The psychology (and economics) of terrorism

An article in the current issue of The American discusses the origins of terrorism -- or more specifically, the origins of terrorists. The conclusion? The popular belief that terrorism is a nihilistic act born of poverty-induced desperation is not quite it. Specifically,

"the available evidence is nearly unanimous in rejecting either material deprivation or inadequate educa­tion as important causes of support for terrorism or participation in terrorist activities. Such explana­tions have been embraced almost entirely on faith, not scientific evidence."

Actually, most terrorists really are committed true believers, willing to die for their cause. Within the Muslim world, the researcher found a positive relationship between level of education and support for terrorism -- the higher your level of education, the more likely you are to support terrorism against Western (including Israeli) targets. Suicide bombers also tended to be better educated than the average population. He didn't find any strong correlation at all with wealth or poverty, although some evidence even suggests that suicide bombers had a slight tendency to come from a higher average socio-economic background than the rest of society.

What does this mean? That addressing terrorism is about more than addressing poverty, or putting military-aged males to work. (Although these things never hurt.) Fortunately, efforts are underway to address more than just poverty as a source of terrorism. Normally, I'd be a little leary of an American effort to introduce "religious enlightenment," but we've reached the point where it's time to give just about any innovative approach a try. Maybe we can just take a page from the Saudi's book, and distract them with Playstations...

These are important issues to address since another recent study finds that as a military tactic, the suicide bomber is increasingly "effective, numerous, adaptable and sophisticated."

Two things are important to remember with all of this, though. First, like any other social science, it's grossly oversimplistic to try and reduce a social phenomenon to one singe cause (such as economics or religious beliefs). You're doing great to even get a primary cause...

Second, and more important, is to recall that these studies are about global terrorism, and not an Iraqi insurgency. There might be significant overlap between these two phenomena, but then, there may not be. It's recently been suggested that little of the violence in Iraq (even little of the Sunni-insurgent violence) is related to the Salafi/Takfiri-type Al Qeada attacks. There may be something to this, since there's plenty to indicate that violence in Iraq has much more to do with political, religious or personal conflicts, or even plain old, racketeering-style profits.

Military Tourism

This post might not be all that relevant for the units the HTTs are here to support -- military tourism is hardly something most maneuver folks here are guilty of. But it was one of my biggest pet peeves when I was here last time--in the Green Zone--so I couldn't help but be disgusted when I stumbled upon this. The mentality associated with walking around this nation like it's your own little sight-seeing trip stuns me. You look at the backgrounds of the authors - a CA guy and an NGO guy - and you just expect better of them. Instead, every local they saw on their sight-seeing wound up seeing the ultimate in ugly American tourists. How can we claim any credibility in anything we do when they see that this is how seriously we take the responsibility we have assumed by doing what we as a nation have done here, and are claiming to do now.

I suppose it could be argued that by trying to explain the historical relevance of these sights, the authors are actually encouraging cultural understanding. It could be argued, that is, until you read tidbits like the fact that the 14 July Bridge was named for the 1985 revolution that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy. Yeah, that's right guys -- the Ba'ath Party finally thought to themselves "Hey, you know what? We're in the middle of a war with Iran, we've been running the country for almost 30 years, let's overthrow the monarchy!"

Thanks for the efforts you so very clearly expended in your time here, guys. There's nothing like a little understanding.

Arrested Development

There's a new article in Joint Forces Quarterly that has some useful observations on detention policies in a counter-insurgency. Among it's most useful observations: try not to arrest too many innocent people, be careful which confirmed insurgents you release and don't let them use your detention center as a training facility or base of operations. Ok, this should all be stunningly obvious, but it seems like one of the biggest problems with COIN doctrine are "practitioners" that read the manuals, say "duh, of course I would/wouldn't do that..." and then proceed to do the opposite. Too often, COIN seems to come down to having to do the smart thing that you really don't want to do. Hopefully, though, missteps will always be balanced with innovative ideas.

Governance Assessment

I'm a little behind, so this assessment from the Congressional Research Service is from earlier this month. It's a good rundown on the state of governance and security from Saddam forward, including the current state of things and options going forward (from partition to installation of a "strong man"). I'll keep to myself which of those going forward options I believe to be most culturally viable...

COIN in a Tribal Society

I posted some brief things a few weeks ago about COIN in a tribal society, but this longer monograph just went up on the SWJ blog. It's by William McCallister, the cultural adviser mentioned in a vignette I referred to a few weeks ago...

DOS Iraq Status Report

Think of this briefing as the national, embassy version of an O & I update. Not a lot of interest or utility for those of us focused on a local level, but still interesting for visibility on the national picture (or at least what's being reported...)

The "Other" Culture

When we talk about the HTTs being here to provide advice on local culture, we're talking about culture as the fabric that binds individual people into a society: religion, politics, power structures, language, organizations, economics, history -- everything. The other type of culture, though -- what you can call the arts, or high culture -- is one small part of that bigger, more important culture. Understanding this other type of culture is not necessarily something that offers immediate utility, but it's another chance to gain an insight on Iraqis - or at least some Iraqis.

You can see from the tags below that this stuff falls squarely into the "shallow news" tag; Some of these stories (the folklore story, the orchestra story) probably don't really reflect life for the majority of Iraqis. But these are all layers of what's going on here that a lot of us can forget about pretty easily...

An Iraqi singer performs Iraqi and Iraq-inspired pieces in Beirut, because "violence and oppression is killing their cultural identity" and "the meaning of tradition... has been lost in Iraq."

Nonetheless, the Iraqi National Folklore Ensemble and Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra continue to practice in hopes of soon performing again. But practicing or not, the singer's point might be driven home by the fact that the Folklore group has to practice in a secret location, and the Orchestra can't seem to keep their best musicians from fleeing the country.

Average Iraqis, though, still turn to the TV. Power may be limited in a lot of places, but the first thing anyone does when it comes on is hit that "on" switch. News is rarely the first choice, though -- favorites are Egyptian soap operas, the latest political satire, or good old escapist cartoons, movies and music videos.