I also agree that we have a deficient lexicon. Somehow insurgency doesn't seem to line up with the AQ strategy - it almost seems like they use it as an operational phase - but different then say Mao. I know it fits in the regard of being a strategy of the weak, but that is not how AQ professes it. Terrorism would seem inadequate as well and I think is better used to describe the tactic.

Can you use the idea of Jihad in some context? Is the reason we don't include use it because we lump it under insurgency? Are we mirror imagin our western definitions onto something that needs it own?