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Fair trade is lasting solution to evil of terrorism
2005-07-12 07:45:04
By Editor
When sobriety finally returns and we begin taking stock of the mindless barbarism perpetrated by terrorists last week in London, the world must accept to confront the growing evil by tackling the socio-economic systems in which it germinates.
Hunting down terrorists is an approach that has only succeeded in breeding more terrorism.
No amount of jingoism and condemnation will suppress terrorists from carrying out further attacks on hapless and usually innocent people if the focus remains on physically exterminating its agents. The US’ misadventure in Iraq is a case in point.
The death of over 50 people and injuries to 700 others during last Thursday’s morning rush-hour attacks on London subways and a commuter bus illustrates just how terrorists have become indiscriminate in their choice of targets and one gets the impression that as the targets become fewer they may resort to using deadlier weapons – biological weapons! As of now, crowded public places remain the soft spots for their activities.
Instructively, the London attacks were carried out at a time when leaders of the world’s most industrialised nations, the Group of Eight (G8), were meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland. Top on the agenda of G8 was African’s debt burden.
As the G8 leaders gloated and pored over their successes, there were also beggars in their midst – leaders from Third World countries, who in the words of Libyan leader, Muamar Gaddafi, were waiting for ’’small change.’’
By small change Gaddafi illustrated just how demeaning it is for poor nations to look to the West for crumbs of global wealth to feed their people.
And the crumbs are usually so few that they are snapped up as soon as they are dished out.
In other words, poverty dehumanises both the rich and the poor and breeds tension between the two classes and unless their differences are ameliorated, they remain a threat to civilised human behaviour.
Whichever way one looks at it, the London attacks – indeed even the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York, the August 7, 1998 twin bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam – have their genesis in inequitable and unequal wealth distribution at individual, national and global levels.
This is not an attempt to flirt with Marxism’s theories of wealth accumulation and distribution. We are talking about the new world order which bars developing countries from doing business with the West.
We are talking about the lack of access to markets in the West by Third World farmers and small-scale industrialists.
Trade protectionism in the form of stiff tariff barriers and farm subsidies ensure that producers in developing countries are locked out of the lucrative markets.
The outcome of such discriminatory global trade systems is leaders who wait on the fringes of wealthy nations’ meetings for small change. The opposite is recourse to terrorism to force the rich to shift their perception of the poor.
This is not to justify the beastly acts of Al Qaeda. The truth is Osama bin Laden and his ilk uses the poor to execute their bestiality. He is able to galvanise their support, not because of his strong religious beliefs, but the vulnerability of the poor.
They are invariably young, unemployed, mentally unstable, immature and without a future to look to materially. Their impecuniosities make them easy prey for the masterminds of the horrendous acts of terrorism.
That Osama and Saddam Hussein are idolised among the African poor is no exaggeration.
They are perceived as the West’s Waterloo and the only ones capable of standing up to imperialism.
In the minds of the jobless and poor from deprived backgrounds, Osama metes out punishment to the global forces and systems that consign them to perpetual poverty.
Correcting global trade imbalances in the form of opening up Western markets to Third World countries is the answer to terrorism.
Even if foreign aid is tripled or quadrupled, as long as trade barriers remain in place, terrorism will remain an inevitable evil.
Economic prosperity creates hope and self-esteem, and provides little room for recruiters of terrorists.
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