re: #515 suchislife

I agree. Do you think it’s possible though that poverty has something to do with the level of support terrorists enjoy in a community?

Honestly, I think it’s situational. In the case of Northern Ireland, for example, I think it actually had a lot to do with the economics of the comunity, although not everything.

In the case of Islamic fundamentalist terror, which is what we’re really talking about here, I think less so, although I think the ignorance and limited world view preserved by poverty (and tribalism) certainly helps terror groups in a number of settings—Afghanistan comes to mind. But Saudi, for example, is hardly a poor nation (to put it mildly), and they’ve produced the cream of the terrorist crop. In their case, they’ve used their money to produce fanaticism and insularity. And certainly, al-Qaeda, for example does not recruit from the poor.

Flip-side, the Palestinian groups do recruit from the poor, and use economic and social pressures to impress suicide bombers into service, or did some years ago, the tactic is less common at the moment.