A recent survey, ‘Poverty and support for militant politics — evidence from Pakistan’, conducted by senior US researchers, concludes that poverty in Pakistan does not feed religious extremism and terrorism (the survey may be found on this link: http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/MORTARA-FAIR-Poverty-and-Support-for-Militant-Politics-Pakistan.pdf). The survey, conducted on 6,000 people sampled from all four provinces of Pakistan, finds that poor people in Pakistan are much less likely to support militant groups than richer Pakistanis. The survey also finds that out all the four federating units of Pakistan, people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa dislike militant organisations the most. The reason, according to the survey, is that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has suffered many more terror acts than the other provinces of Pakistan. Citing the survey, the Daily Telegraph says that the survey findings could jeopardise the UK’s 1.4 billion pound aid to Pakistan over the next five years as a strategy to protect Britain from terrorist attacks rooted in Pakistan. The underlying assumption of the aid package is that poverty feeds extremism and so, by eradicating poverty, extremism and terrorism could be finished, protecting British streets from terror attacks.
This survey provides a better and clearer picture of the ground reality in Pakistan, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Pakhtun tribal leaders and political activists in FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been arguing for years that poverty does not drive terrorism and extremism. This survey vindicates their point of view. Besides the survey’s finding — that poor Pakistanis dislike militant groups because the poor often become the target of terror acts — the other reason why poor people dislike militant groups is that the militants force the poor families to become a part of their terror plans. There is enough empirical evidence of this happening, as produced in the media. Most would-be suicide bombers, arrested by the authorities, narrate to the media that the militants kidnapped them for training in suicide bombing and their poor parents could do nothing out of fear of the militants or remained unaware regarding the whereabouts of the missing children. Upon interaction with the people of FATA, one often comes across narratives about the gruesome acts of terrorism committed against the people of FATA by the FATA-based multi-ethnic terrorists.
This survey also seems sensitive to the security of its informants due to participation in the survey. The surveyors seem to have made a conscious effort to ensure the security of the informants as well as honest answers from them. On this count, the survey is more ‘ethical’ than a similar survey conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow and the New America Foundation last year as well as many other surveys. In this column, I have been urging researchers to apply necessary ethical considerations in conducting surveys in the terrorism-hit areas of Pakistan, especially FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. I welcome the ethical considerations of the survey and hope more western researchers will follow this line.
I see one shortcoming with this survey though. The area of Pakistan that is most hit by terrorism, FATA, has not been included in the survey. Conducting a survey in FATA may be a life-risking undertaking given the poor security situation in the area. Thus, one can understand why FATA is not part of the survey. But by the time of the survey, April 2009, many thousands of people in FATA had fled the area to other parts of Pakistan, especially Karachi and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, due to the widespread terrorism in the region. Those internally displaced people could have been included in the survey. Based upon my first hand interactions with the people of FATA and the survey finding — that people in the area most hit by terrorism dislike the militant groups the most — I can say that the people of FATA would have topped the list among the Pakistanis who dislike the militant organisations if the area had been included in the survey.
As regards the tying down of British aid to poverty eradication in Pakistan in order to protect the UK from terror attacks, one is surprised to see how the British authorities could be so naïve. It is a well-documented fact in western academia that the spread of militant groups in Pakistan is closely linked with the Pakistani state’s geo-political concerns-based policies vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan. Now the militant groups nurtured and promoted by the state have joined the al Qaeda-led international terror secretariat. The Pakistani state’s concerns have to be looked into rather than the poverty in the country to eliminate the root cause of the terrorism reaching out globally from Pakistan. In the UK, just as in many other western countries, several people among the Muslim communities have developed an extremist mindset. Western countries have to address this issue on their own grounds rather than looking for excuses about the poverty in Pakistan.
This, however, does not mean that poverty eradication in Pakistan should not be supported by the UK or countries among the Friends of Democratic Pakistan. The extremist mindset that has set in among middle and upper middle class Pakistanis, especially in Punjab, has been nurtured by the state over three decades. It may take several years to obliterate this mindset after the state gives up its foreign policy pursuit through militancy. However, there is no sign up till now that the state has given up its jihadi pursuit. This implies that for a long time in the future, the richer Pakistanis who lead the terrorist groups or financially or intellectually support them, will continue to ensure their families stay well protected, while at the same time will force the poorer Pakistanis to be used as cannon fodder in their violent jihad.
This is, however, an internal problem in Pakistan and all sane minded Pakistanis will have to pool their resources, including financial resources, to defend this country against extremism. This certainly implies enabling the poor of the country to protect their families from the high-handedness of the militant groups. This is a phenomenal challenge and help from friendly countries, including financial assistance, for poverty eradication, might be significant. More importantly, poverty is an object that can be exploited by many kinds of exploitative forces, militants or others. Efforts towards poverty eradication should be supported on their own merit without linking them with specific security objectives.
The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban