Time | Part of the response to terrorism must be security-based. A strike
against Daesh is needed; those who belong to it must be stopped. But we
also have to think about the political context of the violence, about
the humiliations and injustices that allow this movement to enjoy
significant support in the Middle East and call forth bloody actions in
Europe. Ultimately the real stakes are about creating an equitable model
of social development, over there and over here.
There’s no question: terrorism is fueled by the inegalitarian powder
keg of the Middle East, which we largely helped to create. Daesh, “the
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant,” is a direct product of the
disintegration of the Iraqi regime, and more generally the collapse of
the system of regional borders established in 1920.
After Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait in 1990–91, the united great powers
sent their troops to restore the oil to the emirs—and to Western
companies. Meanwhile, a new cycle of asymmetric and technological wars
was launched—a few hundred dead in the coalition to “liberate” Kuwait
versus tens of thousands on the Iraqi side. This logic was pushed to its
limit in the second Iraq War, between 2003 and 2011: roughly 500,000
Iraqi dead versus 4,000 American soldiers killed, all to avenge the
3,000 who died on Sept. 11, though that had nothing to do with Iraq.
Today this reality, amplified by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with
its extreme asymmetry of human costs and its lack of a political
horizon, serves as justification for every atrocity perpetrated by the
jihadists. Let’s hope that France and Russia, on the move since the
American fiasco, do less damage and bring forth fewer bloody actions.
Beyond the clash of religions, the concentration of oil resources
within small, unpopulated territories shapes and undermines the region’s
whole political and social system. Looking at the zone that stretches
from Egypt to Iran, and running through Syria, Iraq and the Arabian
Peninsula, a population of 300 million, we find that the oil monarchies
hold a combined 60% to 70% of regional GDP, for barely 10 percent of the
population, which makes the region the most unequal on the planet.
It must be made clear that a minority of the population in the oil kingdoms appropriate a disproportionate share of this bounty, while large groups (women and immigrant workers, especially) are kept in semi-slavery. And it’s these regimes that are militarily and politically supported by the Western powers, which are only too happy to get back a few crumbs to finance their football teams or through weapons sales. It’s not surprising that our sermons on democracy and social justice count for little among the youth of the Middle East.
It must be made clear that a minority of the population in the oil kingdoms appropriate a disproportionate share of this bounty, while large groups (women and immigrant workers, especially) are kept in semi-slavery. And it’s these regimes that are militarily and politically supported by the Western powers, which are only too happy to get back a few crumbs to finance their football teams or through weapons sales. It’s not surprising that our sermons on democracy and social justice count for little among the youth of the Middle East.
