(CNSNews.com) – Launching a new global counter-terror fund, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of the importance of “providing more economic opportunities for marginalized youth at risk of recruitment” – although much research has debunked the notion of a link between poverty and Islamist terrorism.
At a meeting in New York Friday of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), Kerry and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu unveiled a $200 million initiative designed to leverage public and private funding in support of what the GCTF calls “countering violent extremism” (CVE) efforts.
Osama bin Laden was the son of a billionaire businessman, Ayman al-Zawahiri is a physician and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has an engineering degree.
A similar pattern was evident in south-east Asia, where key members of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror network were well-educated men.
In a study of Singapore’s experience in combating radical ideology over the 2001-2011 decade, researchers from the country’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies observed that they included Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian former army captain and businessman (who in 2000 provided lodging in Kuala Lumpur to two of the 9/11 hijackers and was later involved in a foiled Singapore bomb plot).
Others were JI bomb expert Azahari Husin, a university lecturer in Malaysia with a doctorate in engineering, killed in 2005; wanted JI fugitive Zulkifli Abdul Hir, a U.S.-trained engineer; Noordin Mohammed Top, a university graduate who became Indonesia’s most-wanted terrorist until killed in 2009; and other JI figures who hold degrees or engineering diplomas.
According to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, “Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.”
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