Socioeconomic Roots of Radicalism

7/27/2019 Socioeconomic Roots of Radicalism

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The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do notnecessarily re ect the of cial policy or position of the Department of the Army, theDepartment of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This report is cleared for publicrelease; distribution is unlimited.

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The author is indebted to Edmund Burke, Graham Fuller, Isebill Gruhn, PaulLubeck, and Steven Simon for helpful discussions; and two anonymous reviewersfrom the Army War College for useful comments and suggestions. None of thesepeople are responsible for the arguments advanced here.

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Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be forwardedto: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 122 ForbesAve., Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. Copies of this report may be obtained from thePublications Of ce by calling (717) 245-4133, FAX (717) 245-3820, or be e-mail [email protected]

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ISBN 1-58487-128-8


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FOREWORD

The September 11 attacks against U.S. targets came as afrightening shock to most Americans who had never previouslyheard of Osama Bin Laden or the virulent radicalism associated withhis al Qaeda network. In the tumultuous aftermath of the attacks,many Americans grasped for explanations as to why these eventsoccurred and what was to be done about them. Closely-relatedqueries were why Islamic radicals enjoy a signi cant amount ofpopular sympathy within the Muslim World, and how this trendcan be reversed.

This monograph, by Dr. Alan Richards, addresses the criticalquestions involved in understanding and coping with the roots ofIslamic radicalism. His work closely examines the links betweenradicalism and a series of crises associated with modernization inthe Islamic World. The result is a thoughtful and probing studyincluding policy recommendations for U.S. military and civiliandecisionmakers that makes intelligible the complex subject of Islamicradicalism.

The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this monographas a contribution to the national security debate on this importantsubject. This analysis should be particularly valuable to U.S. militarystrategic leaders as they seek to better understand the securityconcerns of friendly states within the Islamic World. Additionally,the background information provided should be very useful to allthose involved in military-to-military interactions within the IslamicWorld.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.DirectorStrategic Studies Institute


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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

ALAN RICHARDS is Professor of Economics and EnvironmentalStudies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he has beenon the faculty since 1976. He was educated at Harvard Universityand the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he studiedpolitical science, Middle Eastern studies, and economics. He wasDirector of the University of California Systems Education AbroadProgram in Cairo from 1989-91 (during the Gulf War). In 1991 he wasa member of a three-person team tasked with drafting proposals forU.S. development assistance to the West Bank and Gaza. In 1992-94,

he worked in Washington for USAID as a Senior Political Economist,where he conducted and/or directed political economy analyses ofEgypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, Yemen, and Kazakhstan.He has also taught economics at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, Harvard University, and the American University inCairo. With John Waterbury (formerly of Princeton University, nowPresident of the American University in Beirut), he co-authored APolitical Economy of the Middle East (1990; second edition, 1996), awork widely recognized as a groundbreaking effort in the eld. In1995/96 he was MacArthur Fellow in International EnvironmentalPolicy for the University of California system. He is an advisoryeditor for the journal Middle East Policy, and is a frequent consultantto the U.S. Government on Middle Eastern affairs.


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SUMMARY

Why do Islamic radicals enjoy so much sympathy in theMiddle East and wider Muslim world? The author argues thatsuch radicalism is a political response to the deepening economic,social, political, and cultural crisis in the Muslim World. Rapiddemographic growth, educational changes, government policyfailure, and rapid urbanization are among the causes of highunemployment, and increasing poverty, which, together with otherother forces, have alienated large sectors of Muslim youth. Theregional crisis has deep historical roots, and simple solutions do

not exist. A long-term strategy is needed. Elements of that strategyinclude recognition of the limits of American power in the face ofthis multidimensional crisis, concrete steps to resolve the Palestinianproblem, and improved intelligence cooperation and covert actions.The future of the region belongs to young Muslims: we should askof any proposed policy: how will they interpret our actions?


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SOCIO-ECONOMIC ROOTS OF RADICALISM?TOWARDS EXPLAINING THE APPEAL

OF ISLAMIC RADICALS

Introduction: The Debate Over Roots. 1

Why do Islamic radicalsincluding the partisans of al-Qaeda and other followers of Osama bin Ladenenjoy so muchsympathy in the Middle East and wider Muslim world? Obviously,understanding such a phenomenon is a necessary (but not suf cient)condition for crafting a strategy to cope with the murderous violenceof September 11, 2001. Some analystsincluding this onebelieve

that explaining thisor any otherlarge-scale social movementrequires a nuanced, complex historical analysis of social, economic,political, and cultural factors. Space and professional competencesharply constrain the analysis offered here, which will focus moreon economic, social, and political factors than on cultural andideological aspects.

Any reader of journals and op-ed pages of newspapersknows, however, that perspectives such as this have hardly goneunchallenged. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of September 11,attempts at analysis of any kind were often denigrated as symptomsof cowardice or treason. Pundits and policymakers suggested thatto argue that phenomenon such as al-Qaeda had social roots was toexcuse, or even condone, their apocalyptic actions. As the politicalscientist Thomas Homer-Dixon pointed out, such arguments aregrade-school non sequiturs. 2 After all, historians who study

Nazism do not justify Auschwitz, and students of Stalinism do notexonerate the perpetrators of the Gulag. Understanding is simplybetter than the alternative, which is incomprehension. If we fail tograsp the forces behind the attacks of September 11, we will fail torespond wisely.

A charitable interpretation of such breathless anathemas wouldbe that the authors were simply traumatized by the shock of theevents of that terrible day. While this may well be true, I think thatsomething else is also involved. The title to this monograph has aquestion mark, not because I think that there are not such roots, but


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because there exists an in uential school of writers and thinkers whocontinue to argue that such roots do not exist. One can distinguishtwo broad types of arguments here: 1) arguments about speci croots (i.e., the debate on the role, if any, of poverty in fosteringIslamic radicalismdiscussed below), and 2) a broader denial ofthe idea that terrorism (or crime, or any social pathology) has any interesting social origins. The rst perspective is certainly welcome:it is always useful, indeed necessary, to challenge and question anyparticular historical analysis. Such analysts are, at least, engaging inreasoned debate and analysis, however one may assess the validityof their arguments.

The second perspective is, of course, one much beloved by

(grossly misnamed3

) neo-conservatives. In their jihad againstliberalism and permissiveness, they fear that any sociological oreconomic explanation for behavior will lead to softness, or to aninsuf ciently muscular (in this case, military) response. At a deeperlevel, they seem either to argue that evilsuch as the attacks ofSeptember 11is itself uncaused, or, following a venerable traditionthat extends back at least to St. Augustine, the product of pride. Thislatter perspective is particularly prominent in discussions of thequestion, Why do they hate us? Allegedly, Muslims hate theUnited States because we have been successful, and they have failed.Such explanations, of course, imply that we in the United States neednot change any signi cant aspect of our behavior, most particularlyincluding our energy and foreign policies. We simply have to keepbashing the miscreants militarily often enough, and then they willcome to understand that we are right and they are wrong. It is, in

essence, an American version of the Iron Wall strategy whichVladimir Jabotinsky advocated for the Yishuv in Palestine. 4Of course, the wrong diagnosis will typically lead to the wrong

prescription. The American version of the Iron Wall is likely to beno more successful than it has been in Israel, where, 50 years afterthe proclamation of the Jewish state, Israeli citizens feel at least asinsecure as ever in their history. While military action, and, evenmore, covert operations may well be appropriate elements of a long-term strategy, they are hardly likely to be suf cient. The reason, ofcourse, is that the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism indeed has


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deep, tangled, historical roots, and that our behavior has, and canagain, exacerbate rather than ameliorate the problem.

Part of the dif culty, of course, is the very complexity of thephenomenon (or phenomena) which confront us. As a number ofexcellent recently published articles and books have reminded us(it is a damning commentary that we needed reminding), Muslimswho deeply dislike various aspects of the international order, theirdomestic political system, and/or U.S. foreign policy are a highlydiverse lot. 5 Since at least one of seven human beings is Muslim, howcould it be otherwise? This very complexity makes it hugely dif cultto generalize, yet generalize we must if we are to identify coursesof action that are likely to increase, or decrease, our security. It may

also be that the very complexity (and uidity) of the phenomenon ofIslamic radicalism contributes to disagreement about the relativeweight of various social factors, simply because different analystsareperhaps unknowinglydiscussing different groups of people.

For example, it may be useful to distinguish between thefollowing groups, thought of (perhaps) as concentric circles:

1. Jihadist Sala ssuch as the followers of al-Qaeda and like-minded local groups;

2. Sala sthose who believe that the imitation of the behaviorof the Prophets closest companions should be the basis ofthe social order;

3. Islamistsa still broader category, which includes anyone

who thinks that the precepts of Islamhowever interpreted should be fundamental to the political and social order; and,

4. Discontented Muslimspeople who identify themselvesas Muslims, and who are unhappy with their life prospects,with the justice of their societies, and/or with the state of thewider world.

Presumably, the goal of American policy should be to isolate the rst group from all the others. This alone would suggest that understanding


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the social origins of the other groups, and the origins of theirdiscontents, should be a high priority for Americans. Doing sorequires us to have some understanding of the vast, multidimensionalcrisis which is unfolding in the Muslim world.

A Region in Crisis.

The Araband the wider Muslimworld confronts today amultidimensional crisis. Like any important historical phenomenon,the roots of the current crisis in the Middle East and the Muslim worldare profoundly complex and intertwined. The crisis has economic,social, political, and cultural dimensions. Although the author

focuses on the socio-economic and political aspects of the crisis, thecultural dif culties are equally, perhaps uniquely, dif cult.Although these dimensions are conceptually distinct, they are

intimately linked, and they interact in complex ways. For example,economic failure erodes regimes legitimacy and fosters an ideologicalvacuum, as old ideas (e.g., Arab nationalism) are understandablyperceived as failures. The often-noted fact that essentially all seriouspolitical discourse in the region is now phrased in Islamic termslinks the cultural dimension to all of the others.

The crisis is simultaneously internal and external. It is internal,because, as we shall see, population growth, failed economicpolicies, and local authoritarianisms (as well as cultural issueswhich fall outside of the purview of this monograph) all contributeto the problem. It is also external: wider forces of globalization playa critical role in stimulating the growth and spread of radicalism.

Much of the regions economic stagnation derives from a weak and adistorted integration into the global economy. At the same time, thekinds of integration which have occurredspeci cally, internationalmigration and the spread of global communicationshave themselvescontributed to the spread of radicalism. The failure of local regimesis, in large part, a failure to manage and engage successfully thewider process of globalization. 6 Nor can the problems of governancein the region be understood without reference to outside actors, andto ongoing international con icts.

Todays Middle East nds itself enmired in the modernization


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process. For all the well-known weaknesses of this particular opticon modern history, it remains true that changing from a societyinhabited by illiterate farmers, who are ruled by a literate, urbanelite, into an urban, mass-educated society with an economy basedon industry and services has always and everywhere been deeplytraumatic. Worse, this transition has always and everywhere spawnedgrotesque violence. The modern history of both Europe and EastAsia, the only places in the world where this transition has beenmore or less successfully accomplished, often reads like a horrornovel: World Wars I and II; Stalins Gulag, and Hitlers Holocaust,or Japanese fascism, the Chinese revolution, the Great LeapForward and its attendant famine, and the Cultural Revolution.

American experience has also been bloody: the extermination ofNative Americans, the racial violence of slavery and Jim Crow, andthe more than half-million casualties of our own Civil War. Whyshould we expect Middle Easterners to do better than Europeans,Americans, Japanese, or Chinese?

Much of the violence of this transition has been perpetratedby utopian fanatics, a category which includes fascists, Nazis,Leninists, and Maoistsand the followers of al-Qaeda. Like theirearlier cousins, todays Islamist fanatics have imagined a future,in this case the restoration of the (imagined) conditions of life in7th century Arabia. Like all fanatics, they believe that they enjoy amonopoly on truth, and that those who disagree with them are notmerely mistaken, but wicked or mad. 7 Like all fanatics, they believethat there is only one goal for humanity, and they are ready to wadethrough an ocean of blood to the Kingdom of Love. 8 Fanatics have

always built towers of skulls as monuments to their fantasies.These particularly virulent fanatics are part of a larger socialphenomenon, the transnational Sala movement. This movementadvocates a strict return to the practice of (what they believe to havebeen) the practices of the earliest Muslims. Their political ideologyasserts that such a return will constitute a solution to the manydif cult problems facing Middle Eastern and other Muslim societies.As their slogan goes, Islam huwwa al-halIslam (that is, the Salainterpretation of Islam) is the solution. Sala s include the followersof al-Qaedaand the muwahhiduun (or Unitariansas they call


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themselves) or the Wahhabis (as others call them), partisans of theof cial ideology of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Several analystshave recently called our attention to the spectrum of opinions withinthis movement. 9

Radical movements have their greatest appeal when thedislocations of the transitions to modernity are most acute. Onlythe slaughter of World War I and its chaotic aftermath allowedthe Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia; Hitler is inconceivablewithout the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression; famine,governmental collapse, and the horrors of the Japanese invasion setthe stage for Mao. The Siren Song of fanatics becomes most seductivewhen economic, political, social, and cultural crises combine, and

when people feel that they have been repeatedly humiliated. Any policy which increases the feelings of humiliation of the people of the regionis simply throwing gasoline on the re.

The Rage of the Young .

The utopian fanaticism of al-Qaeda and other groups is nourishedby the deep despair of huge numbers of young Middle Easterners,two-thirds of whom are below the age of 30, half of whom areyounger than 20, and 40 percent of whom have yet to reach their15th birthday. The rst major social element in the noxious cocktailof religious radicalism in the region is the phenomenon of the youthbulge.

The key demographic facts of the region are that the populationis still growing rapidly, but fertility rates have declined considerably

during the past decade.According to the World Bank, the population of the Middle Eastand North Africa is now growing at about 2.1 percent per year. Atthis rate, the population will double in about 34 years. On the otherhand, population growth rates have fallen sharply in the past 10years (from 3.2 percent in the mid-1980s to 2.7 percent in 1990-95 to2.1 percent in 2001). Sharp fertility declines caused this change; thereare reasons to expect further falls.

This generalization hides substantial variation across countriesand regions. (See Table 1.) Although population growth rates andtotal fertility rates have fallen markedly in Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia,


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they have remained stubbornly high in Gaza and Yemen. Indeedthe total fertility rates in Gaza (7.6) and Yemen (7.1) are among thehighest in the world. The Gazan rate is also very high in relation toper capita income, a phenomenon which is also observable in theArab Gulf countries.

Country Population 10 Population GrowthRate (Percent) 11

TFR 12

Afghanistan 26.8 2.5 6.0

Algeria 31.8 2.2 3.4

Bahrain .64 1.9 3.0

Egypt 68.5 1.9 3.4

Gaza 1.2 4.5 7.6Iran 71.9 2.5 4.3

Iraq 24.7 3.6 6.1

Jordan 4.7 3.1 4.8

Kuwait 2.1 1.9 3.4

Lebanon 3.6 1.6 2.3

Libya 6.1 3.7 6.2

Morocco 30.2 2.0 3.4Oman 2.5 3.3 6.1

Pakistan 41.2 2.4 4.9

Qatar .75 1.3 3.5

Saudi Arabia 22.2 3.3 6.4

Somalia 7.0 2.8 7.0

Sudan 33.5 2.9 5.7

Syria 17.8 3.2 5.6Tunisia 9.6 1.5 2.4

Turkey 66.6 1.6 2.5

UAE 2.4 1.6 3.6

West Bank 1.7 3.2 4.9

Yemen 17.5 3.3 7.1

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census: http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp98/wp98.pdf.

Table 1. Population Data for Selected Middle Easternand Other Muslim Countries.


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Populations will continue to grow despite falling fertility ratesbecause fertility remains well above replacement levels and becausepast population growth ensures that many women will soon entertheir child-bearing years (so-called demographic momentum).Many countries of the region will experience considerable additionsto their populations during the coming 15 years. (See Figure 1.) Thepopulation of the region may reach roughly 600 million by 2025,some six times more people than in the 1950s. Such growth posesnumerous economic challenges, from areas ranging from food andwater to jobs to housing.

Several implications follow from this demographic pattern.First, and for our purposes, the most important, is that most Middle

Easterners are young: half of all Arabs, 54 percent of all Iranians and52 percent of Pakistanis are younger than 20 years old. (See Table 2.)Two-thirds of Saudis are younger than 25, and two-thirds of all thepeople of the region are under thirty. (By contrast, only slightly morethan one-quarter of the populations of developed countriestheUnited States, Canada, European Union (EU), Australia and NewZealand (A/NZ), and Japanare under 20.) As Kepel stresses, 13 this age structure rst emerged in the 1970sperhaps not entirelycoincidentally, the same decade as political Islam surged. Note,however, that this picture will not change markedly in the nextgeneration: By 2025 the number of people aged 0-14 years willroughly double; in that year, roughly two out of ve Near Easternersare projected to be younger than 20. 14 When we think of questionssuch as what are the impacts of our policies on Arabs? we are in factasking, what are the impacts of our policies on young people?

Second, as Williamson and Yousef have argued, 15 the rapid fallin fertility may lead to a rapid decrease in the dependency ratio(the number of people under 15 and over 65 to the working-agepopulation). When this has happened elsewhere, as in East Asiain the 1970s and 1980s, dramatic increases in national savingsrates ensued. For Williamson and Yousef, the demographic changecaused the savings change (this is the natural result of their life-cyclesavings model). They are quick to note, however, that whether or not


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F i g u r e

1 .


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Percentage of the population which is:

Country


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such savings nd their way into productive and job-creatinginvestment depends on many other factors. Nevertheless, in the seaof bad news about the regions political economy, it is well to bereminded that not all is bleak.

For the rst time in history, many of these youths have receivedsome education. Although the region lags behind other parts of thedeveloping world such as Southeast Asia, China, and Latin America,nevertheless, school enrollments and literacy have risen dramaticallyduring the past generation. For the rst time in history, most Arabs,and most Iranians, can read and write (this is still not the case inPakistan, however, where only just over two- fths of adults areliterate). As usual, considerable variation exists among countries:

more than three-quarters of adults are literate in Iran and Kuwait,while adult literacy stands at between one-half and two-thirds inAlgeria, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Only abouthalf, or fewer, of all adults are literate in Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, andYemen.

But even in a laggard like Egypt, virtually all children areenrolled in school. School enrollments have exploded throughoutthe region. The pattern has been uneven, particularly betweengenders. In most countries, boys were in school long before theirsisters were enrolled. Today, however, not only all boys, but all ornearly all girls are enrolled in primary school in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia. Roughly 60 percent of alladolescents are enrolled in secondary school in the region. In SaudiArabia, all boys are enrolled in primary school, but only 75 percentof girls are in school. In the most backward countries, such as Sudan

and Yemen, most girls are still not in school. In Yemen, for example,although nearly all boys are enrolled in primary school, only 40percent of girls attend primary school. In Morocco over one-third,and in Oman roughly one-fourth, of girls are not in primary school.Despite the appallingly vast waste of human resources which suchunder-enrollment of girls represents, the past generation has seen aneducational revolution throughout the region.

Several consequences follow. First , some analysts believe that thegap between girls and boys education contributes to the appeal ofIslamists and Sala sts. 16 In this rather hopeful view, part of the origins


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increased during the past decade. Third, stagnant real wages anddif culties nding employment greatly stimulate the desire of theyoung to leave their country.

Country Unemployment Rate Remarks

Algeria 30% 1999

Egypt 12% 2000. Some estimates show20%

Iran 20-25% 2001

Jordan 15% Of cial Rate. CIA gives 25- 30%. (1999)

Lebanon 18% 1998

Libya 29% 2000Morocco 15 - 22% 2000

Saudi Arabia 14 - 18% Higher amonggraduates

Syria 12 - 15% 1999

Tunisia 16% 1999

Yemen 35% 1999

Sources: Saudi Arabia, United States Embassy, Riyadh, and NYT, 8/26/01: Iran,Eric Rouleau, Le Monde Diplomatique, www.en.mondediplomatique.fr/2001/06/ 05iran; all others: MEDEA Institute (European Institute for Research on Mediterraneanand Euro-Arab Co-operation), and CIA World Fact Book.

Table 3. Unemployment in the Middle East:A Compendium of Estimates.

For decades, international migration has provided a safety-valvefor the pressure on domestic labor markets. Migrants, particularlyNorth Africans, moved to the EU, while Egyptians, Yemenis, andMasraqis sought work in the Gulf during the oil boom years. Threepolitical consequences have ensued.

1. The migrants to Europe, who may have intended to be

temporary migrants have tended to stay. Their children, oftencalled second-generation migrants face particularly challengingproblems of education, employment, housingand identity. It is


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perhaps unsurprising that quite a number of second-generationimmigrant Muslims in Europe have been attracted to Sala andother radical doctrines.

2. Migrants to the Gulf often did return to their home countries,not only richer, but also more socially conservative, associatingtheir good fortune with the Wahhabi customs and outlook wherethey prospered. The phenomenon even had a name in Egypt: al- gulfeyya.

3. The expulsion of migrants from Jordan, Palestine, and Yemenduring the Gulf Crisis of 1990 embittered many, and imposed serious

costs on their respective national economies.

What is the state of poverty in the region, and what, if any, are itspolitical consequences? Only sketchy data are available on povertyfrom the Middle East News Agency (MENA). 20 Existing informationis also quite contradictory, which is hardly surprising. After all,poverty is the modern equivalent of classical political economyssubsistence, de ned as some set of commodities without whicha person or household is thought to be suf ciently deprived as tobe de ned as poor. Reasonable people differ sharply over thede nition of the necessary basket of commodities.

Serious issues also bedevil the selection of an appropriate pricevector to be used in calculating the cost of the basket (e.g., do thepoor actually pay the national average price?). Given thesedisagreements, it is not surprising that different studies use different

poverty lines. And these dif culties are limited to an estimate fora single time period. In the MENA region, considerable rainfallvariability and occasional political and economic turmoil make itdif cult to draw conclusions about long-term trends from data fora few years.

Since the World Development Report of 1990, the World Bank hasused the $1 PPP or $2 PPP measures of poverty. Data from twoWorld Bank sources 21 suggest that, at the international poverty lineof $1 in expenditure per person per day at 1985 PPP, the povertyrates are low except for Yemen, a country with one of the lowest


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per-capita income levels in the region. For the six countries coveredby van EeghenAlgeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia the 1990 aggregate poverty rate was around 6 percent. Using thismeasure, poverty in MENA appears to be relatively limited comparedto other regions in the developing world. With a poverty line of $2the rates jump, an indication that a substantial population share liveson expenditures between $1 and $2 per person per day. Using the$2 poverty line, van Eeghen estimates an aggregate poverty rate ofaround 25 percent. National poverty lines vary widely; on averagethey tend to be closer to the $2 line.

In fact, the Banks $1 PPP poverty line, which was designed tore ect the standards of what it means to be poor in a poor country,

seems too low for most MENA countries. The $1 line is far belowaverage $PPP per capita incomes for most countries: the ratio of percapita GNP to the poverty line, both measured in PPP dollars, isunreasonably high when compared with a similar calculation for theUnited States. In the United States, GNI per capita is about 6.5 timesgreater than the poverty line, whereas corresponding MENA guresare Egypt (9.9), Jordan (11.4), Morocco (8.8), and Tunisia (13.8). 22 Inaddition, there are other problems with the World Banks estimates,perhaps most importantly related to the lack of data that are neededto construct price indices for the consumption baskets of the poor.Reddy and Pogge 23 nd that simulations using alternative PPPindices can raise estimates of poverty by 25 percent to 100 percent.

From a political perspective, what counts is the relative, socialde nition of poverty. Poverty is always and inevitably partlyrelative: poor people in Egypt, Jordan, or Algeria (and those who

sympathize with their plight) do not compare themselves with thepoor in Bangladesh or Madagascar; they feel poor relative to theirfellow Egyptians, Jordanians, or Algerians. It follows that higherestimates of poverty are more politically relevant.

While there are disagreements on poverty headcount levels,something of a consensus is emerging on poverty trendswhichis more relevant from a political perspective. Most analysts 24 agreethat aggregate poverty rates in MENA fell during the years of the oilboom (from the mid 1970s to the early-to-mid 1980s) but started torise after that. At the level of individual MENA countries, Adams and


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Page 25 (2001) note that Jordanian poverty, which rose precipitously1988 to 1992, has fallen but still remains higher than in 1988. Otheranalysts also nd that, despite the decline in Jordanian povertyfrom 1992 to 1997, poverty in the latter year remained far higherthan it was in 1988. 26 Similarly, a Ford Foundation review of thelively debate over poverty trends in Egypt concludes that there wasa large rise in the poverty headcount from 1981-82 to 1990-91 (from29.7 percent to 42.4 percent) and that, although the rate of povertyincrease slowed down during the 1990s, by 1995-96 (the last year forwhich there are data) the poverty headcount stood at 48 percent ofhouseholds. 27 A study of poverty in Yemen found that the numberof families suffering from malnutrition rose from 9 percent in 1992 to

27 percent in 1999.28

An International Development Research Centre(IDRC) report concludes that the proportion of people living inpoverty appears to be rising in most of the regions middle and lowerincome countries. 29 Finally, some of the countries for which data aremissingmost importantly Iraq and Sudanhave large populationsand relatively high poverty rates (although the exact magnitudes arenot known).

There are other reasons to believe that, despite the dif culties ofde nitions and data, the problem of poverty may be worsening inthe region. Ali and Elbadawi 30 cite three factors that seem likely to bethe key drivers of the rise in poverty. First, unemployment, despitemeasurement dif culties is not only high, but also rising in manycountries. Second, most job creation has occurred in the low-wageinformal sector, not in higher paying formal sector employment.And nally, there is much evidence of falling real wages in formal

sector urban employment. One might add that in some countries,including Egypt, real wages in agriculture have been falling aswell. 31

What are the political consequences of poverty? Poverty providesa fertile recruiting ground for opponents of regimes (and thereforeposes a challenge to governance) in at least two ways. First, somepoor people, particularly younger ones with some (often limited)education, join violent opposition movements. The basic pro le forthe rank-and- le of many of todays violent radical Islamic groupsis a young person with some education, who may also have recently


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moved to the city. Such young people are often unemployed or have jobs below their expectations. In North Africa, they are colorfullyknown as the hetistes.32 Some evidence from Egyptian arrest recordssuggests that many of those arrested for violent activities against theregime come from the shanty towns surrounding large citiesthat is,from some of the poorest urban areas of the country. Ahmed Rashidhas recently argued that the rise of Islamist radicalism in CentralAsia is also related to the problems of youth unemployment there. 33 Most recently, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA, the alliance ofIslamist parties in Pakistan) attracted poor voters because, as onepoor Pakistani who voted for them said, Nawaz and (Bhutto) juststole from us, the religious parties come from the poo r , and they

will help us.34

Even if the leadership of these parties do not, in fact,come from the poor, in politics, perceptions are what counts.The tenacity of violent opposition in Upper Egypt during the

past 2 decades is also plausibly related to poverty. The Said (Middleand Upper Egypt) is the poorest region in the country. Moreover,there, as elsewhere in the country, poverty has been rising duringthe past 10 years. The poverty situation deteriorated during the pastdecade, thanks to the collapse of unskilled wages. These had risenover 350 percent in real terms from 1973 to 1985, largely thanksto emigration for work in the Gulf States (public job creation alsoplayed a role). With the collapse of the regional oil industry in thewar-related migration to Iraq, and in the ability of the public sectorto create jobs, wages for unskilled workers fell by over 50 percent.As Saiidis increasingly move to cities, they export the problem ofIslamism to more visible locations, such as the major cities of Egypt.

The lack of new jobs is particularly acute since the long-runproblem has and in many cases will continue to worsen in the shortrun. The demand for labor has grown sluggishly because outputgrowth has lagged, and also because of speci c policy biases againstlabor-intensive, job-creating growth. Not only do the statist, inward-looking policies sketched above retard growth; they also raise thecapital-intensityand reduce the job-creating impactof whatevergrowth does occur. But changing these policies requires laying offworkers in state-owned enterprises and the bureaucracy, a movewhich frightens many leaders.


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Country PercentAlgeria 59.5Egypt 45.0Iran 61.1

Jordan 73.6Lebanon 89.3Morocco 55.3Pakistan 36.5Saudi Arabia 85.1Sudan 35.1Syria 54.0Tunisia 64.8Turkey 74.1Yemen 24.5

Source: UNDP, Human Development Report, 2001 . NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 154-157.

Table 4. Urban Population as Percent of Total Population, 1999,in Selected Middle Eastern and North African Countries.

politically volatile and dangerous to regimes than is rural discontentin the region. Rapid urbanization strains budgets, legitimacy, andgovernance, while swelling the ranks of regime opponents.

Consider the example of Karachi. This city had one million

inhabitants at the time of independence, but now holds at least11 million people, and will grow to perhaps 20 million by 2015.The managers of such cities are completely overwhelmed. Thesystems providing water, electricity, transportation, health care, andeducation are all swamped. Meanwhile, the one place in the slumswhich is cool while the outside is hot, the one place which is cleanwhile the outside is lthy, the one place which is calm where outsideis only chaosis the mosque. Government policy has played animportant role here: government incapacity, and the abandonmentof public space to private, Islamist schools, clinics, hospitals, andwelfare agencies, have done much to advance the fanatics cause


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Some analysts, such as Gilles Kepel, see reasons to be hopeful. 36 He contends that the social disorientation of the rst generation ofrural migrants to the cities fueled much of the appeal of radical andother Islamist movements. Stating that this process is decelerating,he therefore argues that this particular root of radicalism is likely toshrivel over time. This contention has much to recommend it, butunless the above arguments on how dysfunctional urbanizationhelps radicals is wrong, the deceleration of rural to urban migration(which itself is not a foregone conclusion in all countries (see Table4), is unlikely to be suf cient to undermine their appeal in the cities.

But the September 11 Terrorists Were All Privileged!

A number of observers 37 have objected that, so far as we can tell,most of the criminals of September 11 were privileged and educated.Krueger and Maleckova conduct a regression analysis of arrestedPalestinians using income and education data, and conclude thatpoverty does not cause terrorismthat is, the arrested youth areneither relatively poor nor uneducated. There are two problemswith inferences from such ndings. First, it is far from clear thata similar result would obtain in, say, Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan, orUzbekistan. Second, the research asks the wrong question (Areterrorists uneducated and/or poor?), and, therefore, unsurprisinglyyields uninteresting answers. The real question, How does povertycontribute to Islamic radicalism, requires a more nuanced analyticalapproach.

The social problems sketched above, including poverty,

contribute to the existence of Islamic radicalism in several ways.In the rst place, we should remember the famous quip of GeorgeOrwell: Revolutionaries can always pronounce their aitches.Revolutionaries are often, even typically, from relatively privilegedbackgrounds. Lenin was no muzhik. Mao tse-tung was the son ofa rich peasant. Yet the conditions of Russia and China in theirrespective youths profoundly shaped their perspectives. Peoplewho knew Mohammed Atta in Germany heard him speak of the fatcats running Egypt. Most people nd the presence of widespreadpoverty and human degradation offensive. We are thinking,


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reasoning beings: we look around us, and then draw our ownconclusions. The presence of widespread socio-economic dislocationdelegitimizes regimes in the eyes of those who spend much of theirtime thinking about what they see, such as intellectuals, journalists,and students. It is entirely unsurprising that the shock troops of arevolutionary movement are educated and privileged. It would bequite a-historical to argue that their existenceand their appealisindependent of the social conditions of their societies.

It is also worth remembering that the phenomenon of Islamistradicalism is far wider than al-Qaeda. Movements in Algeria,Egypt, Palestine, Pakistan, Yemen, Central Asia, and SoutheastAsia include many diverse actors. Indeed, Gilles Kepels optimistic

account38

is fundamentally a story of the alliancesand cleavages between two large social groups, the disenfranchised urban poorand the devout middle classes. He argues that, although the poorare drawn to Islamist politicians, the latter have been able to seizepower only when they could forge such an alliance (as during theIranian revolution). I would argue that, beyond such alliances, thecontinued presence of societal distress on the scale evident in theregion, contributes to (note that the verb is not cause) the continuedappeal of Islamist radicals, not only among the poor but also amongthe lumpen intelligentsia of unemployed middle-class high schooland university graduates. Monocausal explanations of complexhistorical phenomenon are always foolish. This hardly means thatsocio-economic conditions are irrelevant to their genesis.

A Historical Analogy .

An historical analogy may be illuminating here. The fanatics ofal-Qaeda display a family resemblance to the so-called Nihilistsand other terror-prone would-be revolutionaries of 19th centuryRussia, as described by the Hungarian writer Tibor Szamuely:

The Russian intelligentsia was a social stratum composed ofthose politically aroused, vociferous, and radical members of

the educated classes who felt totally estranged from society . . .The alienation of the intelligentsia from society was to a greatextent inherent in the countrys rudimentary social structure . . .


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unlike the West, Russia had no interest groups capable of givingstrength, support and substance to the intellectuals protest . . .The Russian intelligentsia had neither a place nor a stake in theexisting order of things. 39

The author goes on to argue that, just as the educated youngmen who piloted planes into the World Trade Center could easilyhave found well-paying jobs, there were considerable opportunitieswithin the Tsarist burearucracy for men of talent in the RussianEmpire. But, like the al-Qaeda mujahidiin , many Russian intellectualschose to spurn this path: The intelligent . . . himself rejected the ideaof serving a system founded on injustice, oppression and misery. 40 That is, ideas matterand ideas are not formed in a socio-economicvacuum.

Further similarities emerge. For example, in Russia during thisperiod, as during the past generation in the Middle East and widerMuslim world, there was a dramatic expansion of the universities,whose doors opened for the rst time to relatively less privilegedyoung men, often from rural backgrounds.

(After the Crimean War) there was a marked shift in the socialcomposition of the student body in the universities . . . it came tobe made up more and more of so-called raznochintsy , people ofdiverse rank: sons of clergymen, peasants, petty of cials, armyof cers, artisans, tradesmen who had become divorced by virtueof their education or inclination from their fathers social stationand could no longer t into the of cial estate system. 41

In a manner which Szamuely nds very understandable,

instead of being grateful for this opportunity for upward mobility,the student- raznochinets brought with him a deep sense of theinjustices of Russian life . . . [which] rapidly turned into hatred of theexisting order. 42 Szamuely also notes that the intolerant utopianismof the student revolutionaries was a mirror-image of the violenceof the Tsarist state. Here, too, there are important parallels with thecurrent situation in many Muslim countries.

The Failure of Governments.

The incompetence and authoritarianism of many Muslim and


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Middle Eastern governments strongly fosters Islamist radicalism. These governments are overwhelmingly unelected, unaccountable, and corrupt;they provide no legitimate outlet for youth discontent. Unsurprisingly,these governments are widely despised by their young people. Theold ideologies of these governments, largely varieties of nationalism,are also perceived as failures. The old ideology has failed to delivermaterial goods or a sense of dignity either at home or abroad. Thehalf-century failure of Arab states to resolve the Palestinian situationand the inability of Pakistan to ease the lot of Kashmiri Muslimshave contributed to the evident corrosion of regimes legitimacyin the eyes of youth. Nationalism has not disappeared; it has beenassimilated into the Islamists discourse. And, as George Orwell once

said, the nationalism of defeated peoples is necessarily revengefuland short-sighted.Governments are rightly faulted for countries dismal economic

performance. During the past 20 years, Organization for EconomicCooperation and Development (OECD) countries have seen their percapita incomes rise at some 1.4 percent per year. East Asia (excluding Japan) has, of course, grown much faster, at 5.8 percent per year, arate which doubled per capita incomes in 12 and 1/2 years. EvenLatin America, with its notorious lost decade of the debt-ridden1980s, saw per capita incomes rise at just under 1 percent per yearduring the past 2 decades. By contrast, per capita incomes in theArab states today are little different from what they were in 1980;some analysts would argue that per capita growth has actually beennegative, 43 which is clearly the case for some countries, notably theKingdom of Saudi Arabia. Real wages and labor productivity today

are about the same as in 1970. This performance is worse than thatof any other major region of the world except for the countries of theformer Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa.

The reasons for this woeful record are well-understood. A balefulcombination of vast economic rents, authoritarian and centralizingstates, and the fashion for import-substitution of the third quarterof the 20th century generated inward-looking political economiesdominated by the state. Oil wealth has rendered the public purseindependent of taxation of the populace: no representation hasbeen fostered by no taxation. Because oil money ows directly intothe public purse, it fosters corruption. The role of the state in the


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economy wasand remainsunusually large, whether measured bypercentage of output or employment. (See Figure 2.) Dismantlingsuch inherited structures has proved dif cult, and the process ofeconomic reform has often been tentative, dilatory, and slow.

Sluggish reform combined with continued regional con ict anduncertainty have undermined private investment, whether of localsor of foreigners. Consequently, the demand for labor has grownslowly, while, as we have seen, the supply has soared. Governmenteconomic policy failure is the other blade of the scissors producingunemployment, falling real wages, stagnant per capita incomes.

What Is To Be Done?

How can we reduce the appeal of utopian fanatics? We should

Figure 2.


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approach this problem with considerable humility. Take the economiccrisis. A strong case can be made that Middle Eastern economies havefailed, thanks to institutionaland politicalde ciencies. Outsiderscan do very little to promote institutional change, as the United Stateslearned to its dismay, in Russia and elsewhere. Similarly, resolvingthe deep cultural crisis of contemporary Islams confrontation withmodernity can only be done by Muslims. Non-Muslim Americansare largely by-standers in this process, as well.

Take the problems of the economy. The region has been slow toembrace the international consensus (the Washington Consensus)on what economic policies ought to be adopted to improve economicmanagement, and thereby to restore growth of incomes and job

creation. This view holds that only a private-sector led, export-oriented economic development strategy has a chance of copingwith the development challenges facing the region. This consensusis best articulated by the World Bank and the International MonetaryFund (IMF), 44 but it has many other adherents, particularly in theU.S. Government and in American academia and think-tanks.

The usual policy recommendation is to push harder for MiddleEastern regimes to reform their economies. However, thereare reasons to fear that, although the Washington consensus hasvirtues, it, too, is likely to fail. This is especially so for two groups ofcountries, the very poor nations and the relatively rich states of theGulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

For the poorest countries, exports are highly unlikely to provideeither adequate food security (which is an increasingly seriousproblem, given population growth and water constraints) 45 or

suf cient numbers of jobs. At the same time, while domesticproductive capacity has been and is being damaged by populationgrowth and property rights issues (e.g., for groundwater); naturalresource degradation may have gone so far as to be very dif cultto reverse. Note that the enthusiasm for private market solutions isunlikely to be very helpful when severe negative externalities exist.Further, thanks to past population growth, the labor force is growingso rapidly that provision of suf cient jobs via the private sector-ledexport model is simply not credible: infrastructure is far too poor,and the labor force is overwhelmingly illiterate. The grim facts are


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that, at best, economic development in such countries is mainly aholding action, designed to prevent further deterioration and theconsequent complete breakdown of order. In addition to the humansuffering such breakdowns always bring, the danger, of course, isthat the anarchy of a Somalia or Afghanistan provides excellenthavens for terrorists and other organized criminals.

Nor does the Washington consensus easily t the GCC states.The problems here are, in the rst instance, largely scal. The reliefwhich the last several years have afforded seems unlikely to last:the rent ceiling, given by alternative energy production costs, isperhaps about $25 per barrel. Even at this maximum (and relativelyunlikely) price, revenue would be short. The imperatives of

spending have (at least) three proximate causes: the perceived needto spend heavily on 1) defense, 2) consumer subsidies, and 3) publicsector job creation. The GCC states have local populations whichcompletely depend upon, and expect to receive, a wide variety ofconsumer subsidies. Governments ability to meet their side of thesocial contract is increasingly in doubt. Most importantly, the largemajority (e.g., in Kuwait, ~ 80 percent) of nationals are employed bythe state. Consequently, shortfalls in government revenue translatequickly into dif culties with employment creation. The need for jobcreation is particularly acute, given the weakness of a demographictransition in the GCC states: mortality rates have fallen sharply, butfertility rates have fallen only very moderately and remain very highby international standards. (See Table 1.) High rates of populationgrowth 15-20 years ago translate into very rapidly growing laborsupplies today. The private sector cannot currently take up the

slack in employment creation. The sector is too dependent onstate largesse, and relatively too small to do so. Most importantly,however, the countries of the Gulf have limited comparative advantagesin non-oil goods or services. Wage rates, seriously in ated by past oilrents and current consumer subsidies, are far too high to competein low wage activities, but skills are too low to compete in moresophisticated activities.

The orthodox economic growth strategy also faces formidableobstacles in other countries of the region where the strategy mightmore plausibly work, in the so-called Newly Industrializing


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Countries (NICs), like the North African countries, Egypt, Iran,and, possibly, Jordan. Here the needed policy shifts may themselvesbe destabilizing, not only because the necessary changes involveausterity, but also because special interests which are major propsof regime supportand who occupy important subsidized positionswithin the bureaucracyface important challenges. Examples of thelatter range from East Bank Jordanians to Egyptian workers in state-owned enterprises.

Over the longer haul, the needed changes are also likely tobe destabilizing in another way: attracting the necessary volumeof investment in the region will almost certainly require greatergovernmental accountability and more transparent rules of the

economic game. This is not to say that democracy is needed forgrowth; it is merely to suggest that it is very unlikely that regimeswill attract the necessary private capital from their own citizens orfrom foreigners if regimes persist in their arbitrary, authoritarianpractices. Since there are good reasons to suppose that continuedauthoritarianism is, in itself, one of the roots of Islamic radicalism 46, andsince continued unaccountable governance undermines economicgrowth, institutional change in the direction of greater participationand enhanced governmental accountability is almost certainlynecessary if the countries of the region are to achieve stability in thelonger term.

The problem, of course, is that managing the transition from thecurrent situation of authoritarian unaccountability is likely to berockyand destabilizing. what are you up to? Inevitably there willbe failures as well as successes. Given recent history, it should be

obvious that even relatively successful regimes may well be hostileto many U.S. foreign policies. Much hypocrisy has poisoned publicdebate on these issues in the United States: we are simultaneouslytold that 1) the Arab street doesnt matter, and 2) regimes areactually in favor of our overthrowing the government of Iraq, butthey cant say so publicly. The inconsistency here seems to botherfew observers. To paraphrase that darling of the neo-conservatives,Winston Churchill, more democratic regimes in the region are likelyto be the worst of all possible outcomesexcept for all the others.

Humility, of course, would help. The truth is that outsiders arelargely irrelevant to the process of deep institutional and cultural


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change which, alone, can ultimately overcome the profound, multi-tiered crisis facing the Muslim world. Our attempts to promotedemocracy in the former Soviet Union ran squarely against theburden of Russian, Caucasian, and Central Asian history.

Of course, it is within our power to refrain from making thingsworse. We can, indeed must, avoid actions which provide argumentsto the fanatics, and which discourage those Middle Easterners whowould respond differently to the crises facing their societies. Here, ofcourse, our foreign policy plays a vital role. We must press on withseeking a settlement to the con ict between Israelis and Palestinians.The sorry legacy of the past 2 years (not to say the last century) meansthat any resolution will be, to say the least, enormously dif cult.

Time may be running out for the only viable solution, a two-statesolution. Whatever the dif culties, we have no choice but to try. Anyseasoned observer of the region knows that it is entirely impossiblefor the United States to have peace with young Arabs and otherMuslims until this situation is resolved . We also have opportunitiesto contribute to change through modifying our policies toward theGulf and, perhaps especially, toward Iran. Our energy policies alsoremain stunningly myopic, as we continue to pay at the pump formany a Sala madrasa.

Unfortunately, current indications are that our policies willdo little to ameliorate these problems. A dismaying tendency inthe current American discourse is to attribute the entirety of theproblem to cultural failings in the Muslim world, and to argue thatthe problems have a largely military solution. The above analysissuggests that this is most unlikely to be true. 47 Instead of formulating

a nuanced policy, combining short-term covert operations againstal-Qaeda with medium- to long-run strategies to undermine theappeal of violent Islamist radicals, the Bush administration hasadopted a policy which myopically focuses on unilateral militaryaction. Now that we have destroyed the Baathist regime in Iraq, weface a dilemma: if we withdraw too quickly, we risk plunging thecountry into chaos, but if we stay too long, we risk being perceivedas colonialists. Falling into either trap would further undermine ourstanding in the Muslim world. Perhaps we will be both lucky andvery skillful (we will need both). Unfortunately, there is a grave risk


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of our actions stoking the already intense rage against the UnitedStates felt by the political actors to whom the future belongs: youngMuslims. Sadly, as of this writing, it seems probable that bothAmerican behavior and regional trends will continue to nourish theroots of Islamist radicalism.

Summary of Policy Recommendations .

Recognize that our past policies have contributed to the originsof this problem. Understand that denial of history does not serveour interests.

Recognize that the necessary institutional changes must comefrom within Arab and other Muslim societies. Learn from thefailure of shock-therapy in the former Soviet Union.

Subject all policies to the youth testask: Could this policyfurther enrage young Muslims against us?

Movenow and forcefullyto create a viable, independent,

democratic Palestinian state. Understand that genuinely democratic Arab and Islamic polities

will include strong representation of Islamists. Accept thatalthough we will have our differences with many of these, wecan often still work with all except the jihadist sala s (see list onpage 3).

Adopt domestic energy policies designed to speed the transitionto the post-oil era.

Work closely with the EU on all Middle Eastern issues. (What

would we think if the EU pursued policies in Latin America thatignored our interests?)

Do everything possible to strengthen intelligence and policecooperation with Arab, EU, and other governments in the struggle


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against al-Qaeda and like-minded jihadi sala st terrorists.

ENDNOTES

1. I am more fearful than ever that I will hopelessly repeat myself, over andover again, Vavclav Havel, A Farewell to Politics, New York Review of Books,October 24, 2002, p. 4. Unlike Mr. Havel, I know that I am repeating myself: I drawheavily here on several previous pieces: Socio-economic Roots of Radicalism,Naval War College Review, Vol. LV, No. 4, Autumn, 2002; The Political Economyof Economic Reform in the Middle East, Santa Monica: RAND, October 2001; andAt War With Utopian Fanatics, Middle East Policy, Vol. VIII, No. 4, December2001. An earlier version of this monograph appears as a Global Policy Brief, Centerfor Global, International, and Regional Studies of the University of California,Santa Cruz. I am repeating myself, but events in Washington and elsewheresuggest that the material bears repeating.

2. Thomas Homer-Dixon, Why Root Causes Are Important, Toronto Globeand Mail, September 26, 2001.

3. There is nothing conservative about these people, particularly inthe context of American policy toward the Middle East. They are, in fact,revolutionaries.

4. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, NY and London: Penguin Books, 2001.

5. See especially Guilain Denoux, The Forgotten Swamp: Navigating PoliticalIslam, Middle East Policy, Vol. IX, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 56-81; Michael Scott Doran,Somebody Elses Civil War, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2002, pp. 22-42;Quintan Wiktorowicz, The New Global Threat: Transnational Sala s and Jihad, Middle East Policy, Vol. VIII, No. 4, December 2001, pp. 18-38; Graham Fuller, TheFuture of Political Islam, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2002, pp. 48-56; GillesKepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,2002; Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror . NY: RandomHouse, 2002.

6. As argued extensively by Clement Henry and Robert Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001.

7. Isaiah Berlin, Notes on Prejudice. New York Review of Books, October 18,2001, p. 12.

8. Ibid.


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9. See, for example, Mahmoun Fandy, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent,New York: St. Martins Press, 1999; and the references cited above in note 5.

10. In millions, 2000.

11. Rate of natural increase, 2000.

12. Total Fertility Rate, 2000. The TFR measures the number of children whicha statistically average woman will have during her lifetime.

13. Op.cit, p. 66.

14. U.S. Census Bureau.

15. Jeffrey G. Williamson and Tareq Yousef, Demographic Transitions andEconomic Performance in MENA, unpublished paper, Harvard University,1999.

16. Philippe Fargues, Demographic Explosion or Social Upheaval? inGhassan Salame, ed., Democracy Without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World , London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.

17. Although the gap between the percentage of males and the percentage offemales in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon declined from 1980 to 2000,the gap stayed essentially the same in Morocco, and increased in Tunisia andYemen. Calculated from World Bank data.

18. Richard Bulliet, Twenty Years of Islamic Politics, The Middle East Journal,Vol. 53, No. 2, Spring 1999.

19. Eric Rouleau, Trouble in the Kingdom, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2002,pp. 75-89.

20. The following paragraphs draw on Hans Lofgren and Alan Richards,Food Security, Poverty, and Economic Policy in the Middle East and NorthAfrica, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), forthcoming.

21. World Development Indicators, 2001; and Willem van Eeghen, Poverty inthe Middle East and North Africa, World Bank, 1995.

22. Sheldon H. Danziger and Daniel H. Weinberg, 1994; The Historical Record:Trends in Family Income, Inequality, and Poverty, in Sheldon H. Danziger, GaryD. Sandefur, and Daniel H. Weinberg, eds., Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 18-50. World Bank, 2001b;World Development Indicators, Washington, DC.


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23. How Not To Count the Poor, Sanjay G. Reddy and Thomas W. Pogge,May 1, 2002. www.socialanalysis.org.

24. See, for example, Social Protection in the Middle East and North Africa: AReview, Tzannatos, Za ris, paper presented at the Mediterranean DevelopmentForum, March 2000, p. 5; Willem van Eeghen and Kouassi Soman, Poverty inthe Middle East and North Africa, in Ishac Diwan and Karen Sirker, eds., Voices from Marrakech: Towards Competitive and Caring Societies in the Middle East and North Africa, Selections from the Mediterranean Development Forum: Knowledge andSkills for Development in the Information Age, Marrakech, Morocco, May 12-17, 1997; http://www.worldbank.org/mdf/mdf1/ ; George F. Kossai , Poverty in theArab World: Toward a Critical Approach, paper presented at the MediterraneanDevelopment Forum, September 3-6, 1998, Marrakech, Morocco, p. 5.

25. Richard H. Adams, Jr., and John Page, Holding the Line: PovertyReduction in the Middle East and North Africa, 1970-2000, paper presented atAnnual ERF Conference, October 25-27, 2001.

26. Radwan Shaban, Dina Abu-Ghaida, and Abdel-Salam Al-Naimat, PovertyAlleviation in Jordan in the 1990s: Lessons for the Future, ERF Forum, Vol. 8, No.2, October 2001, p. 2.

27. Ford Foundation, Poverty Report, Cairo, 1998, www.fordfound.org/global/ cairo/features.cfm

28. Mohamed El-Maitamy, Poverty and the Labor Market in Yemen, ERFForum, Vol. 8, No. 2, October 2001, www.erf.org.eg/nletter/oct01_11.asp.

29. Max Rodenbeck, An Emerging Agenda for Development in the MiddleEast and North Africa, IDRC, 2000, www.idrc.ca/books/focus/930/12rodenb.html.

30. A. G. Ali and Ibrahim A. Elbadawi, The Labor Market and Poverty in theArab World: Some Preliminary Results, paper presented at the Seventh AnnualConference of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran andTurkey, October 26-29, 2000.

31. Alan Richards, The Egyptian Farm Labor Market Revisited, Journalof Development Economics, Vol. 43, 1994, pp. 239-261; Gaurav Datt and JenniferOlmsted, Induced Wage Effects of Changes in Food Prices in Egypt, Washington:IFPRI, 1998.

32. A Maghrebi word which blends the Arabic heta, wall, with the French suf x-iste: one who leans against the wall.


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33. Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, New Haven:Yale University Press, 2002.

34. Gretchen Peters, Pakistan Tilts Toward Extremism? Christian Science Monitor , October 15, 2002.

35. However, some observers argue that violent con icts in sub-SaharanAfrica are also closely linked to the problems of rootless youth. See, for example,Paul Richards, Are Forest Wars in Africa Resource Con icts? The Case of SierraLeone, in Nancy Peluso and Michael Watts, eds., Violent Environments , Ithaca andLondon: Cornell University Press, 2001, pp. 65-82.

36. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, Anthony F. Roberts, trans.,Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002.

37. See, for example, Michael Mandelbaum, Stirred but not Shaken: TheEconomic Repercussions, in Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda, eds., How DidThis Happen? Terrorism and the New War , NY: Basic Books, 2001; Alan B. Kruegerand Jitka Maleckova, Does Poverty Cause Terrorism? The New Republic, June 24,2002.

38. Op. cit.

39. Tibor Szamuely, The Russian Tradition , London: Fontana, 1974, pp. 192-194.

40. Ibid., p. 194.

41. Ibid., p. 197.

42. Ibid., p. 198.

43. Gary Hufbauer, China, the United States, and the Global Economy,Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1999.

44. See, for example, World Bank, Claiming the Future: Choosing Prosperity in the Middle East and North Africa, 1995; and IMF, Building on Progress: Reform and Growthin the Middle East and North Africa , 1996.

45. See Lofgren and Richards.

46. See, for example, Graham Fuller, The Future of Political Islam, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2002.

47. This statement should not be taken to imply that military action is


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Documents

Socioeconomic Roots of Radicalism