North Africa has always straddled two worlds. Its populations are overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim, but its proximity to Europe and position as a trading route have always given it a more Western sensibility. Unlike Syria and Egypt, the countries of North Africa were never the front-line states in the Arab-Israeli wars, and other than Yasser Arafat's brief hiatus in Tunis, were never identified particularly with Palestinian radicalism. The economies of North Africa are far more diversified than those of the Persian Gulf, and the madrassa culture that has taken root in Sunni countries like Pakistan has found much less support in North Africa.

No wonder then that Islamic extremism never took hold.

Morocco, in particular, has an excellent relationship with the United States and has even warmed relations with Israel. And when Libya, a pariah state for so many years under Moammar Gadhafi, finally decided to abandon its nuclear program and cast its lot with the West, the Islamists may well have thought: "There goes the neighborhood."

But now the Islamists are seeking their revenge. In some ways, this is no surprise. I have been to the region six times - most recently last weekend, where I saw the sites of the suicide bombings in Casablanca - and fear it may well be the next front in the war on terror.

The bombings in Algeria and Morocco represent yet another evolution in the nature of the enemy, and there are two new and troubling characteristics to these attacks.

First, sponsorship. Local Islamic terror groups (like GSPC) have rebranded themselves as "Al-Qaida in the Mahgreb," reminiscent of Iraq, where the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network started calling itself "Al-Qaida in Iraq." Rebranding demonstrates the resilience and appeal of Al-Qaida. We may be decapitating Al-Qaida leaders one by one in Afghanistan, but in North Africa they are signing up by the dozens.

Second, tactics. Al-Qaida used to be enamored with the spectacular attack. No longer. Perhaps that is because aviation and maritime security have tightened. Or because Al-Qaida now knows that low-tech often does the trick. The bombs used in North Africa have been of the home-grown variety - inexpensive fertilizer-based explosives in trucks or small bomb belts with nails as shrapnel. Hezbollah was the inventor of the truck bomb (think Lebanon in the '80s) and Hamas perfected the nail-laden explosive belt (think Israel in the '90s).

What does this mean? It means that Al-Qaida is getting stronger. It has proven, in Iraq and now in North Africa, that the brand is "portable." And its tactics, such as using smaller operations that require only a few young men willing to lose their lives, are getting harder to stop.

The danger, of course, is that the brand will take hold in America, and that a few dedicated killers will do severe damage - just as they have done in Algiers, Amman, Bali, Buenos Aires, Casablanca, Istanbul, London, Madrid, Mumbai, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.

Targets in those attacks were not limited to so-called "Western" interests; innocent Muslims also were slaughtered. Though the wanton quality of some incidents - like the bombing of a wedding party in an Amman, Jordan, hotel - has generated a backlash by more moderate local Muslim populations, the activity has not been deterred.

Why haven't we been attacked here? If terrorists are scaling down their attacks, one assumption must be that they can and will. Their "muscle" could easily be "home-grown." In Torrance, for example, four members of a prison-based jihadist cell await trial on charges of conspiring to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism; kill members of the armed forces; and murder foreign officials.

The United States must devise better strategies for supporting friends and allies in the region - not just to prevent and disrupt the plans of the hard-core haters who cannot be rehabilitated, but to win the argument with the thousands of would-be terrorists. In terms of geography, North Africa and its deteriorating security situation is thousands of miles from North America. In terms of the nature of 21st-century terror threats, it is a cyber-second away.