To understand Europe's approach to counterterrorism, it helps to remember that its attitude has been informed by the region's experience with the old form of terrorism-not the new transnational kind. Because of the limited form that most of European terrorism has taken in the past, European governments remain more inclined than Washington to distinguish the political wings of terrorist groups from their military elements. This in turn helps explain why, although European governments have generally been very effective in stopping terrorists financially—they have frozen about $35 million in suspected al Qaeda assets since September 11 (compared to about $34 million in the United States and $124.5 million worldwide)—as of December 2002, they still had not frozen the assets of Hamas' political wing.