From NPR news this morning:

source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126228610

As Support Fades, Al-Qaida Shows Signs Of Decline

There is a lot of reporting on how terrorist groups get started and how they develop, but very little about how they end. Obama administration officials have been saying for weeks that its drone attacks over the past year have got al-Qaida on the run, but experts say it isn't just drone attacks that are weakening al-Qaida. The group is defeating itself.

The Ways A Group Can End

Audrey Kurth Cronin, a professor at the National Defense University, lists the way such movements end.

"There are different ways that groups end, and those include decapitation, the capture or the killing of the leader," she said. "Sometimes negotiations can help lead to the end -- success which is, by the way, relatively rare; failure where groups lose popular support; and finally reorientation of the violence of a group."