Shocking! Amazing! Truly Incredible!

US forces in Afghanistan have discovered the true deterrant to terrorism there.

Hint: it's not bombs, missiles, night-raids, firefights, bigger occupying armies...

Answer: Poverty reduction tactics!

With escalating violence threatening Afghanistan's future, the U.S. military has a new focus: employ as many of the poor as possible to rebuild schools and medical clinics so they don't join the Taliban or al-Qaida.

The U.S. military operational commander in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, believes that the more Afghans being put to work helps take away some of the enemies' ability to recruit.

"I'd rather have an Afghan national working on a road or helping build a clinic than getting three to five bucks or whatever the Taliban or al-Qaida-associated movement pays him to plant an IED (improvised explosive device)," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
"We are hiring as many Afghans as we can."

As part of the strategy, an ambitious string of reconstruction projects are on the drawing board for fall and winter, when militants here are normally quiet, in an attempt to prevent an insurgent offensive next spring, when snows melt on high mountain passes used by the rebels.

Invest Afghanis in their future! [Isn't that the perfect American sloganeering?]

The model that will work here is not, however, simply Americans employing the deeply impoverished. This task is globally impossible. But the technique to reducing terrorism goes hand in hand with reducing poverty. Remove the threat of poverty, remove the desire to join manipulating forces that use the impoverished for their ends.

Bono trying to convince Bush in 2002:

As you can see, I’m traveling in some pretty good company today – Bono,” said Bush, as he gestured to the singer. [NYT, March 15, 2002] The Washington Post noted that “the White House clearly craved” Bono’s support. [March 15, 2002]

The modest new promise for a few billion dollars sometime beyond the current budget cycles also may soften international criticism of Bush’s emphasis on a military response to world terrorism and a previous disinterest in the root causes of violence.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn and other world leaders have argued that to combat terrorism, global poverty and other international problems must be addressed. “We will not create a safer world with bombs or brigades alone,” Wolfensohn said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. Poverty “can provide a breeding ground for the ideas and actions of those who promote conflict and terror.”

Therefore, the World Bank president said, “If we want to build long-term peace, if we want stability for our economies, if we want growth opportunities in the years ahead, if we want to build that better and safer world, fighting poverty must be part of national and international security.”

...
In his March 14 speech to the Inter-American Development Bank, Bush acted as if this was his new discovery. "Poverty doesn't cause terrorism," Bush said, as Bono listened on stage. "Yet persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair. And when governments fail to meet the most basic needs of their people, these failed states can become havens for terrorism."

For Bush, this recognition of the link between terrorism and political desperation might have seemed like a burst of enlightenment compared to his previous rhetoric about mounting a "crusade" to root out "evil-doers." But it is still not clear whether Bush's actions will match his words – or whether his new-found commitment to fighting world poverty was mostly a political show for Bono.

Of course, the "political show for Bono" has consistently been attacked under the grounds that Bono, as a rock act, can have little expertise or effect on poverty, while he can draw great attention to it. I think that the global effect of Live 8, 3 years after this article, can show that these guys who have international appeal also have a platform to build justice.

Does poverty = terrorism? No.

But even Bush is aware that the impoverished, when given the choice between starvation and terrorism, might easily turn.