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What Does and Doesn't Fuel Terrorism - Empire? - Global Policy Forum What Does
and Doesn't Fuel TerrorismBy Nicholas Kristof
International Herald Tribune
May 8, 2002
From President George W. Bush to bleeding hearts on the left there is agreement that to combat terrorism we must attack root causes like Third World poverty and illiteracy. When wisdom becomes conventional it is often wrong. In fact, it would be easier to make the case that to fight terrorism we should promote destitution and bomb universities.
I am not urging that, of course. But while there are many good reasons to favor foreign aid and better schools, fighting terrorism probably isn't one.
At a conference on terrorism at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, experts chipped away at the international consensus about roots of terrorism - that poverty and hate-filled education, or no education at all, breed terrorists.
"The most commonly cited 'root causes' seem to me not to be important factors," said Graham Allison, director of the school's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
Poverty is frequently mentioned as a root cause. "We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror," Bush said in March in announcing an increase in foreign aid. But we all know that the Sept. 11 hijackers came from privileged backgrounds.
Look at ETA in Spain, Red Brigades in Italy, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, the IRA in Ireland or Timothy McVeigh. They suggest middle-class alienation rather than Third World deprivation.
International poverty does promote terrorism in at least one indirect way: Poor nations periodically collapse and end up providing sanctuary to terrorists. "Terrorists need headquarters, and if you need a headquarters, the best place is a failed or even collapsed state," noted Michael Ignatieff. Thus foreign aid may be a good investment to fight terrorism if it props up countries like Pakistan or Indonesia.
Education might seem likely to soothe a disposition for violence but it doesn't. The most rigorous analysis is in a new paper by Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova. They find no correlation between involvement in terrorism and either poverty or illiteracy.
They looked at the backgrounds of Lebanese Hezbollah militants killed in action, and they found that they were better off and better educated than the general population. They examined public opinion polls in the West Bank and Gaza and found that better-educated Palestinians were more likely than others to approve of violence.
If poverty and illiteracy are not direct causes of terrorism, what are? Three other factors seem important.
First, humiliation. "This word is extremely important in explaining why terrorists are so successful in recruiting large numbers of young men," said Jessica Stern, who has interviewed terrorists around the world. If we are to reduce terrorism in, say, the Middle East, it would help to reduce security arrangements that needlessly humiliate Palestinians.
Second, economic isolation. Robert Lawrence noted that the great majority of nations are members of the World Trade Organization, but that the few which are not include North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia. So trade promotion may help. Third, foreign policy. Anybody who has met Al Qaeda supporters knows that the terrorists are motivated in part by American foreign policy, principally the U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Palestinian rights. But it is hard to make too much of the Israel angle because Al Qaeda was planning the Sept. 11 attacks just as peace talks were proceeding unusually hopefully in 2000. "Does anybody here think that the attack would not have been carried out if we had succeeded at Camp David or afterward?" asked Dennis Ross, the former Middle East envoy.
In trying to uproot terrorism, perhaps we should think in new directions, like extending trade or, especially, trying to confront feelings of humiliation that may well be more explosive than poverty or illiteracy.
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