Is poverty really a root
cause of terrorism?
The story of Mohammed
Emwazi says no By ADAM TAYLOR
February 27, 2015 The
Washington Post
Earlier this month,
Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, told MSNBC's Chris
Matthews that the United States couldn't win the fight against the Islamic
State by simply killing all the militants. Instead, she suggested, other
factors had to be considered, including "a lack of opportunity for
jobs."
Harf's
comment was widely mocked (it prompted a hashtag, #Jobs For ISIS) but really
Harf wasn't saying anything that the Obama administration, or, in fact, the
Bush administration, had not said before: Poverty can lead people to join
radical Islamist groups.
Now, revelations about the upbringing of the man dubbed
Jihadi John have prompted people to return to Harf's comments. Mohammed Emwazi
is a Kuwaiti-born British man who became notorious for his masked appearances
in Islamic State beheading videos. And, as The Washington Post revealed on
Thursday, his upbringing was not marked by poverty, but instead was pretty
well-to-do.
As someone who grew up
not too far from Emwazi, let me give my own subjective opinion here: The idea
that he was raised in affluent or even wealthy circumstances is a bit of a red
herring. The house Emwazi was raised in seems fairly modest, and the
neighborhood of Queens Park is socioeconomically mixed, with a large number of
immigrants in the area. The Telegraph reports that his father had worked as a
minicab driver -- a stable career that is not known for its high salary
(London's "black cab" drivers are far better paid).
In
addition, the idea that Emwazi was highly educated strikes me as a little
dubious.
He
attended a local state school, Quintin Kynaston Community Academy, which has a
fairly good reputation. Then he studied computer science at the University of
Westminster, ranked 95th in the country by the Guardian. Westminster is a fine
university, but it's not Oxbridge, nor a rival to any of the other Russell
Group universities known for attracting Britain's upper and middle classes. His
degree is in a particularly employable field but was no automatic ticket to a
life of luxury.
This sort of background
is nowhere near poverty, of course, but the Emwazi family may have been
numerically closer to it than they were to bin Laden family-style wealth.
Emwazi's
background seems, for lack of a better word, normal. Walk down any street in
London and you'll pass people from both poorer and richer backgrounds. The
Emwazi family's middle-class background is unexceptional, similar to millions
of other families in London.
So what made Emwazi choose a different path? It's possible
that despite his economic reality, he felt a poverty of opportunity. Another
idea, put forward by friends of Emwazi who spoke to The Washington Post and the
rights group CAGE, is that Emwazi was radicalized only after coming under
pressure from the British security services.
"We now have
evidence that there are several young Britons whose lives were not only ruined
by security agencies, but who became disenfranchised and turned to violence
because of British counter-terrorism policies coupled with longstanding
grievances over Western foreign policy," Asim Qureshi, research director
of CAGE, said in a statement.
That
rationalization may strike some as glib, but, at the least, repeated arrests by
the British intelligence services did little to deter Emwazi from a path to
radicalism and do seem to have cost him employment back in Kuwait.
If
anything, it's too early to tell. As Emwazi's background is investigated over
the next few days, it's likely more information will come out that could point
to his motivation: Things he might have said about Islam or international
politics, details of his family background, or moments of violence in his life.
Most likely, however, no smoking gun will be found. His decision to go from
Mohammed Emwazi to "Jihadi John" was likely based on a complex
tapestry of factors, only a fraction of which we'll ever really understand.
Do Emwazi's circumstances prove Harf and the U.S. government
wrong? On their own, no.
Emwazi is an individual
and one who has already proven himself exceptional within the Islamic State's
ranks. The Islamic State is now a vast number of people, each with their own
background, experiences and beliefs that shaped their decision. It's the
aggregate, rather than the experiences of one young man from Queens Park, that
counts -- and no single factor will ever explain everything.
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Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post.
Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia
University.
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