The Nearest Enemy: How Fragmentation and Localization Are Unraveling Transnational Jihadism

The proliferation of jihadist organizations across the globe marks the decline of transnational jihadism, not its resilience. This unraveling can be traced along three dimensions: ideology, organization, and strategy. Ideologically, the universalist narrative that once aggregated global grievances has fractured into localized insurgencies, and the schism between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State over sectarian violence, state-building, and the hierarchy of enemies has shattered any pretense of a unified transnational vanguard. Organizationally, the affiliate model that ensured survival post-9/11 has transferred strategic initiative to local actors. These groups have undergone goal displacement, prioritizing resource control and organizational survival over a transnational agenda. Strategically, the far enemy doctrine has collapsed in practice, with jihadist violence now overwhelmingly directed at near enemies and local rivals. The fragmentation and localization of jihadism present Western counterterrorism with an opportunity to deepen these trends, though the decline they have produced is reversible. Consolidating it calls less for expansive intervention than for restraint paired with a calibrated policy that tolerates local actors prioritizing domestic control while selectively removing foreign leaders with transnational commitments. Broad counterinsurgency operations, by contrast, risk interrupting re-nationalization and pushing indigenous commanders back toward transnational attacks, possibly reducing the rift between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.