At the basic level, the steady pace of Islamist insurgencies around the world—Iraq, Chechnya and the northern Caucasus, southern Thailand, Mindanao, Kashmir and Afghanistan—and the incremental "Talibanization" of places like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and northern Nigeria, ensure a bountiful new mujahideen generation. Less-tangible factors will also contribute to this bounty.
-Osama bin Laden remains the unrivaled hero and leader of Muslim youths aspiring to join the mujahideen. His efforts to inspire young Muslims to jihad against the U.S.-led West seem to be proving fruitful.
-Easily accessible satellite television and Internet streaming video will broaden Muslim youths' perception that the West is anti-Islamic. U.S. public diplomacy cannot negate the impressions formed by real-time video from Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan that shows Muslims battling "aggressive" Western forces and validating bin Laden‘s claim that the West intends to destroy Islam.
-The adoption of harsher anti-terror laws in America and Europe, along with lurid stories about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison, and the handling of the Qur'an will give credence to bin Laden's claim that the West is persecuting Muslims.
-The ongoing "fundamentalization" of the two great, evangelizing monotheist religions will enhance an environment already conducive to Islamism. The growth of Protestant evangelicalism in Latin America, and the aggressive, "church militant" form of Roman Catholicism in Africa, has and will revitalize the millennium-old Islam-vs.-Christianity confrontation, creating a sense of threat and defensiveness on each side.
Compounding the threat posed by the next, larger generation is the possibility that analysts underestimated the first generation's size. Western leaders have consistently claimed large al-Qaeda-related casualties; currently, totals range from 5,000-7,000 fighters and two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leadership. If the claims are accurate, we should ponder whether the West has ever fought a "terrorist group" that can lose 5,000-7,000 fighters, dozens of leaders, and still be assessed militarily potent and perhaps WMD-capable? The multiple captures of al-Qaeda's "third-in-command"—most recently Abu Ashraf al-Libi—and the remarkable totals of "second- and third-in-commands" from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization suggests the West's accounting of Islamist manpower—at the foot soldier and leadership levels—is, at best, tenuous.
