also occurring last year were such deadly attacks as the seizure of a school in Beslan, Russia, by Chechen militants that resulted in at least 330 dead, and the Madrid train bombings that left nearly 200 dead.

So well more than one-fourth of those killed in Islamist terrorism died in two spectacular attacks. That means that the rest of the attacks, though numerically greater, were relatively less deadly, an observation that is borne out by experience in Iraq, according to recent statements by Joint Chiefs of Staf Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers.

Not all is rosy for the terrorists, either. Bill Roggio reports of a”recently intercepted letter from one “Abu Asim al-Yemeni al-Qusaymi, a purported representative of Al-Qaida’s Committee in Iraq, … believed to be addressed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” al Qaeda’s head in Iraq. Among others things the letter (if authentic) makes this outrageous claim:

The entire Islamic nation is waiting to have an Islamic state implementing the rules of Allah, and are waiting for those men who are going to protect their dignity that are being abused everyday.

Well, I already covered that fiction so I won’t belabor it. What the letter goes on to say is a real peek inside the Islamists fighting in Iraq. Bill continues,

The fighters believe they are being sacrificed unnecessarily, and have been ordered to do so by Zarqawi himself, and are also complaining of their treatment by their own leaders. …

al-Qusaymi then longs for the good old days of Fallujah, where Zarqawi was free to openly visit the troops and care for their needs. It is unclear if the “brothers that were tortured and jailed” he is referring to are jailed by local police, tribes or al Qaeda commanders, but either way, Zarqawi no longer has the freedom of movement to obtain their freedom. This is a sore spot with al-Qusaymi and likely with the rest of the rank and file, and demonstrates that Fallujah was an important sanctuary for al Qaeda:

Who is to blame, should it be the oppressor or the oppressed? We have brothers that were tortured and jailed. They are harmless and nobody is meeting with them or asks about them. It is unlike the case in Fallujah where you used to come and visit us, and we enjoyed your company. The situation has changed dramatically and that is not acceptable to Allah.

When al Qaeda’s leaders start beating each other up with what they think Allah wants it can’t bode well for their unity. There is also this tidbit from the letter in which al-Qusaymi complains about the al Qaeda in Iraq’s small-unit leaders:

We have commanders that are not capable of being good leaders. We are not accusing them without reason but we have tested them and found them incapable.

The kind of tactical incapability al-Qusaymi refers to may explain some recent terrorist attacks that baffled American officers:

Strategists who keep close tabs on the war in Iraq are scratching their heads over a sudden shift to large-scale attacks on American bases by the insurgents who heretofore have primarily bedeviled U.S. forces with their roadside bombs and hit-and-run attacks.

In one event 100 terrorists struck the Marine base at Husaybah, attempting to blow a hole in the perimter with a fire truck packed with explosives.

Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Butler shook himself from the rubble of a suicide truck bombing. He staggered to the ledge of his three-story guard tower and stared into a cloud of white smoke. Butler, 21, of Altoona, Pa., was temporarily deafened by the blast, but he recalled what came next with cinematic clarity. The white smoke parted to reveal a clean red fire engine. It sped past a mural bidding travelers “Goodbye From Free Iraq” and hurtled directly toward Butler, who shot at the fire engine until it exploded about 40 yards away from him.

After this the enemy tried to storm the base but were repelled after suffering 34 killed and wounded. This attack came not long after 70-80 terrorists launched a fairly conventional attack againt Abu Ghraib prison where they lost 50. (Some American officers think this attack was the work of Baathist dead enders, not al Qaeda.) At any rate, such attacks are bloodlettings for the insurgents.

American commanders long ago recognized the ability of the terrorist leaders to adapt quickly to changing conditions and exploit any perceived weakness. Some U.S. commanders privately hoped that this day would come when the poorly trained terrorists would go head-to-head with American regulars. If terrorists come out in the open in large numbers, it makes it easier to find them and kill them.

The insurgent and terrorist leaders score points for being able to pull a company-size attack force together quickly in so open and barren a terrain, and to plan and coordinate a complicated, precisely timed assault. But it’s good their fighters are all volunteers for martyrdom. When a hundred of them charge a hard-core battalion of 700-plus Marines, that’s what awaits.

(The writer of the cited story, btw, is Joe Galloway, who both reported and fought at the battle of the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 in Vietnam and was the only reporter awarded the Bronze Star Medal during the Vietnam War, and that for bravery under fire.)

Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman argues that the main reason the violence has risen is because the perpetrators understand their side is losing.

But these bombings are also signs of the deeper struggle that the U.S. attempt to erect democracy in Iraq has touched off. My friend Raymond Stock, the biographer and translator of Naguib Mahfouz and a longtime resident of Cairo, argues that we are seeing in Baghdad, Cairo and Riyadh the modern incarnation of several deeply rooted and interlocking wars. These are, he said, the war within Islam between Traditionalists and Rationalists, which dates back to Baghdad in the ninth century; the struggle between ardent Sunnis and Shiites, which dates back to succession battles in early Islam; and the confrontation between Islam and the West, which dates back to the Arab conquests of the seventh century and the Crusades.

In the modern incarnation of each of these struggles, members of the Sunni-Traditionalist-jihadist minority are losing. And the more that becomes evident, the more violent they will become - because their whole vision is in danger of being repudiated by fellow Arabs and Muslims. “The Iraqi election was a total shock to the militant jihadist forces in the Arab-Muslim world,” Mr. Stock noted. “They warned Iraqis that ‘you vote - you die,’ and instead millions of Iraqis said back to them, ‘We vote - we decide.’ ” And the thing they are deciding on is not to be pro-American, not to be pro-Western, but to try to build their own Arab society in a way that will be open to modernism and interpretations of Islam that encourage innovation, adaptation and progress.

The jihadist forces hate this notion.

Which is a bit of an understatement. And to which James Joyner adds,

Despite years of propaganda from dictators, mullahs, and biased journalists poisoning their minds, average Muslims are rejecting the jihadist call. That the terrorists are willing to murder their own indiscriminately is a sign of desperation.

And I hate to toot my own horn (well, a little), but it does seem to me that the rest of the commentati are finally awakening to what I wrote in November 2003: Al Qaeda’s primary war is against other Muslims - the Muslim Civil War is the most important struggle in the world today:

Al Qaeda’s war is not only against the West; in fact, I say that they are not even principally fighting against the West. Their primary war is against other Muslims. What is at stake are lives, human freedom and the very definition of Islam itself.

As I pointed out in August 2002, the Muslim world is faced with defining what Islam really is. If al Qaeda is not in fact the keeper of the true faith, then the rest of the Muslims must unite to destroy al Qaeda just to ensure the survival of Islam itself. They need to understand that the present crisis is not primarily that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not toe their line.

The rejection of al Qaeda was pronounced on Jan. 30 when Iraqis went to the polls despite al Qaeda’s murderous threats.