Lack of Civil Liberties, Not Poverty, Breeds Terrorism

R.A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Wed Jul 4 20:56:19 PDT 2007


<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB118358989440157536.html>

The Wall Street Journal


CAPITAL

By DAVID WESSEL


Princeton Economist Says
Lack of Civil Liberties, Not
Poverty, Breeds Terrorism
July 5, 2007

When Princeton economist Alan Krueger saw reports that seven of eight
people arrested in the unsuccessful car bombings in Britain were doctors,
he wasn't shocked. He wasn't even surprised.

"Each time we have one of these attacks and the backgrounds of the
attackers are revealed, this should put to rest the myth that terrorists
are attacking us because they are desperately poor," he says. "But this
misconception doesn't die."

Less than a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush said,
"We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." A couple of
months later, his wife, Laura, said, "Educated children are much more
likely to embrace the values that defeat terror." Former World Bank
President James Wolfensohn has argued, "The war on terrorism will not be
won until we have come to grips with the problem of poverty, and thus the
sources of discontent."

The analysis is plausible. It's appealing because it bolsters the case for
the worthy goals of fighting poverty and ignorance. But systematic study --
to the extent possible -- suggests it's wrong.

"As a group, terrorists are better educated and from wealthier families
than the typical person in the same age group in the societies from which
they originate," Mr. Krueger said at the London School of Economics last
year in a lecture soon to be published as a book, "What Makes a Terrorist?"


"There is no evidence of a general tendency for impoverished or uneducated
people to be more likely to support terrorism or join terrorist
organizations than their higher-income, better-educated countrymen," he
said. The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich
country, Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Krueger, 46 years old, is one of those academics whose research extends
from the standard fare -- How much more do workers with education earn?
What happens to employment when the minimum wage rises? -- to, well, cool
stuff. Did Firestone factories produce shoddy tires during a period of
labor unrest? (Yes) Are rich people really enjoying life more than the rest
of us? (No) Are concert-ticket prices higher for female musicians than
males? (Yes)

He began poking around this sordid subject a decade ago when he and a
colleague found little connection between economic circumstances and the
incidence of violent hate crimes in Germany. Among the statistical pieces
of the puzzle a small band of academics have assembled since are these:

* Backgrounds of 148 Palestinian suicide bombers show they were less likely
to come from families living in poverty and were more likely to have
finished high school than the general population. Biographies of 129
Hezbollah shahids (martyrs) reveal they, too, are less likely to be from
poor families than the Lebanese population from which they come. The same
goes for available data about an Israeli terrorist organization, Gush
Emunim, active in the 1980s.

* Terrorism doesn't increase in the Middle East when economic conditions
worsen; indeed, there seems no link. One study finds the number of
terrorist incidents is actually higher in countries that spend more on
social-welfare programs. Slicing and dicing data finds no discernible
pattern that countries that are poorer or more illiterate produce more
terrorists. Examining 781 terrorist events classified by the U.S. State
Department as "significant" reveals terrorists tend to come from countries
distinguished by political oppression, not poverty or inequality.

* Public-opinion polls from Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey find
people with more education are more likely to say suicide attacks against
Westerners in Iraq are justified. Polls of Palestinians find no clear
difference in support for terrorism as a means to achieve political ends
between the most and least educated.

Data on which all this relies are hardly perfect: Terrorists don't fill out
elaborate questionnaires. Better-off, better-educated individuals could be
motivated if not by their own circumstances, then by the conditions of
their impoverished countrymen. Interviews of terrorists in Pakistan by
Harvard terrorism scholar Jessica Stern reveal recruiters there found the
poorest neighborhoods to be the most fertile ground, particularly among
those who feel Muslims are humiliated by the West. She says Mr. Krueger and
like-minded scholars don't yet have enough evidence to prove anything. "We
are only just beginning to do really serious large studies in terrorism,"
she says.

But the conventional wisdom that poverty breeds terrorism is backed by
surprisingly little hard evidence. "The evidence is nearly unanimous in
rejecting either material deprivation or inadequate education as an
important cause of support for terrorism or of participation in terrorist
activities," Mr. Krueger asserts. The 9/11 Commission stated flatly:
Terrorism is not caused by poverty.

So what is the cause? Suppression of civil liberties and political rights,
Mr. Krueger hypothesizes. "When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed,"
he says, "malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist
tactics."

Which -- ironically, given that Mr. Krueger is no fan of the president's
actual policies at home or abroad -- is close to Mr. Bush's rhetoric:
"Liberty has got the capacity to change enemies into allies."

MORE

* For more on Krueger:

http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/3

* For his work on terrorism:

http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/references.html4

* For more on Firestone:

Capital: The Hidden Cost of Labor Strife5

* For more on Stern:

http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/Jessica_Stern6 

Hyperlinks in this Article:


(3) http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/

(4) http://www.irs.princeton.edu/krueger/references.html


(6) http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/Jessica_Stern


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





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