It's Politics, Stupid Posted by Patrick Barry

Writing in today’s New York Times, Robert Pape, Lindsey O’Rourke and Jenna McDermit address what is sadly an insufficiently understood subject in terrorism discourse: the political motivations for extremism.  Looking at the bombings in Moscow, Pape and Co. argue:

"Chechen suicide attackers do not fit popular stereotypes, contrary to the Russian government’s efforts to pigeonhole them. For years, Moscow has routinely portrayed Chechen bombers as Islamic extremists, many of them foreign, who want to make Islam the world’s dominant religion…Chechen suicide attackers do not fit popular stereotypes, contrary to the Russian government’s efforts to pigeonhole them. For years, Moscow has routinely portrayed Chechen bombers as Islamic extremists, many of them foreign, who want to make Islam the world’s dominant religion…As we have discovered in our research on Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, suicide terrorist campaigns are almost always a last resort against foreign military occupation."

The ideological pigeonholing of the sort discussed above is something I and many others typically associate with today conservative movement.  Indeed, when discussing terrorism in the context of the American experience, certain conservatives seem happy to lump most of the world’s Muslims into a millenarian casserole. 

Still, I wonder whether progressives are, to some extent, also guilty of ignoring Pape’s message – that political grievances push extremists towards savage acts of violence. But whereas conservatives tend to focus more on ideology, progressives tend to place strong emphasis on conditions such as poverty or poor education when explaining terrorist acts. Take John Brennan’s much lauded articulation of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism strategy, in which he points to the need for a U.S. counterterrorism strategy that addresses “the upstream factors—the conditions that help fuel violent extremism.”  In Brennan’s view, if the U.S. fails “to confront the broader political, economic, and social conditions in which extremists thrive, then there will always be another recruit in the pipeline, another attack coming downstream.”   While I should say that I mostly agree with Brennan in the sense that I suspect a U.S. foreign policy based on promoting dignified standards of living would confer some positive benefits on efforts to undercut extremism, it’s important to recognize the body of evidence that says that the conditions-extremism connection is overdrawn and may discount political motivations that determine predilection toward terrorist violence.

For instance, in his book What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism, economist Alan Krueger argues that the relationship between poverty and terrorism is dubious.  And, in an article for International Security analyzing motivations for extremism in Pakistan, Christine Fair and Jacob Shapiro find that “commonly suggested palliatives intended to reduce generalized support for militancy—economic development, greater democratization, alternatives to religious education, and so on—are unlikely to be effective” for reducing demand for militant activities.  Rather than focus on conditions alone, what Fair and Shapiro recommend, and what I think is echoed in today’s op-ed by Pape and his colleagues, is that policymakers try to address the “core political concerns” of militant groups.  

It's also worth pointing out that what is true for Pakistan and Russia is also largely true for the United States, particularly when it comes to hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq.  America could improve education, increase political access and accountability, and lift thousands of Iraqis and Afghans out of poverty, but so long it presides over large-scale military occupations in those countries, there are still going to be a sizable number of people who view terrorism as a political tool for resisting that reality.

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