Pew International Journalism Program

Kipper: Poor Economic Opportunities Provide Genesis for Terrorism

WASHINGTON, September 24, 2001 - The United States must encourage Arab regimes to implement long-range economic reforms as part of its campaign against terrorism, an expert on Middle East affairs told Pew Fellows.

Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) traced the causes of extreme anti-American sentiment to high oil prices in the 1970's, when billions of U.S. dollars, sometimes referred to as "petrodollars," were pouring into the Middle East.

"Most of that money went to infrastructure and corruption - very little was spent on what was needed, and what continues to be needed in this part of the world," especially education, Kipper said. "Petrodollars did not produce a single good university."

Without educational opportunities, the vast majority of young men in the Middle East are unequipped to find employment in the global economy. "These young people have no decent education," Kipper said. "They don't have a stake in the societies in which they live, none of the countries in the Middle East are moving in a democratic direction."

Kipper said Islam is being used as an excuse to wreak terror. "What I think we're seeing with Islam in the Middle East and some other places is a reformation. And we know from Christianity and Judaism that all religions as they reform themselves go through excesses. I think as we look back at this era that some of the things done in the name of Islam were not at all part of that reformation, but aberrations and excesses that people who found it convenient, or were misguided, or were uneducated were using Islam as a calling card for doing violent things."

This situation, combined with veterans of the Afghanistan-Soviet war returning to their home countries with no practical skills besides waging war, has formed the basis for today's terrorist organizations.

"The lack of care and thinking about the problem with what to do with these Arabs who fought in Afghanistan and what to do when they [returned] home has been a big mistake," said Kipper.

"We need a longer-term regional policy, and one of the things we need to do is use a little tough love," said Kipper. "We need to have a very strong, very consistent part of our policy that insists on structural economic reform, more openness, better education [and] freedom of expression. We need to make it clear that our good relations with those countries depend on their taking steps towards that goal."