The Morphing of AQI

In his post, The Morphing War Against Al Qaeda in Iraq, Douglas Farah suggests that the recent reports of the beating Al Qaeda in Iraq is taking at the hands of American and Iraqi forces, should not be overstated. AQI is in trouble, but they are not yet defeated. Farah believes that AQI may be changing their strategy:

One of the fundamental truths of dealing with networks, terrorist or otherwise, is that they will morph quickly to survive and adapt as the environment around them changes...

...The strategy [of AQI] may now be to move outside Iraq and wage a different type of war from surrounding countries.

Farah recalls the South American drug wars of the 1980s and 1990s as an example of the difficulty in defeating a network that is intent on survival.

HT: Counterterrorism Blog