America's "war on terrorism" has thrown political Islam in Africa into the international spotlight. This book examines the social and political manifestations of Islamism in North-East Africa, including the Nile Valley and the Horn. Militant Islamists were a powerful force in the region in the 1990's, seizing state power in Sudan - where they pursued far-reaching programmes for comprehensive social transformation - and threaten all other governments. They suceeded in moving the socio-political consensus onto Islamist terrain, but their more ambitious aims were unattainable. By 2000, jihad-ist Islamism was in retreat, brought down both by its own political and ideological limitations and by the wars waged by its adversaries. In the meantime, however, the regional enemies of the Islamic state themselves faced exhaustion. Since 2001, a new set of dynamics is beginning to unfold in the region, reflecting American global domination and how the US agenda is refracted through local political struggles.