Simultaneously, the group has moved away from the other two pillars of suicide bombing and excommunication, part of the grander effort not to alienate locals.

Jabhat al-Nusra, according to an insider source, who did not want to be identified as speaking with a journalist, has issued internal instructions ordering its commanders to refrain from the use of suicide attacks whenever possible, and never in civilian areas. And indeed, few such attacks have happened away from the front lines. Similarly, Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafi-jihadist group close to Jabhat al-Nusra, banned suicide bombing in the early days of the conflict. The cautious use of suicide bombing is also common beyond Syria, including in Yemen and Libya. It seems that suicide attacks reached a high point after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but they have now fallen off dramatically—with the notable exception of those committed by the Islamic State.

Excommunication, or takfir, is on the decline as well, as jihadist groups have come around to the practicality of aligning themselves with relative moderates instead of enforcing a rift whenever a theological difference of opinion becomes apparent.

Beyond Syria, the al-Qaeda chapter in Yemen has also looked closer to home in the aftermath of the anti-government uprising in 2011 and the war launched by Saudi Arabia against the Houthis in 2015. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, once seen as the most dangerous branch for its role in international terrorism, governed Hadhramaut for an entire year; this experiment seems to have further enmeshed it in local dynamics. In 2017, the group told a Norwegian newspaper that it had renounced international operations and stopped recruiting foreign fighters as part of an agreement with local tribal and religious leaders.

One could easily dismiss these changes as limited or temporary, but there are two reasons to believe that they represent a genuine trend.

First, Sunni jihadists’ localized approach evolved organically out of the geopolitical upheavals of 2011. The popular uprisings across the region submerged jihadists deep in local struggles. Extremist groups had to respond quickly to rapidly changing events, which meant they could not always report to jihadist ideologues or leaders living elsewhere. That was a radical change from the way jihadists used to operate, mostly as a vanguard movement led by dogmatic radicals who wanted to go after the “head of the snake,” as Osama bin Laden and others labeled the U.S. and its Western allies.

The emergence of the Islamic State in 2013 and 2014 might seem like a dispositive counterexample; in reality, that group’s radicalism and global ambition caused something of a backlash among other Sunni jihadists, who sought to distinguish themselves from the hard-liners through relative moderation and localism. As ISIS rose to power, and later as it collapsed, other Sunni groups continued their local strategy, suggesting that it arose from deep convictions, and was not superficial or merely tactical.