J.M. Berger : Just six months ago, online jihadist networks were overflowing with praise for the war in Syria. Foreign fighters on social media deemed Syria the “five-star jihad” – noble, glamorous, relatively comfortable and fully connected to the Internet.

But the stars are falling. Instead of fighting the oppressive Bashar al-Assad regime, jihadists are now fighting each other, with no end in sight.

It was a long road to this crucial juncture. Before September 11, al-Qaeda was a relatively small, shadowy terrorist network with probably fewer than 1,000 sworn adherents. Its primary activity was terrorism - theatrical attacks on non-combatants outside of war zones - although it exploited foreign-fighter conflicts such as the 1990s war in Bosnia to raise funds and groom hardened recruits.

Today, al-Qaeda is all over the map, both literally and figuratively.

In the wake of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, jihadists have spread out over the Middle East and North Africa, eventually settling into a franchise system in which the original group, al-Qaeda Central, designated official affiliates in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa.

Along the way, al-Qaeda’s primary mission shifted. While it has not forsaken terrorism, its resources today are overwhelmingly devoted to fighting wars and insurgencies.

In Syria alone, no one can credibly dispute that the current number of jihadist warfighters dwarfs the maximum possible size of al-Qaeda prior to 2001.

In Yemen, Somalia and Mali, al-Qaeda-aligned fighters have increasingly adopted the model of insurgency. While terrorist tactics still proliferate in these regions, organizational goals point to overthrowing existing regimes and directly capturing and controlling territory. In contrast, traditional terrorism seeks to sway policies and polities indirectly, through violence targeting non-combatants.

Al-Qaeda has not abandoned terrorism, but it has adopted a default position of encouraging “lone wolf” attacks by non-networked supporters in the West. While this obviously represents an ongoing problem, individual actors do not represent the same magnitude of threat that manifested itself on September 11, nor do they require al-Qaeda to spend its own resources.

Holding territory is an inherently local activity, which has focused the resources of many jihadists on the countries where they dwell, rather than on attacking the U.S. homeland. Even al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- widely held to be the most dangerous al-Qaeda threat to the West -- has attempted only a handful of attacks on the U.S. homeland. Each of the plots that have become public knowledge were lightly staffed and funded on a shoestring budget. AQAP’s resources are instead overwhelmingly devoted to battling the government of Yemen, where it is based.

In Somalia, al-Shabaab is fighting an insurgency, but it is also the al-Qaeda affiliate most visibly devoting resources to transnational terrorism, including a recent spree of regional terrorist attacks on the soil of its immediate neighbors Kenya and possibly Djibouti, both of which have troops in Somalia.

But while some dozens of terrorist conspirators can have a far-reaching and disproportionate impact -- that is the very reason terrorism exists in the first place -- such attacks do not suggest a broad global reach, and more importantly, they do not alter the math of resource allocation for the broad al-Qaeda movement.

In the year to date, all known terrorist conspirators combined represent only a fraction of 1 per cent of active jihadist warfighters. Far more people have died in 2014 as a result of insurgent activity and warfighting in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Mali than in terrorist attacks over the same period.

Meanwhile, important fractures have opened up within the broad al-Qaeda movement. Al-Qaeda has always included diverse elements, but Osama bin Laden was able to exert a measure of control thanks in significant part to his personal credibility and deep pockets. After the rise of the affiliates, rifts began to emerge, but they were carefully handled in private, maintaining the public facade of unity.

Since Mr. bin Laden’s death in 2011, his successor Ayman al Zawahiri has been unable to keep these internal conflicts behind closed doors.

In recent months, a full-scale civil war has erupted within al-Qaeda. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS, formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq) defied public orders from Mr. Zawahiri and entered into bloody combat with al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nursa. As a result, in February Mr. Zawahiri ejected the group from al-Qaeda. ISIS minions on social media launched scathing attacks on Zawahiri, calling him “senile” and even accusing him of having assassinated the venerated father of the global jihadist movement, Abdullah Azzam.

ISIS has adopted a number of political, strategic and ideological positions to differentiate itself from al-Qaeda, many of which revolve around how to hold and govern territory, reflecting the change in direction of the broader movement.

All of this presents new and interesting challenges for Western counterterrorism strategy, currently focused on disrupting al-Qaeda plots and killing senior leaders.

So far, al-Qaeda’s civil war works in our favor. Jihadists are even more focused on local and internal issues, and even less on global terrorism (although one or both sides could attempt to change the conversation with an attack on the West). Jihadists are also actively killing each other in impressive numbers and creating an ugly environment that complicates the process of recruiting new blood.

What happens if we tamper with this complex and rapidly evolving scenario?

For instance, U.S. drones have been extremely active in Yemen recently, presumably targeting AQAP’s top leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, who is an Al-Qaeda Central loyalist and the global movement’s deputy leader, second only to Mr. Zawahiri.

Al-Qaeda loyalty oaths are made to the leader, not the organization. So if we kill Mr. Wuhayshi, his successor is not obligated to maintain allegiance to AQC.

Would AQAP’s new leader throw in with ISIS? Such a development would weaken al-Qaeda, but would it shift the balance of power too far? The prospect of a global jihadist movement dominated by the notoriously brutal ISIS is unappealing, for many reasons.

For as long as this conflict continues, dominoes will fall with the death of any top al-Qaeda leader. If we kill Mr. Zawahiri tomorrow, all oaths of loyalty to Al-Qaeda Central expire with him. The new leader of al-Qaeda might be more effective and able to end the infighting, resulting in a stronger al-Qaeda. Or the whole network might shatter, leaving ISIS to fill the vacuum.

The Western powers need to start fleshing out such scenarios and pondering the second-order consequences of our current, dated policies.

The combination of unprecedented chaos and unprecedented resources assures we will see continued rapid change in the global jihadist movement. The al-Qaeda of 2014 barely resembles the 2009 model. What will 2015 look like?