Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Project at Simon Fraser University, had some useful perspective Tuesday on why al Qaeda might be strangling itself with its own violence.

From the Sept. 23 Globe and Mail:

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are back on the offensive in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Algeria. The upsurge of suicide attacks provides good reason for concern - but none for despair. Coverage of these bloody attacks has diverted attention from a picture that's far less bleak.

In most of the Muslim world, Islamist terror is in decline. According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, world fatalities from such attacks dropped by nearly half in the last six months of 2007.

This is not surprising. Few non-specialists realize just how few terrorism campaigns, secular or religious, achieve their strategic objectives. The evidence for this is actually overwhelming: For example, a recent RAND Corp. study found that 90 per cent of the 268 terror campaigns that have ended since 1968 have failed.

But - and this has to be sobering news for Washington - only in a small percentage of cases was failure due to military defeat. Most terror campaigns end in some form of negotiated settlement, or with the terrorists brought to justice by police and courts.

Doctrinal infighting, lack of effective operational control, and lack of unity (all currently much in evidence in the case of al-Qaeda and its affiliates) often contribute to this failure. But the critical factor is loss of public support. Terrorist groups that alienate their support base will eventually be abandoned, even if the terrorists themselves go undefeated.

Mack went on to look at some of the violent ultra-leftist groups that operated in Europe from the 1960s to the 1980s, the circumstances under which terror campaigns can work and then had this closer:

In three short years, al-Qaeda and its loose network of affiliates have deeply alienated the populations whose support was critical to their cause. Opinion polls across the Muslim world reveal an extraordinary drop in support for terrorism over this period.

This is no accident. These groups extol an extremist ideology that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject, while the repressive policies they seek to impose are widely resented. Indiscriminate terrorism that mostly targets fellow Muslims has also sparked deep and bitter ideological divisions within the movement and catalyzed increasingly effective official anti-terrorism campaigns. As counterproductive as they are barbarous, these strategies have served only to pave the way for Islamic terrorism's eventual demise.

Here's a post worth reading if the above interests you: Why al Qaeda can't win