al-Qeada in countries without US troops

Today's times has an interesting piece on the North African branch of al-Qeada, with the most important line a few paragraphs in:

American and European security and counterterrorism officials say the attacks may signal the return of foreign fighters from the Iraq war, where they honed their bomb-making skills.

In some ways this is actually good news about how things are going in Iraq. If the Times analysis is right, this means that Iraq has shifted from being the center of a a global jihad, to being a local insurgency, not only in the view of the mainstream, but also for the jihadis themselves.