Now, 10 years after its birth, some experts, in particular in the Arab world, estimate that al-Qaida is thriving. Coincidentally, some of the same analysts are actually blaming the United States for this, insisting that the U.S. is using the terrorism excuse to dominate the world.

For instance, Egyptian analyst Diaa Rashwan said that it is only when the U.S. gives up its plans to dominate the world that al-Qaida will start getting weaker and lose ground. In the same vein, Muhammad Darif, a Moroccan expert on radical Islam, told the Egyptian daily Al Fagr: "…terrorism has become the whip the United States uses against any country that doesn't follow the superpower in the new world order."

These are two very questionable assessments, to say the least. In fact, it is quite telling that the responsibilities are reversed and that, in a way, al-Qaida and the United States are on the same level.

Working on that assumption that the U.S. is trying to dominate the world and also wage a war against Islam, let's take a look at the pre-9/11 time period. Incidentally, al-Qaida's argument dating back to 1998 is totally flawed because the United States has actually a recent history of intervening to save Muslims in the world, from helping the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, to Lebanon, to Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Even the first Iraq war was fought with the help and the support of most Muslim countries.

In a post 9/11 world, it is very questionable to deem that the United States is using terrorism to build an "empire." It is also vital to underline that al-Qaida's war is not aimed at just the U.S. but rather against the West in its whole. Viewing it just as a dichotomist war between al-Qaida and the U.S. is clearly ignoring the facts.

In a previous assessment of al-Qaida, Darif also said: "Al-Qaida has suffered tremendously from the Western propaganda, and [also] from the regimes that succeeded in tarnishing its image … by presenting it as an organization targeting civilians." The facts prove him wrong: first, it was not Western propaganda that tarnished al-Qaida's reputation but rather its actions; second, al-Qaida has a long history of almost exclusively targeting civilians (from the bombings against the U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998 to 9/11, to Bali, Casablanca, Madrid, Amman, London and Iraq). Interestingly, one of the proofs of al-Qaida's declining influence is that by targeting civilians in Muslim countries, it has lost tremendous popularity in the Muslim world.

But more than anything, it is al-Qaida's failure in Iraq that has clearly inflicted the maximum damage to Bin Laden's organization. Indeed, there, al-Qaida failed to mobilize the masses mostly because it killed gruesomely scores of civilians and also because it lost its charismatic emir, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. forces in June 2006.

Al-Qaida suffered another blow when a drone killed one of his most senior operatives, Abu Laith al-Libi, in January 2008 in Afghanistan.

Another sign of al-Qaida's recent decline includes the fact that they reached out to groups that they previously shunned: for example, the Algerian GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) was brought into the fold and changed its name in January 2007 to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). And finally the recent public dissension within the movement, proven by the recent spat between Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's No. 2, and its former mentor Sayed Imam al-Sherif (aka Dr. Fadl), is clearly pointing to a deterioration of the internal situation. Incidentally, CIA Director Michael Hayden told The Washington Times on March 11 that internal divisions between Saudi and Egyptian leaders of al-Qaida are producing "fissures" within the terrorist group.

While al-Qaida still clearly represents a forceful threat (especially with its recent regrouping in Afghanistan and Pakistan), it has witnessed serious setbacks.

Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).