Splinter-cell terrorism refers to acts of terror, especially bombings, hijackings, and assassinations, committed by agents of organizations operating all over the world free of direct link to any organization. It is the ultimate example of guerrilla warfare, and as the world has seen in the past 20 years or so, huge, powerful, technologically advanced militaries have extreme difficulty stopping these criminals.
Splinter-cell terrorists are responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States of America. Before that, the U. S. remained generally aloof to the global war of attrition being waged against these fanatics (lunatics). U. S. embassies were bombed in Africa in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, and all the while, efforts were underway to find the leader of the primary aggressor against global civilization, al-Qaeda. That leader, Osama bin Laden, could not be found, until after 9/11, when the U. S. began hunting him down in earnest. It took a decade to catch him. In the meantime, other fanatics the world over were perpetrating atrocity after atrocity against innocent, unarmed civilians of dozens of countries, for the avowed purpose of eradicating Jews and Christians from Earth. Stopping each of these terrorists once they make their presence known can never put an end to the problem.
Islamic terrorists are not the only culprits, as Theodore Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh prove. It is impossible to make these fanatics respect any military might, since to begin with, they are not afraid to die in the process of killing others. How civilized humanity can put a total end to this terrorism is still debatable, of course. Whether it even can be stopped is also debatable.