By: Sandy Arifin )*
It can’t be denied that terrorism has many interesting aspects to be discussed. One of them is about the relationship between poverty and terrorism. Some people assume that terrorism is caused by poverty. This assumption is mostly expressed by politicians and public figures. For example, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2002 had stated that the root causes of terrorism emanating from poverty, where poverty causes people have no hope in life. In line with Colin Powell, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2007 also stated that the war against terrorism will never be won as long as the still exist.
What led to the emergence of such an assumption? According to Edwin Bakker, a terrorism expert from the University of Leiden, the assumption that poverty is at the root of terrorism departing from at least two basic ideas. First, poverty will make someone would not had the opportunity to improve their standard of living so he would have some sort of “anger” against those whose condition is better, especially the government. Second, a number of terrorist organizations constitute extreme left groups who claim that they are fighting for the poor. Both the basic idea became the platform of why many people consider that poverty is the root cause of terrorism.
Maybe there are several people who agree with that assumption. However, the results of academic research in the field showed a “somewhat different” from what many people think regarding the relationship between poverty and terrorism. If we cite again the opinion from Edwin Bakker he said that poverty is not the root cause of terrorism. It can be seen from some of the facts on the ground. First, some of the “world’s top terrorists” today does not come from a poor family. For example Osama Bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, who came from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. Then, according to the results of research Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova towards the perpetrators of terrorist, they concluded that the relationship between poverty and terrorism tend to be weak and indirect. In fact, according to them, terrorism is caused by frustration at political situation, not economic. In essence, most academics agree that poverty is not the root causes of terrorism.
Such a “weak bond” relationship between poverty and terrorism implies that anyone can become a victim of radicalization that leads to the acts of terror, no matter of what kind of social and economic status that someone has. These conclusions should be aware of all segments of society, especially the elderly. Current trends indicate that the process of radicalization is quite massive conducted through social media, the media which can only be “accessible” by the people (especially teenagers) that have such a “good” status both in social and economic aspect. Therefore, the effective supervision of parents towards their children socially indispensable, including oversight of the use of social media wisely. The phenomenon of terrorism is complex. To handle this was not an easy matter. However, an effective synergy between the government and the public can be a major weapon to minimize the growing challenges of radicalization that can lead to acts of terror.
)* The author is CIDISS contributor